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In Part 1 of this article, we looked at some of the reasons why WordPress provides an ideal platform to market your business on social media.

In this section, we look at a number of tracking tools, services and applications that let you:

• Search, find, sort, filter and organize users according to demographics, their interests and behavior, etc.
• Listen in on social conversations online
• Identify key consumer buying signals.

With this information, you can engage in meaningful conversations with your audience and pitch them information about your products or services.

Let’s move on now to some of the actual tools and applications you can use for monitoring social media activity. If you are looking for ways to increase sales using social media, then check out this list of the top social management tools and resources for businesses and WordPress users.

WordPress Social Media Tracking – Useful Resources

(Discover what consumers are saying about you, your business, or your competitors on social media)

Is there a free and simple way to access information about what is going on in your niche or industry that will save you a massive amount of time doing research? Yes, there is. It’s called …

Google Alerts

(Google Alerts – free web monitoring service)

Google Alerts is one of the simplest and most useful tools available online for keeping up with the latest news and information about all kinds of topics, staying informed about people and companies, and monitoring what other people are saying about you and your business online. Google Alerts is also free.

Google Alerts is not only only a useful tool for managing your reputation online, but also for receiving the latest news about people, brands, companies, or any subject you are following.

With Google Alerts, you just subscribe to a keyword or topic and you’re done. Whenever Google’s robots (Googlebot) index a new web site, news update, press release, blog post, a tweet, video, or any other content related to that topic, it will automatically send you an email or RSS update.

We’ve created a simple step-by-step tutorial on setting up Google alerts here: A Simple Guide On Setting Up A Google Alert

Hootsuite

(Hootsuite.com)

Hootsuite is a social management platform that lets you manage all of your social activities from an easy to use dashboard.

Hootsuite provides social media management, social marketing, social selling, and social customer service solutions. You can schedule Tweets and Facebook posts, monitor conversations, create and customize analytics reports, share the workload amongst teams, departments, or regions, assign tasks, receive real-time notifications, have internal conversations, and collaborate with team members.

Hootsuite is one of the most used social media management tools (SMMT). It allows you to post to many social networks (including their app directory), and offers integration with Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Foursquare, WordPress and more.

Visit this website to learn more: Hootsuite

Buffer

(Buffer.com)

Buffer lets you schedule social content. You add updates to your Buffer queue and it will be posted for you at spaced out intervals over the day.

You can schedule updates for a day, week, or month. Scheduling times are preset, but you can change these in your settings. In addition to the web interface, Buffer is also available as a browser extension and as a mobile app.

More information: Buffer

Social Metrics Pro

(SocialMetrics WordPress Social Analytics Plugin)

Social Metrics is a plugin for WordPress that lets you monitor Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and other social signals from your WordPress Dashboard.

Some of the powerful features included in SocialMetricsPro include Excel-like conditional formatting, built-in and external widgets, sort, search and filter data, export data capabilities, one-click auto-update functionality, and a simple social SEO improvement system.

We have written a detailed article on Social Metrics here: SocialMetricsPro WordPress Social Plugin

Sociocaster

(Sociocaster – Social media management for internet marketers)

Sociocaster is easy to use and works for any marketer or business. You can easily engage with audiences, schedule messages, manage your social networks, and measure ROI from one easy to use dashboard.

Sociocaster includes lots of powerful social and marketing features: a powerful visual designer, royalty-free image finder, built-in bookmarklet, unlimited social account management (agency license), and more.

To learn more, go here: Sociocaster

SproutSocial

(SproutSocial.com)

SproutSocial is a premium social media management tool aimed at small to large businesses as well as the enterprise sector.

SproutSocial has a built-in social Customer Relationship Management system (CRM), advanced scheduling tools, social monitoring, support for teams and multiple profiles, helpdesk for customer support, team collaboration tools, security features, reports and analytics, mobile apps, RSS feed integration, etc.

More info: SproutSocial

SocialReport

(SocialReport)

SocialReport is a social intelligence platform that lets you track and manage all of your social media accounts from one place.

Social Report tracks the performance of your Facebook pages and Twitter profiles, business reviews, website performance and blogs, and displays your social channel data on a simple and intuitive dashboard. You can quickly and easily organize your data by customers or business, and track your own social profiles as well as competitor profiles.

More info: SocialReport

Followerwonk

(Followerwonk)

Followerwonk is a Twitter analytics tools that lets you search Twitter bios, compare users, analyze, track, sort and compare followers, match your activities to gains and losses in followers to give your followers what they like best, discover who your most important, influential followers are, where they are located, when do they tweet, hone your social graph by following and unfollowing users, etc.

To learn more, visit this site: Followerwonk

ManageFlitter

(ManageFlitter)

ManageFlitter provides a set of easy to use tools to empower you to work smarter and faster with Twitter.

ManageFlitter lets you sort followers and following lists by a range of criteria, post tweets at the best time to reach your followers, easily search inside your Twitter stream to find and follow the right accounts for your business, use tweet analytics to track keywords and beat your competitors, find out which inactive accounts you follow, and more.

More information: ManageFlitter

Beevolve

(Beevolve)

Beevolve is a social media monitoring platform for small and medium sized businesses, analysts, content marketers, community managers, and online marketers. It lets you monitor your social media mentions, schedule and launch social media posts, and measure sales and engagement, buzz, social sentiment, etc. for those posts.

For more details, go here: Beevolve

HowSociable

(HowSociable)

HowSociable is a simple tool that lets you see brand mentions across different social media platforms.

HowSociable.com displays brand viability metrics and gives you a “social magnitude” score. This social numerical view lets you know how well you are doing on social media, and what aspects of your social marketing strategy can be improved.

For more details, go here: HowSociable.com

Mention

(Mention)

Mention provides media monitoring for all kinds of businesses, marketers, CEOs, agencies, etc., and allows anyone to know what’s being said about them online and on social media.

Mention’s algorithms monitor billions of data points, so when someone mentions your business online, you have access to real time, intelligent and actionable data that can help you with your business goals. Mention also allows collaborative monitoring.

More information: Mention

Google Analytics

(Google Analytics)

Google Analytics is not only an analytics application that tracks unique page views, website traffic, visitor behaviour, where your visitors are arriving on your website from, etc., it can also help you monitor links from your WP blog to your social media sites.

Hootsuite has published a 6-step tutorial that shows you how to track your social media links with Google Analytics on their blog.

Facebook Insights

(Facebook Insights)

Facebook not only lets you add share, follow, and like social media plugins and commenting features to your site, it also provides a comprehensive analytics tool called Facebook Insights that lets you analyze how your content is performing on Facebook.

(Facebook Insights)

Facebook Page Insights helps you better understand page performance to help you with your business marketing efforts.

You can use Facebook’s Page Insights to learn about your posts — which are attracting the most comments, likes, and shares and to learn about your about your audience. You can then use this information to publish relevant posts when your audience is on Facebook.

Visit this website to learn more: Facebook Insights

Twitter Analytics

(Twitter Analytics)

Twitter Analytics let you see how your tweets are performing and gives you a break down of your top tweets, followers, profile views, tweet impressions, and tweets linking to you.

The Twitter Analytics dashboard also provides you with useful information about your tweets in the form of Tweet highlights, allowing you to better plan your Twitter marketing strategy.

(Twitter Analytics – Tweet activity)

Go here for more info: Twitter Analytics

YouTube Analytics

(YouTube.com)

YouTube Analytics lets users better understand how their channel is performing on the YouTube platform.

You can monitor the performance of your channel and videos with up-to-date metrics and reports like the realtime, overview, watch-time, engagement, and earnings reports.

Go here for more information: YouTube Analytics

Pinterest Analytics

(Pinterest)

Pinterest Analytics lets you see what people like from your profile, and what they save from your website. With Pin insights, you can get information that helps you learn what your customers want.

For more details, go here: Pinterest Analytics

Other Social Media Services And Web Applications

Many new tools and technologies are being developed each year to help businesses take advantage of social media.

The list below contains a number of other social media tools and services. Keep in mind that new web technologies change. If any of the tools below change, please let us know.

Wunderlist

A task management tool with a social twist. Create professional and personal lists and share your lists with family, friends and colleagues.

SDL/Alterian

SDL Web (formerly Alterian) is an all-in-one global web experience management solution that lets you create engaging digital experiences with online consumers.

Answerbase

Create social Q&A communities. The Answerbase Q&A Platform facilitates users being able to ask questions, view Q&A content, and get their questions answered.

Appinions

Appinions, makers of an influence analytics marketing platform built on patented natural language processing and social network analysis technology was acquired by ScribbleLive, a content marketing and live publishing SaaS platform that lets you plan, create and distribute content. Marketers can optimize their campaigns by quickly finding, tracking and connecting with opinion leaders who are most likely to influence a trend, idea, product or brand. The ScribbleLive acquisition enables brands to view the web through the lens of people’s opinions. This tool provides answers to content marketers’ questions like ”who should we listen to or partner with?”, “where should we publish?”, etc.

ViralHeat

Viralheat is part of Cision, a global media intelligence software company. Viralheat is a powerful data analytics application that delivers insights from social media analytics. It is a highly scalable social media analytics and management platform. Viralheat offers predictive social analytics and a comprehensive social media management stream combining monitoring, publishing, analytics and reporting for all major social networks in an intuitive interface. Customers can schedule and publish updates, follow conversations, access metrics and KPI, and deliver presentation-ready reports.

Bambuser

Bambuser lets you broadcast live using your webcam or mobile device, share to your favorite social network or blog and engage with viewers. Share via your smart device and stream to your blog.

BlogDash

BlogDash links brands searching for ways to promote their products and services with bloggers willing to write content aimed at bringing brands the positive media attention they are looking for.

BrandWatch

Brandwatch Analytics is a powerful social media monitoring and analytics platform that allows you to collect, analyze and report on your social media data.

Buzzflash

Buzzflash is an independent platform for transformative ideas featuring daily headlines aimed at inspiring direct action and participation.

CircleCount

CircleCount is a Google Plus education tool. CircleCount lets you discover all of the Google+ circles in which you are included. If your profile isn’t already being tracked on CircleCount.com, you can easily add your Google Plus profile and it will start tracking your circles.

Commun.it

Commun.it is a community management tool for building relationships and discovering leads on Twitter.

Contax.io

Contaxio is a contact management tool for your social networks that tracks your friends and followers on Twitter and provides detail that helps you decide when to follow back.

Conversocial

Conversocial provides cloud-based social customer service solutions that help brands improve their customer experience and operational efficiency by managing the flow of customer service enquiries and social media discussions on channels like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram.

SocialStudio

Social Studio helps you discover what consumers are saying about your brand, your products, and your competitors, and empower your team to plan, execute, and track compelling social media marketing..

Disqus

Disqus integrates with WordPress and can be used instead of the built-in WordPress commenting system to expand the power of social discussions online. Disqus is used by millions of websites covering pretty much any topic imaginable.

Echofon

Echofon provides users with social apps for Facebook and Twitter. Echofon apps notify you of mentions and messages. Echofon for Twitter automatically keeps unread tweets in sync between apps on different devices, makes viewing and sharing photos, videos, locations, and links simple, and Echofon for Facebook provides simple, streamlined navigation and an uncluttered Facebook experience, browse your newsfeed and timelines, comment and like with ease and post photos or videos.

Everytime

Everytime is a collaboration app for creatives. If you work with images, sounds, or videos, you can save any moment from Youtube, Vimeo, Soundcloud and any media on your computer. Those moments can then be easily shared, discussed, and found online with social collaboration.

Icerocket

Icerocket is a social media search engine which lets you search Twitter, the blogosphere, Facebook, or all at once for any keywords you like.

GroupHigh

GroupHigh is a blogger outreach tool that lets you filter, sort, and search to find and prioritize your blogger outreach based on which bloggers are active and building communities on popular social networks. GroupHigh’s blog search makes it easy to build a list of bloggers based on location, topics, content, and more.

Klout

Klout is a website and mobile app that uses social media analytics to rank its users according to online social influence using the “Klout Score”, which is a numerical value between 1 and 100. You can use Klout to suggest shareable content that your audience hasn’t seen yet, and track how retweets, likes, and shares change your Klout Score.

KnowAboutIt

Know About It lets you discover the most engaging and relevant content lost in your social stream. The stories are collected from the KnowAboutIt system from the previous 24 hours, and are ranked by the number of comments that the stories attract.

LiveFyre

LiveFyre provides users with a real-time content marketing platform that lets you engage your audience, leverage native and social user-generated content surrounding your brand, and curate Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram content from fans into an interactive display.

TailWind

Tailwind is a social media monitoring tool for Pinterest. It lets you schedule pins, monitor Pinterest, analyze industry trends and measure performance and results.

Viralwoot

ViralWoot is a social media marketing platform for small and medium sized businesses using Pinterest. Viralwoot lets you view how your pins are performing, find which are your top performing boards, etc. with built-in analytics reports.

TweetReach

TweetReach allows you to measure how well your tweets, keywords, search queries, and hashtags are performing on Twitter. TweetReach gives you insights about Twitter and snapshot reports.

Keyhole

Keyhole’s real-time dashboard shows how many people posted with your hashtag, along with the number of Retweets, Likes and Impressions your campaign is generating on Twitter and Instagram. Users can monitor their analytics using easy to understand visual reports.

Riffle

Riffle integrates with over a dozen Twitter platforms and provides you with insight into the current and potential value of Twitter users, engagement, and real-time activity tracking tools. It integrates with most popular Twitter platforms allowing users to easily add it into their existing social media activities.

Merchii

Merchii lets you link bloggers, consumers, and online merchants by tagging images on the web. Merchii provides a financial incentive for creating social engagement. Users can earn money from every purchase made.

MutualMind

MutualMind is a complete social data platform that lets you monitor, analyze and engage with social media. One web-based solution provides users with all the tools they need to display data on collaborative screens, detect moments or trends in social data and route the insights back to the enterprise instantly.

Unified Social / PageLevel

Unified Social acquired PageLever, a leading Facebook analytics company, in January 2013. Since being acquired, Pagelever’s comprehensive, real-time reporting has been integrated in the Unified Social operating platform. These tools form a complete marketing suite for top global brands and agencies to aggregate, warehouse and activate their social data.

Refollow

Refollow lets you find an audience, measure and manage your social media presence.

RetweetRank

Find out how influential are you on Twitter.

Searchmetrics

Searchmetrics lets you see important key performance indicators such as the visibility of a page in social media.

SimplyMeasured

SimplyMeasured lets you analyze and understand conversations, audiences, and competitors that matter to you across every social channel.

SocialBakers

SocialBakers delivers deep, competitive social media stats that tell you how your social performance stacks against the competition and wider industry benchmarks. You can create, manage, and optimize all your Facebook and Twitter ads in one place, quickly identify your best content and top posting times, gain powerful insights about your audience, and track long-term brand performance.

Synthesio

Synthesio is a social media intelligence tool. Synthesio provides scalable monitoring and analytics solutions to hundreds of global brands and agencies. Users can cut through the social noise, find conversations that matter, measure their digital reputation, manage their consumer relationships and boost their social activities’ ROI.

Sysomos

Sysomos provides powerful social media analytics that lets you monitor, analyze, gather insights and make decisions aimed at creating better services and products for your customers. Type in your keyword and instantly see what people are saying both in real-time and historically on any topic across all social channels. Find new and related topics, discover influencers, and gain valuable insights into the communities that matter to you.

ThisMoment

ThisMoment helps businesses engaging with everyone everywhere. Depending on your business, ThisMoment’s Content Cloud helps you to find, mix and share a variety of content through different channels across the Enterprise.

Trackur

Trackur provides simple, affordable, and fast social media monitoring.

TrapIt

Trapit is a social selling, employee advocacy and content marketing tool. With the click of a button, teams can share content with their social networks, prospects, and customers.

Tweepi

Tweepi provides a number of different ways to search for users that might have an interest in your brand. Once you find your targeted group of users, you can then easily interact with users by ‘following’, ‘adding to list’ or ‘@mentioning’ them. Twitter then notifies those users via mobile notifications and email, and interested users may check your profile and follow you back.

Followadder

Followadder provides users with automated social networking management software. It lets you get real Instagram followers, real photo likes and comments, schedule posts, follow/unfollow Instagram users, like back photos, access automated photo liker and automated direct message, search by hashtag, create lists, and more.

Twellow

You can think of Twellow as being like the Yellow Pages for Twitter. You can search hundreds of business categories, or your geographical area for followers on Twitter.

TwentyFeet

TwentyFeet provides users with a powerful social reporting tool that lets you visualize your Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube accounts and any other service you use. Learn which of your tweets, posts, photos, or videos get the most engagement in seconds.

TwitterFall

Twitterfall lets Twitter users view upcoming trends and patterns posted by other Twitter users in the form of tweets.

Wajam

Wajam is a tool that displays search results of what your friends are sharing on top of your normal search results.

Addict-o-matic

Addict-o-matic lets you instantly create a page that displays the latest buzz on any topic of your choice.

Bitly

Bitly lets you share, track and analyze your links.

MyTopTweet

MyTopTweet is a simple social monitoring tool that displays your top 10 performing tweets.

SocialMention

SocialMention is a real-time social search engine and analysis platform.

Twazzup

Twazzup provides real-time monitoring and analytics for Twitter.

TweetDeck

TweetDeck is a Twitter tool for real-time tracking, organizing, and social engagement.

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We hope that you have found this information useful. To learn more about using the WordPress CMS platform to grow your business online, please see other tutorials we have published here on WPCompendium.org.

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