Brandwatch Reviews

Best in class software, easy to use, and feature-rich

Comments: We use Falcon.io to monitor the sentiment, mentions and overall trends/virality of our clients social media profiles.

Pros:

First of all, the biggest benefit of Falcon is that it comes in significantly cheaper than the market leader (Salesforce) and 100x easier to use and get started. While customization may not be as extensible as Salesforce (also without the headaches), there's still a good degree of tuning to be found within Falcon such as setting up automatically generated reports, custom dashboards, and brand monitoring options. Falcon also works great in a multilingual setting (French and English in our case), though will sometimes report some false-positives in non-English sentiments. The ability to monitor brand mentions, sentiments, and callouts across all social media platforms and the web in one convenient dashboard is amazing.

Cons:

The mobile version of the site, and mobile apps for iOS/Android (Called Engage) are a bit buggy sometimes, and leave a bit to be desired feature-wise. Though, thankfully it appears that the app is regularly updated and maintained, so I'm holding out hope that it grows to be much more serviceable in the future.

Falcon Review

Comments: Getting other teams to schedule has cut down my tasks in some ways, making people more responsible for their own projects and providing training for them so they've learned a new skill.
Customer service is always great, (Helgi is awesome) (and love that you can send GIFS), and they're usually quick to respond and resolve issues.

Pros:

The calendar overview Scheduling quite easily Being able to leave notes Having a team system

Cons:

The approval system and the access that different user roles have. Preview mode not always being accurate. Not being able to do things like tagging on pics for Twitter or needing an app to schedule certain posts on Instagram. Falcon not being able to collate all data from all channels for stats (but i know that's due to the channel permissions and not Falcon) Falcon sometimes refreshing and not saving posts, taking ages to load images. Channels being disconnected (again not entirely Falcons fault)

Review

Comments: It's a good experience, but really wish those pieces of functionality were available as they are crucial to efficiency of our business.

Pros:

The software is helpful to managing all social channels

Cons:

There are a few features that really could be improved: -bulk scheduling: being able to schedule multiple posts over the course of months or weeks. Our business can use the same evergreen posts at certain times. The functionality that Sprout Social offers is ideal. -scheduling the same posts across multiple channels on the same interface. Facebook, Insta and Linked In-- again Sprout allows this functionality. -not limiting custom reports to a certain number of metrics.

Alternatives Considered: Sprout Social, Meltwater and Hootsuite

Switched From: Sprout Social, Meltwater and Hootsuite

Reasons for Switching to Brandwatch: Previous relationship and the all in one reporting functionality. Other companies used 3rd parties for reporting purposes.

Would Highly Recommend

Comments: My overall experience with Falcon. io has been very positive. I just wish I had more time to use it to its full potential!

Pros:

It allows one person to manage over 10 different social channels with varying levels of involvement. The reporting function is very user-friendly. Customer service is easy to access through the help feature if you ever run into issues.

Cons:

Cost. Considering all the free open-source software available, I think the cost would limit the types of businesses that could afford this tool.

Excellent so far!

Comments: Enjoying it so far, it meets all our needs and has great customer support.

Pros:

The product is easy to use and hands down the best thing that comes with it is the constant support of their staff. Always very helpful and quick in responding to queries.

Cons:

I think overall the platform could be a little more visual. We've previously used Dash Hudson and found this to be 100% user friendly and metrics could be understood at a glance.

Falcon.io makes it easy

Comments: It is a pleasure to use this tool and the quality of data it collects is brilliant. The tool is very easy to use and navigation is seamless.

Pros:

Very easy to use and the data collection is brilliant. Customer support is out of this world.

Cons:

Lack for social listening analytics. In this sense it feels a bit light-weight. Twitter content performance data is limited. Boolean search queries are too limited for complex search queries.

Alternatives Considered: Synthesio and Talkwalker

Reasons for Choosing Brandwatch: Tracx shut down.

Reasons for Switching to Brandwatch: Quality of the data was top notch. The tool is very easy to use and the support is out of this world.

Falcon Makes Our Social Media Life Easier

Pros:

I like how Falcon quickly allows me to pull monthly reports to send to management. Before Falcon, I had to go through each platform we use and compose an analytics report. Now I just go into Falcon, customize what data I want to see, set the date range, and snap--there it is.

Cons:

A previous scheduler we used allowed the user to drag content all around the calendar when rescheduling. I wish Falcon had that option (instead of having to open the post and reschedule it that way.

Good tool for cross-organization visibility

Pros:

I like that it's easy to use, and the capabilities within it are easily divided so everyone can find exactly what they need, when they need it.

Cons:

I find that on particular platforms, certain preferences I had set natively don't translate over to the tool. i.e. news feed targeting in Facebook, etc.

Alternatives Considered: Hootsuite

Reasons for Choosing Brandwatch: The tool was too large for the what the organization needed. Price was also a factor.

Switched From: Sprinklr

Good social media scheduler and monitoring system.

Pros:

I like the ease of scheduling social media posts. They tend to keep up with the platforms' changes pretty well.

Cons:

The analytics leave a little to be desired, though they do seem to be developing those capabilities at the moment.

Falcon.io is a One Stop Social Media Stop for Agencies

Comments: I shared most in the I like section. For our big client its been a godsend, with smaller clients a bit trickier. Its streamlined our content creation process and made us more consistent with posting at optimal times on different platforms than ever. Also we can get months ahead with scheduled content, like we'd always dreamed. Its freed up time for other important business things!

Pros:

I love the dashboard interface, and the ability to switch from one Client (Project) to another. I absolutely LOVE that my team & I can post for clients on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn & Twitter. We even can map out Instagram stories as a part of the overarching social media strategy. As an agency owner, I like the approval capabilities for my content creator or clients to create posts and for us to be the final approval and last eyes to see a post before it goes live. And last but not least, I am a huge fan of the reporting, easy to generate reports for each platform that we can send or review for clients as frequently as need. Also was extremely helpful for end of year/new year meetings I had in December and January, I was more prepared and educated about our stats than ever before, with just a few clicks.

Cons:

Wishing you had Pintrest posting (we use and pay for Tailwind). More education on how to use social listening. More capabilities of the apps (to approve ideally or quick switch out or fix posts). To be able to answer chats/DMs in your app, so we can track our responses through stats.

Must-Have for a Busy Agency

Comments: Overall I love it for scheduling, analytics, and engagement management. I have noticed a few bugs with it not working certain days or posts not able to go through. But for the most part, with how much I use it, I've had minimal issues, and I would recommend this for any agency or social media marketer that is juggling a lot of clients.

Pros:

This platform cuts out hours of time scheduling & customizing posts for multiple social media platforms. It's also a great tool for managing comments/messages for multiple clients in one easy, organized location.

Cons:

FB Business Suite now allows you to schedule IG & FB stories, while Falcon still doesn't have that feature. Also we paid for the Advertising feature which allows you to set up FB ads directly through the platform, however I have found that I still end up using FB Ads Manager to maintain my advertising. I was excited about the idea of being able to do everything in one spot initially but the advertising feature is not easy to use, although I'm sure a lot of that has to do with what the FB API allows for third-party apps, and you can't easily set up different types of ads & optimization, so you end up having to move to FB Ads Manager anyway to do anything that isn't a basic "boost."

Falcon Review

Pros:

I like the ease of use when assigning messages to my team. I also like the calendar view and the ease with which can reschedule posts.

Cons:

My least favorite thing about Falcon is the reporting module, I'd love to see some revenue based KPIs in there as well.

Alternatives Considered: Sprout

Reasons for Choosing Brandwatch: Wanted a more robust product

Switched From: Agorapulse

All-in-one tool for social media

Comments: We are managing several dozen channels and over 70 users in a dozen countries - for me as an admin and coordinator Falcon provides tools to see what's happening where and allocate access and resources easily.

Pros:

- Ease of user/channel management. - One-stop solution for publishing, engagement, listening and analytics - Reliable and easy web-interface and bulk upload features - Very responsive customer support - Lots of customer success management support - training, webinars, etc.

Cons:

- I am less impressed by Measure tools than the rest of the suite, but this largely because we have extensive needs for pretty customised reporting on social channels' performance and I find it more productive to work with raw data and custom made dashboards. If you are a content manager and need to keep an eye on some key numbers - Falcon is OK.

Alternatives Considered: Sprinklr, Emplifi Social Marketing Cloud, Percolate and CoSchedule Marketing Suite

Great and easy to use content planning tool

Pros:

Full range of features that enables you to set and previsualize

Cons:

Uncertainties around the figures shared due to non real time display

Alternatives Considered: Hootsuite

Reasons for Choosing Brandwatch: Price, and tool more robust

Switched From: Loomly

Reasons for Switching to Brandwatch: Easier user interface

Great software with just a few bugs

Comments: Overall, Falcon has been a great social media management tool and we would highly recommend

Pros:

I love the level of detail in Falcon. The analytic tools are great and the engage platform is phenomenal. We are also equally impressed with the Listen tool.

Cons:

There has been a few moments where we had extreme bugs that took weeks to resolve. However, the support team went above and beyond and has always quickly gotten back to us and regularly communicated.

Alternatives Considered: Sprinklr

Reasons for Switching to Brandwatch: Cost.

Overall a great & efficient software, with some room for improvement.

Comments: It's definitely tidied up our social media scheduling process and has allowed us to track things without searching back through our posting history. Once twitter impressions are implemented this will be near enough perfect.

Pros:

The tagging/labelling posts is by far the best feature we use. It allows us to categorise by player or sponsor and then easily pull off the data for all of those posts collectively.

Cons:

The software is still yet to implement twitter impressions as part of the label reports which makes collecting the data more work than it should be.

Alternatives Considered: Sprout Social and Hootsuite

Reasons for Choosing Brandwatch: The post labelling feature.

Expensive but useful social tool

Comments: Very positive.

Pros:

Integration with LinkedIn. Powerful monitoring capabilities. Easy to use dashboards. Great onboarding. Reliable - never had a failed post.

Cons:

Expensive compared to competitors. No support for gallery posts or multiple image posts on Instagram and LinkedIn.

Brandwatch Review

Comments: Overall I'm very happy with Brandwatch.It delivers great results when working for Twitter or Reddit searches.

Pros:

Brandwatch lets you have all the results possible for the queries made.It does not give an estimation of the results, but the actual number of posts that were made on the timeframe selected.It also has a great dashboards panel.

Cons:

That it does not support TikTok and Instagram public posts.It also does not have a very good automated sentiment for mentions. We usually have to change it manually.

Doesn't have everything, but better than the rest!

Comments: I've used Hootesuite and Sprout Social for other clients, and Falcon.io is my favorite to use. It's a very easy to learn platform.

Pros:

Right now the best two things that Falcon offers is an easy to use calendar-at-a-glance as well as allowing you to schedule multiple image Instagram posts. No other platforms seem to have the right Instagram capabilities right now and that alone puts Falcon ahead of the rest. Additionally, if you tag your posts for different campaigns, or any other variables, you can sort by those tags in the calendar view to see how your month or week is looking.

Cons:

One of our biggest KPIs is Engagement Rate, and the reporting side of Falcon is still slowly coming along. Sometimes its still easier to just pull natively from the platform. But they still offer some great reporting features. I think there is still a chance you can't schedule video on Twitter.

Brandwatch is a bad deal

Comments: We've signed into a Brandwatch contract for two years now and I've seen a continual decline in customer service. We noticed the program wasn't picking up mentions that it should have been picking up and when reaching out to our rep she was unable to help us. Brandwatch is an expensive listening tool compared to someone like NUVI or Google Trends, it should be served with great customer service. At this point we are just riding out our contract until we can cancel.

Pros:

In-depth analytics and word cloud features are neat.

Cons:

Customer service is poor and that makes or breaks a company. The queries were not always easy to write and trouble shooting them wasn't easily done within the program.

A wonderful social media tool with solid capabilities

Pros:

I LOVE that it can actually schedule instagram posts. that might not seem like a big deal, but it is. it truly works. The ability to copy/paste posts between networks (copy a FB post over to TW for example) and schedule them as well, is great too. the ability to tag your posts with internal tagging is also very helpful their "listen" feature is also quite useful for keeping track of what your target audience is up to and interested in.

Cons:

like any social media management too, it can feel a bit bulky if you're just trying to get in and post ASAP. but the features are worth the price tag in general and there's a lot of value in their system.

Really useful, but some extra features could help it work even better

Comments: I like being able to do all my social media work on Falcon, rather than skipping between sites. It also allows me to do the bulk of posting in one session, rather than doing it throughout the week. Overall it works really well, and makes my work easier, but I would appreciate some additional features being added so that it can work even better.

Pros:

The listening tool on Falcon is really powerful and allows you to track the impact and reach of your social media campaigns. The scheduling tool is also useful for prepping social media output in advance, and easy to use.

Cons:

Some really useful features are missing, most noticeably the ability to track impressions - both for accounts and hashtags. I also find the video scheduling tool for Facebook to be less good than the native scheduling, so I will end up scheduling videos on Facebook rather than on Falcon.

Good base functionality, but some difficulties with basic features

Comments: Falcon.io is a great mid-range tool that is a good solution to a wide variety of social media needs. The support staff are great, and there are features that are a nice plus. However, the tool doesn't respond well to being pushed too far. Reporting is restricted, team set up has odd quirks, and some of the bonus features detract more than anything.

Pros:

We really like the audience module, with being able to tag and track consumer groups. The easy-to-use queues are great, with a lot of flexibility. The team grouping is a good feature as well. The support staff are great. Finally the modular pricing makes it affordable for a wide variety of needs.

Cons:

The insights and reporting element is not fully developed, with a lot of mismatched features and confusing elements. The response templates are awkward and really impractical. Some of the queue features make it hard to collaborate in teams. Not being able to roll out a queue set up across users also takes a lot of time during set up.

Great on complex detail, not so great on basic reporting

Comments: Growing and understanding our audience is incredibly important - Falcon's tools allow us to do that.

Pros:

Audience insight/profile is very useful, as is the easy way to view key topics/words at a glance. Publishing tools also simple and easy to use.

Cons:

Some simple reporting functions are missing that most (much cheaper) tools offer - even the basic ability to see how many followers/likes your pages have across all connected platforms is not an easy task - you have to manually add everything up from different areas of the reporting tool. A much simpler dashboard is needed in addition to the detailed ones already available.

Alternatives Considered: Sprout, Buffer and Hootsuite

Reasons for Choosing Brandwatch: Wanted more audience insight

DNV GL US team member's review

Comments: I like that I can schedule posts, but it is a lot of work and the whole point of such a platform is that posting work should be reduced. Posting for several dates is even more time consuming than doing it directly in LinkedIn or Twitter, there I just need to press "reshare", here I need to find, copy and then change date and then post.

Pros:

Scheduling posts is convenient versus posting right away

Cons:

can't schedule for multiple days, need to copy for each date can't post on several channels at once, need to copy and post on each channel industry search is tiresome, can't make pre-selected lists to use later with one click