Companies spend a lot of money these days creating killer content for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the various other social media platforms out there. Whatever business you’re in, reaching your customers, clients and readers relies a huge amount on the ubiquity of social media sites.
But there’s no point spending time and resources on fantastic Facebook posts and tremendous tweets if you then don’t know how to effectively monitor their impact and influence. Counting how many followers you have only tells part of the story.
For example, while social media is often considered essential by businesses, they often don’t realize that social media audiences are not in a transactive state of mind and so direct sales don’t often work unless time-limited. However, as communication platforms for brand development social media can be very effective.
Getting the most out of your chosen social media platforms is going to be an integral part of your content marketing, as part of your overall online marketing strategy. That’s why we’ve picked out five really useful social media analytics tools that will help you understand which of your posts are working, and which get a thumbs down.
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(Image credit: Hootsuite)
1. Hootsuite
One stop social media management
Manage posting schedules
Analytics for performance
Mutliple integrations
Hootsuite aims to provide an all-in-one platform for social media management across multiple sites. As expected, there’s an option to search and filter through existing social media, in order to find brand mentions, insights, and demographic information.
Additionally, with any of Hootsuite’s plans you have the option to schedule posts from multiple profiles across multiple social media sites. This allows you to ensure any marketing campaigns are properly timed and targeted when and where you need them to be. This is especially when posts can be tagged to ensure you store them in the right place for use at the right time.
There’s also an analytics feature so you can track and measure performance against KPIs. Reports are customizable, so you can ensure you display and read the data you need to and stay focused on that. This is especially as Hootsuite is built to work for teams, not just individuals.
A number of integrations are also available, such as Asana, Slack, Mailchimp, Trello, and Zendesk, ensuring that you can work productively and efficiently when it comes to building your social media marketing and communications campaigns.
There are 3 different plans available, depending on the number of users required, with Professional, Team, and Business plans allowing 1, 3, or 5 users respectively, as well as up to 10, 20, or 35 social media profiles to be managed accordingly.
(Image credit: Sprout Social)
A central hub for managing all your social media accounts
Covers a wide range of social media accounts
Powerful data analysis capabilities
Helps with customer support
Sprout Social is probably first and foremost known as a one-stop shop for managing and scheduling all of your social media accounts through one simple-to-use platform. Very handy indeed for your company’s social media administrator when they’re trying to juggle Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and more at once.
But it doubles up as a powerful tool for analysing your data, too. You can sort by various demographic and geographic measures to quantify exactly what content is working for which followers. Sprout can manage multiple accounts and monitor keywords across all social media so that you know when your brand is being discussed. It also helps your company respond to customers by directing messages to the people within the organisation who need to action them.
You can try Sprout Social for free with its 30-day trial. If you like it, prices then start from $99 per user per month for up to five different social profiles, with additional plans offering more profiles, scope, and features.
(Image credit: Buffer)
3. Buffer
A dead easy way to track the success of your marketing campaigns
User-friendly
Real-time analytics
Google Analytics integration
Rather like Sprout Social above, Buffer is another all-rounder that lets you post to your platform and then analyse the results. One of its major plus points is just how simple and straightforward it is to use, while also giving you flexibility. The fact it provides analytics in real-time makes instantly judging the impact of your content a doddle.
Use the “Top Post” icon to compare different forms of content to see which works best for each network. While the Buffer app also allows for seamless Google Analytics integration for tracking the success of your marketing campaigns.
Payment plans depend on whether you’re looking to publish or analyze social media accounts, with different pricing for each based on the volume of accounts or published content you want to manage.
(Image credit: Hubspot)
Social media management software
Monitor multiple platforms
Multiple tools
Hubspot marketing platform
Hubspot Social Media Software is a suite of social media management tools available under the Marketing Hub. The aim is to save time by prioritizing social connections you place most value on across a range of social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn.
There are various management features available, such as for publishing and sharing content, monitoring mentions, and reporting to let know know not just levels of engagement but also how these translate into actual business metrics.
These tools are available as part of the Hubspot Marketing Hub, which means you can use them in conjunction with a range of other focused marketing tools. As above, this means not simply monitoring and managing your social media, but critically also ensuring that the work you put into it translates into some form of measuring business return.
(Image credit: Zoho )
Get insights to make a success out of using Snapchat
Elegant interface
Allows for better organizing your stories
Pricing not available upfront
Zoho Social offers a simple way to manage your brand on social media, by providing a complete social media management platform.
As well as managing multiple social media channels, there’s also a posting calendar feature available so you can see which posts have been scheduled for posting. You can also monitor your target keywords across conversations, and allow for team collaboration from a single dashboard.
Zoho Social also comes with a version specifically for the needs of marketing agencies, which allows for brand and communications management for client lists, while also allowing for white labeling.
Also expect to be able to integrate Zoho social with other Zoho Tools, such as office, analytics, and CRM.
The growth in social media has resulted in the growth of apps and software for helping companies monitor their presence and manage their engagement. Here are some more tools to consider to help with that:
StatusBrew offers another social media management platform, aimed for use across sales, marketing, and customer care teams. As well as campaign management, there are also reporting and analytics features to keep track of your engagement and overall brand health. On top of that, there are a number of popular integrations available, such as Slack, Zendesk, Mailchimp, and Shopify.
Tweetdeck has become the essential Twitter management tool for many users of that platform. Provided directly by Twitter, it allows you to better filter messages from followers, as well as provide a single dashboard from which you can monitor Tweets, messages, notifications, and trending hashtags. There are also search tips, shortcuts, and various settings provided to manage your monitored content.
Facebook Pages Manager is an app for Android and iOS that allows you to directly manage your Facebook pages on the go from your phone or other mobile device. This allows you to get notifications, read and reply to messages, as well as link Facebook and Instagram accounts together. Standard page management features such as settings, performance, and reach, can also be managed by the app.
Brandwatch puts its ear to the ground to eavesdrop on to the information that could be imperative to your company from Facebook, Twitter, blogs, forums, news and every other corner of the web. Social sentiment analysis shows the tone of the data collected from the profiles you’ve connected with, and it’s easy to tap into pertinent trends and themes emerging from the internet that could tip the balance in your company’s favor.