Sysomos, now part of Meltwater Reviews & Insights

I work on a small team at a mid-size advertising agency, where we manage and lead our clients' influencer marketing strategies and programs. We use Klear on a pretty regular basis (at least 2-3 times per week) to help identify influencers, execute programs and measure results. Before we started using Klear our team was doing all of our influencer identification manually (searching on Instagram, reading articles about the best "lifestyle" bloggers, etc.) so we really wanted a platform to help us streamline that process. We also liked Klear over other similar products because it was a self-service platform and it isn't an opt-in network, making the pool of influencers to vet as large or small as we need it to be. This was important because some of our clients run hyper-local campaigns, so we needed to be able to filter down and see results in a small city.

Klear is great for doing some preliminary research when building out an influencer list. We've used it a lot for this and overall had pretty good success. We sometimes supplement with manual searching, but overall Klear has helped save a lot of time and labor on our end. I do prefer to manage influencer programs myself though, so I don't take advantage of the program's chat functionality, payroll capabilities, etc.

Sysomos was used by the prior agency I used to work at for social listening ad-hoc client requests, or tracking of mentions or conversations on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. It helped provide insights on the volume of a certain conversation topic, about a brand, hashtags, crises, and more.

I would say that this is a fine tool for standard social listening tracking or monitoring. I would not say that it's top of class by any means, but it is sufficient and it gets the job done. I would like to see the interface get updated and new functions included.

We use Sysomos MAP as a way to get quick insights and numbers for a broad overview of a topic or issue. It can give ideas for volume and what potential irrelevancies may come in without going through a full set up of a monitoring project. It can also provide really good insights on influencer and interrelated communities identification, if that is something that is of use to the client. The tool is used primarily for desk research.

It is well suited to quick turn projects that require very little as far as specific data is concerned. If you're trying to dig into the mentions to garner insights, it can be difficult to view things and find the most relevant content. But if you're looking for broad overviews leveraging big data insights, it is excellent.

Sysomos MAP is used across the whole organization to measure impact of social media campaigns on Twitter. It is also used to find social influencers.

It is very well suited for Twitter campaigns. For Facebook and Instagram, you will have to measure manually.

I use Sysomos Expion to moderate and schedule a clients' social content. It is used by the department I work in for one client. The application allows me to moderate the numerous social pages in one place across Facebook, Twitter, and Google +. The feed within the app updates as content comes in from fans and followers, allowing us to address them.

It is easy to schedule content, but the API breaks for no reason. This causes content to not publish or publish without photos.

Expion is used to manage 9 brands by the same team. Mostly on the Facebook pages but also other social networks.

Expion is better for global brands focused on publishing and less on reacting. The tool can slow down the whole engagement and the team may need to check the front office to make sure all messages were answered.

No much to debate on this question. We are currently using Elite Renting and we are all very disatisfied with the product. The daily rents are never correctly converted into the Ads and constantly need to be corrected. There are only "3 easy steps" but the 3 step is editing 4 different screens of information, very time consuming. Expion was a much better product.

I would ask what exactly you will need the tool for. It's helpful for managing many Facebook pages like my particular client, but manual posting for one page may be easier if your brand is smaller. Overall, I'm very likely to recommend Expion to a colleague.

Play around with it first. Find out capabilities and ask how the tool is better than competing products.

Push them to customize the tool for your needs. They'll do it.