You work hard as a law enforcement officer, and you deserve the best tools to keep your community safe. That’s where social media monitoring software comes in. What do you need to know before signing up for a service? Here are some tips to help get started:
-Make sure you understand the social media monitoring service’s features
-Check its customer support
-Research the company’s history of abuse and neglect
-Compare pricing and features
How to Choose the Right Social Media Monitoring Software.
There are a number of social media monitoring software platforms available on the market today. This section will provide tips on which social media monitoring software is best suited for law enforcement purposes.
There are four main types of social media monitoring software: network security, content filtering, live streaming, and real-time analytics.
Network security can be used to monitor entire networks or individual users within networks. Content filtering can be used to target specific content or pages in a network for review and copying. Live streaming can be used to capture live events or interactions between users within a network. Real-time analytics can be used to track user activity and trends across all forms of social media platforms.
In order to choose the best social media monitoring software for your needs, it is important to understand the different types of software and how they can be used. Additionally, it is important to read and understand the safety warnings associated with each type of software. By following these tips, you will be able to choose the right social media monitoring software for your needs.
Best Social Media Monitoring Software For Law Enforcement
Babel Street
Capabilities and Data Sources: Babel Street says that its web-based platform, BabelX, can conduct cross-lingual searches for more than 200 languages and automatically translate posts to English. Babel Street also claims that BabelX can analyze sentiment in over 50 languages.
Babel Street states that its data sources include:
- Over 30 social media platforms.
- Proprietary third-party and customer datasets.
- Billions of blogs and message boards.
OssaLabs
Law enforcement agencies who rely on social media intelligence are better equipped to build stronger ties with communities and their leaders, leading to safer, more secure communities.
The OssaLabs social media monitoring tool helps officers:
- Discover opportunities for positive outreach in the community
- Empathize with community members by learning more about their interests and views on important issues
- Identify new ways to connect with and protect vulnerable populations, such as homeless persons and at-risk youth
- Understand public perception during periods of heightened tensions to better prepare police teams and avert crises before it’s too late
The OssaLabs Solution
OssaLabs’ Social Impact Pro can assist law enforcement agencies in monitoring social media discussions to understand community attitudes before they become a news headline. This critical insight can help officers get in front of issues and address them more effectively.
- Discover conversations online and what is trending in the local population
- Collect data regularly on community attitudes and perceptions about local law enforcement and issues affecting the community as a whole
- Monitor public discussion to better engage communities on sensitive matters
- Scan the U.S. map down to the county-level to understand where topics are trending
Digital Stakeout
Capabilities & Data Sources: Digital Stakeout advertises that it has integrated its tools into its Scout product, which uses data from the Internet, social media, and the dark web to provide users continuous data discovery, user-defined alerts, and custom data visualizations on its platform.
In 2016, Digital Stakeout claimed that its Canvass tool had access to over 550 social networking sites in over ten categories. On its website, Digital Stakeout states it collects information from Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr, Disqus, and WordPress.
Skopenow
Capabilities and data sources: Skopenow claims that its tools have the capacity to:
- Automatically find, extract, and analyze data from social media anonymously
- Conduct behavioral recognition analysis through image and text analysis, subject monitoring, and comprehensive search results
- Notify users via automated alerts when there are developments in a subject they are tracking
- Create interactive visualizations by merging location data from consumer reports, social media posts, and metadata
Skopenow claims to have access to:
- All major social media platforms, including Parler
- Court records through PACER
- Consumer records
- Phone numbers, usernames, email addresses, court records, and any information available online
Cobwebs
Capabilities & Data Sources: Cobwebs developed a tool, Tangles, which it touts as an all-in-one investigative platform to collect, store, and analyze digital evidence. The tool’s purported capabilities include:
- Real-time monitoring of posts, geo-locations, keywords, and interactions between social media users.
- Analysis of sentiment in targets’ online activity.
- Measurement of the strength of social media connections.
- Predictive insights through their AI-powered statistical analysis.
Cobwebs claims to source its data from throughout the Internet, including social media and the deep and dark web, but does not name any specific platforms or data sources. In December 2021, Meta removed about 200 accounts operated by Cobwebs and its customers worldwide. In its investigation, Meta found that accounts used by Cobwebs’ customers participated in targeting related to law enforcement activities, as well as frequent targeting of activists, opposition politicians, and government officials.
Best Social Media Monitoring Tools
1. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a very popular, freemium, social media monitoring software that can track activity across a number of social networks and platforms – those networks and platforms include LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Foursquare, and WordPress. You can also manage social media accounts by scheduling posts across multiple platforms. If more than one person is handling a social media account, you can also delegate tasks.
2. Hootsuite
What does it monitor? All major social media platforms
Paid or free: Free tool with paid options
Arguably the easiest social monitoring tool to use on this list, Hootsuite’s customizable search streams will monitor any social platform you like so that you can see what’s going on at a glance. Zero in on essential topics, trends, and social mentions based on keywords, hashtags, locations, and specific users.
This paid tool is powerful enough to qualify more as a social listening tool than a social monitoring app, but Hootsuite Insights can give you an instant overview of millions of online conversations in real time.
Search for any topic or keyword, and filter by date, demographics, location, and more. You’ll be able to identify thought leaders or brand advocates, understand the perception of your brand in the market, and get immediate alerts if and when your mentions spike (for good or for bad.)
3. Meltwater
Meltwater is the Swiss Army knife of media monitoring tools, with social media management, audience insights, social listening, sentiment analysis, and influencer management — all housed in one easy-to-use interface.
Trusted by over 30,000 clients worldwide, and ranked as the #1 media intelligence platform by G2, it’s a sophisticated option, ideal for everyone from enterprise teams to SMEs.
The Meltwater social monitoring platform offers intuitive, highly customisable monitoring dashboards, where you can track conversations in real-time, pinpoint developments in community sentiment, and capitalise on the most valuable mentions.
The Meltwater social monitoring platform covers networks like
- Twitter (the whole tweet archive, not just a 10% sampling)
- YouTube
- Asian Socials
- Message boards
- Forums like Reddit and Quora
- Over 300 million blogs
- Podcasts
- Broadcast
4. Keyhole
Keyhole helps you monitor your Twitter and Instagram accounts – you can look at keywords, hashtags, URLs, and usernames. You can both see data in real-time and historical information, while you can also view heat maps that show you activity levels in certain parts of the world.
5. Nexalogy
What does it monitor? Most major platforms + broader web
Paid or free? Free tool
Nexalogy’s top-tier data visualizations set it apart: interactive timelines, geolocation-based heat maps, lexical cluster maps that show common patterns of topic. Plus the “basic” stuff that would take a human being weeks to figure out, like popular keywords and most active accounts.
6. Sprout Social
While Sprout is primarily a social media management tool for SMEs to handle day-to-day content publishing, it offers media monitoring functionality too.
With the Smart Inbox sitting at the heart of the monitoring dashboard, you can bring messages, mentions, and tags from core channels into one central hub, instead of switching between networks to track notifications. Set up inbox filtering and tagging options to help you prioritise interactions, and save time to focus on the most valuable opportunities online.
You can also track the most important conversations by setting up Sprout keyword searches to watch for brand and product mentions. Sprout’s ‘Trend Reports’ provide insights on Twitter performance (not any other core social media networks), showing where your efforts are working, and offer a breakdown by the most common hashtags, trending topics, and popular public figures.
7. Twitter Counter
Twitter Counter is a tool used to track your Twitter stats. You can track millions of Twitter users and stats, and there are also buttons and widgets that can be added to websites, blogs, and social media profiles to show the number of followers and the most recent Twitter visitors. You can also see retweets, mentions, and historical data, you can add multiple accounts so you can keep track of them all in one place and you can create custom reports and graphs, and download .pdf reports.
8. Cyfe
Cyfe offers you the chance to centralise insights from your media activity (as well as site data, sales journeys, marketing spend, and customer support) into widget-filled dashboards. The emphasis is on visualisation over interaction, so if you need something with both monitoring and interaction functionality instead, you’d do better with a tool like Meltwater or Hootsuite.
That said, it’s very easy to get started: to track the core platforms for mentions, keywords, and likes. You can either use one of their pre-built dashboards or customise your own from multiple display widgets.
The tool will then pull real-time data on your (or your competitors’) social media activity into the dashboard for you to monitor live or export as a report. To get notified of a spike in mentions or engagement — perhaps to capitalise on influence or remedy a mistake — you can also set up instant email and SMS alerts.
It’s a simple but reliable dashboard, best suited for SMEs or agencies who need a consolidated overview of their online activity or that of their clients.
9. Reputology
What does it monitor? Yelp, Google, Facebook reviews + other review sites
Paid or free? Free tool
For customer-facing businesses, a bad review can be a real blow if it isn’t dealt with correctly and quickly. Reputology lets you monitor major review sites such as Yelp, Google, and Facebook reviews from one dashboard.
You can track activity across multiple storefronts and locations, and respond using quick links.
10. Talkwalker
Talkwalker is an advanced monitoring and insights tool aimed at large agencies and global brands who want insights on consumer sentiment, relationships with public figures, competitor benchmarking, and reputation management.
Companies with high levels of activity across multiple regions can monitor written content on digital and offline media in 187 languages — and if you upgrade to the Enterprise package, you can track images and logos too.
Depending on your package, you can gather data from over 150 million websites and 20+ social channels. And, the entry-level package offers a year of retrospective data — which extends to 2 years in the full subscription.
Use ready-made dashboards to monitor brand health, understand audience insights, analyse campaigns, or build custom dashboards to track tailored topics and keywords. The Talkwalker analytics dashboard breaks down social activity into the core metrics, i.e., mentions, sentiment, hashtags, engagement.
But if you’re after a comprehensive media reporting tool that also has scheduling and publishing packed in as well, you might want to look at Meltwater.
How to Use Social Media Monitoring Software to Stay Safe.
Many law enforcement agencies use social media monitoring software to keep an eye on the activities of their community. This software monitors online posts and can report any activity that might be harmful or illegal.
Stay up-to-date on Social Media Posts
Keeping up with new social media postings is a key part of keeping your community safe. By tracking all updates, you can stay aware of potential dangers and identify suspicious behavior.
Monitor Your Posts for Spammers
If you see a post that seems to be spam, take action right away to stop it from appearing on your community website. This can include deleting the post, reporting the author to authorities, or suspending the account of the suspected spammer.
Use the Tools of Social Media Monitoring Software to Keep Your Community Safe
Other tools you may want to consider using in order to keep your community safe include password management software and malware removal software. By using these tools, you can help protect yourself against cyber threats and prevent possible damage to your computer system.
Tips for Safe Social Media Use.
One of the most important things you can do to stay safe online is use social media monitoring software. This software can help you see where and how your posts are being shared, and it can also help you keep track of who is spamming your community.
In addition, it’s important to be aware of the dangers of spammers. When someone starts sending emails or other messages with malicious content, it can endanger not only your community but also your safety. To protect yourself and your community, consider using social media monitoring software to detect spammy posts and to remove them from your space.
Monitor Your Posts for Spammers
Another key step in staying safe online is to be sure that all of your posts are accurate and fair. If you know that a post is inaccurate or harmful, you can remove it from circulation by editing it or deleting it from your account. Additionally, be sure to monitor your comments section for any signs of spammy behavior. By doing this, you can help keep your community healthy and safe while ensuring that all points of view are represented accurately on social media.
Keep Your Community Safe by using Social Media Monitoring Software
Finally, one of the best ways to keep yourself and your community safe is by using social media monitoring software as part of an overall security strategy. By using this type of software together with other measures like Google AdSense or firewalls, you can ensure that no one has access to sensitive information or create a secure environment for online interaction.
Conclusion
Using social media monitoring software can help you stay safe online, keep your community safe, and protect your business from spammers. By using the right tools, you can keep your community safe and keep your business afloat. Be sure to use the tools of social media monitoring software to stay up-to-date on posts by friends, family, and other members of the community. Monitor your posts for spammers and take necessary action if you see any suspicious activity. Use social media monitoring software to keep your community safe by staying up-to-date on all posted content, preventing spamming. Thank you for reading!