trendspottr vs. UpContent
Versus
UpContent and trendspottr both offer a similar service, but vary in the execution. Both tools say that they deliver the right content at the right time – and they both do, depending on the type of content you are looking for.
Both tools allow you to create a topic, as you would in a search engine, and both provide relevant results. The difference lies in how the results are delivered and filtered:
UpContent is a content discovery tool. It pulls in every possible piece of content associated with a topic, and then allows you to filter the content based on your needs. You can sort it by time period, content type (news, videos, blogs or social media), and content preference (relevance, recency, shareability or influence).
trendspottr is a predictive trend intelligence platform. It pulls in content that it determines will be trending or viral in the next few hours or days, as well as content that is currently trending. Each piece of content is given a trending score.
With trendspottr, the only results you are given is content that currently is trending or may begin to trend. With UpContent, you get every piece of content that is related to a topic. You also have the option to filter the content based on its shareability or influence. Both are great tools and effective at what they do – it just depends on what your goal is.
UpContent caters to content marketers, knowledge leaders and writers:
Content marketers can use the tool to find content to share on social media platforms, to track conversations happening around their brand (similar to alert tracking), and to find sources to cite for blog posts and other articles.
Knowledge seekers can use the tool to stay up-to-date with their industry by staying apprised of all the latest news and discussion topics occurring within their field.
Writers and academics can use the tool to find research on any topic.
According to trendspottr’s FAQ, their content is good for “journalists, editors, traders, advertisers, brand managers, and trend hunters that need to be “ahead of the curve” to prepare for and predict market and social behaviors, consumer preferences, impending crises, and major trending events.”
UpContent pulls content from the sources you already manually review when searching for content to share and curate. It crawls blogs, news sources, video sites, and social media.
It appears that trendspottr pulls content from news sources, blogs and Twitter. They likely pull from more sources, but it does not appear to be explicitly stated.
UpContent allows you to search content from the last 24 hours, last 7 days, or last 30 days.
On trendspottr, there does not appear to be a date range. Content is brought in solely based on whether it is trending or may begin to trend, regardless of when the content was created.
UpContent layers two unique filters for searching content, Shareability and Influence, on top of determining the relevance and recency of the content. Shareability predicts and finds the content that has the best chances of being shared by your audience, which is very valuable when driving customer engagement. Influence serves you content that was produced by thought leaders and by the individuals/brands that people within an industry listen to. This is always great content to share and to consult when curating; plus, it can be a great way to discover new influencers within your industry.
With trendspottr, the tool itself is the filter – it pulls in trending content and content that will likely trend.
Both tools are available on Hootsuite for free. trendspottr also has a paid app available specifically for Instagram.
trendspottr’s free app does not allow you to create custom queries - you must choose from pre-built topics. Also, clicking on any of the results to view the original content piece reroutes you back to trendspottr’s website first.
UpContent allows you to create your own keyword searches, as well as allows you to view the original article with just one click.
UpContent allows you to create detailed keyword phrases to narrow your results down as much as you like. You can use Boolean operators such as AND, OR, NOT, parentheses, and quotation marks.
trendspottr allows you to create keyword phrases, as well as enter hashtags, stock symbols and @ names. You may also be able to search by language.
UpContent is mainly focused on discovering as much content as possible and then filtering it in a way that is useful to a user. New features are currently being developed for topic sharing and topic comparison views.
trendspottr has a few additional features users can try. For a fee, they offer alert emails that will notify you when an emerging trend is discovered on a selected topic. There are also 10 ready-made, common topics that you can choose from and get results for. They also offer a widget you can embed on your site that displays trending content for a specific topic.
UpContent and trendspottr are similar in that they help you find content pertinent to specific topics. However, UpContent takes a more holistic view by pulling in everything and then letting you sort the content based on your needs (including sorting by shareability and influence). trendspottr takes a specialized focus on content by just providing currently trending content, and identifing content that may become trending.
Your needs and content use cases will determine which tool works the best for you. And heck, you may find that using both at the same time is exactly what you need.