Meltwater vs. Shoutlet (Discontinued)

If you practice media relations in your role, Meltwater is helpful. You can do research to find relevant publications and journalists, build media lists, export them to share with a team or client and you can also keep notes on your campaigns. I like using it for research, although I do research outside the platform, as well, to be sure to be thorough (and some of the info in the database is outdated). I would say if you don't practice media relations, it's probably not as useful. There are other tools that do a better job if you want to search for media or social media mentions, for example. If you are looking for an all-in-one media relations tool that's relatively easy to use, Meltwater is probably a good fit.

Incentivized

Shoutlet has potential benefit for everyone, from small start-ups to large organizations. Whether you're just starting out establishing a social media presence or are a seasoned veteran, it just makes sense to run your social media strategy through a tool this comprehensive and that offers as many special features as Shoutlet does

Incentivized

• Up to date contact information. It is actually relevant and active info, not always the case with others.
• The user interface is better than most tools. While not perfect, it's pretty easy to figure out how to get what you want.
• Their support is excellent. Anytime I've needed help I can call, but better than this, they proactively call and assist.

Incentivized

• Community Management - efficiently post to multiple platforms and targets at the same time
• Contest and Facebook tab creation in-house, no development resources required
• Amazing and proactive client support - the whole team at Shoutlet will go out of their way to find solutions and fix problems

• Their tracking system for media mentions isn't perfect - we have stumbled across several posts mentioning our company/product that were not picked up by the platform. While frustrating, we send these URLs to our rep and their tech team ensures that that website will be monitored moving forward.

Incentivized

• Couldn't tag other pages directly from Shoutlet (ie: posting a Mashable post and tagging Mashable).
• Had to manually set the best time for it go out when a lot of other platforms have the capability to set the best posting time for you.
• No guarantee on quality of photo size.

Incentivized

We have had great success with Meltwater Buzz the past 2 years. The reporting has been great for our board reports, seeing the conversations going on between our followers helps us to learn who our audience is and what we can do better on our social media. The analytics we see on Meltwater Buzz we could not get anywhere else

Incentivized

We have been using Shoutlet for so long, and have seen so much growth and versatility, I believe we are confident that all of our social media management needs are being met with Shoutlet. It really helps that the Shoutlet team has open to recommendations in terms of usability and are interested in meeting our specific needs.

Once you get some basic training it's pretty easy to use. I would like to see training manuals, or instructional videos to help me explore features I'm not currently using.

While some things do require a little training, a quick phone training session or reading an online guide usually suffices. I've never needed multiple training sessions for any part of Shoutlet. As someone with very little coding/programming background (read: absolutely none), I am always able to accomplish what is needed without feeling over my head or needing help.

In general, the software works really well. I get weird errors for time to time. Tech Therapy does a great job helping when things go awry

Our account rep at Meltwater went dark for a long time. Then, a couple of weeks ago, our new account manager reached out to set up a meeting. Apparently, they had a big shakeup in the company, and there were some personnel changes. Our new account rep was great in discussing the platform's capabilities that were available to us and even offered to schedule a follow-up meeting with his technical team to introduce our new social media team members to the platform and how it could help them with their jobs.

Incentivized

I feel that the level of support I get from Shoutlet is far beyond the level of support I've received from other companies in a variety of services. It would be nice to have a regular update from Tech Therapy that lists out any potential bugs they're working to fix for the various browsers they support. Sometimes I wonder if I'm experiencing an issue simply because I use Firefox vs. Chrome.

Again, really in-depth and helpful for a program that is really easy to use.

Walked step by step through program. Very informative on a program that doesn't require much training.

You are only allowed 15 users, so make sure you've identified who will have access to use the tool.

Meltwater serves as an all-in-one platform, so it has benefitted us greatly in being able to service a variety of needs in one place. Having a streamlined platform is important to our team since it can feel counterproductive to visit a variety of products to service one client's needs. So, Meltwater has been essential in ensuring our needs are met through one destination.

Incentivized

The main reason that we selected Shoutlet over other competitors was the ease of use, content tagging and ability to work seamlessly across a variety of functions. It was in a sense the entire package in once place. Social content management, social listening, social analytics and more. It's been the best bang for our buck and compared to all the above mentioned products it really just offered the whole picture for one price. We still use additional analytics to measure social results as well but Shoutlet is the easiest approach to adapt your social strategy into one solid format

Incentivized

• Improved PR reporting, for sure.
• Competitor analysis for clients and ourselves.
• A great ability to track the news and understand particular news drivers for certain industries, allowing us to get our client in front of the media at or before the perfect moment.

Incentivized

• Allows our small staff to provide our clients with world-class service and data.
• Exponentially improved fan base expansion for our clients.
• Rapid response for customer service issues for clients - allowing us to help our clients prevent their social media presence from becoming the Complaint Department, rather a true community of fans and supporters of a brand.