In Part 1 of this article, we looked at some of the reasons why WordPress provides an ideal platform for marketing your business on social media.
In this section, we examine a number of tracking tools, services and applications that let you:
- Search, find, segment, filter and organize users according to demographics, their interests and behavior, etc.
- Listen to online social conversations
- Identify consumer buying signals.
This information will allow you to start a meaningful conversation with a targeted audience and pitch them information about your products or services.
Let’s move on now to some of the actual tools you can use to monitor social media activity. If you’ve been looking for ways to increase sales with social media, then check out our list of the top social management tools
for business owners and WordPress users.
Top Social Media Monitoring Tools For WordPress Users
(Discover what people are saying about you, your brand, and your competition on social media)
Wouldn’t it be great if there was a simple and easy (and free) way to find out what is new in your niche or industry so that you are not wasting a huge amount of time doing research? Well, there is, and it’s called …
Google Alerts
(Google Alerts – free web monitoring service)
Google Alerts is simple, useful and free tool from Google that lets you keep up-to-date with the latest news about all kinds of topics, stay informed about people and companies, and track what other people say about you and your business online.
Google Alerts is not only only a great social media monitoring tool for managing your reputation online, but also for automatically sourcing news about people, companies, or any other subject you are following.
With Google Alerts, you just subscribe to a keyword or topic and you’re done. Whenever Google’s indexing bots crawl a new web site, news update, press release, blog post, a video, tweet, or any other indexable 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 how to create a Google alert here: A Simple And Easy Step-By-Step Guide On How To Set Up A Google Alert
Hootsuite
(Hootsuite.com)
Hootsuite is a social management platform that lets you manage all of your social profiles from one dashboard.
Hootsuite provides social media management, social selling, social marketing, and social customer service solutions. You can schedule Tweets and Facebook posts, track conversations, create and customize analytics reports, streamline workflows amongst teams, departments, or regions, assign tasks, receive real-time notifications, have internal conversations, and add employees and clients to teams without sharing passwords.
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.
More information: Hootsuite
Buffer
(Buffer.com)
Buffer lets you schedule your social content. Add updates to your Buffer queue and it will be posted for you.
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 using a web interface, Buffer also provides mobile apps and a web browser extension.
More info: Buffer
SocialMetrics
(SocialMetricsPro Social Media Analytics Plugin For WordPress)
SocialMetrics is a plugin for WordPress that tracks social activity across leading social networks like Google+, Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and StumbleUpon.
Some of the powerful features included in Social Metrics include Excel-like conditional formatting, built-in and external widgets, sort, search and filter data, export data capabilities, 1-click autoupdate functionality, and a simple social search improvement system.
We have written a detailed article on Social Metrics Pro. If you would like to learn more about this plugin go here: Social Metrics Pro Social Plugin For WordPress
Sociocaster
(Sociocaster)
Posting to Linkedin, Facebook, WordPress, and Twitter is time-consuming and to get all of these tasks done usually requires different applications, or software, plugins. Sociocaster lets you do it all from one location with just a few clicks.
Sociocaster is ideal for entrepreneurs and internet marketers. It includes powerful marketing and social features: image-sharing designs, popular Twitter topics discovery tool, smart inbox tool, unlimited social account management (agency license), and much more.
To learn more, visit this website: Sociocaster
SproutSocial
(SproutSocial)
SproutSocial is a robust social media management tool built for small to large businesses as well as the enterprise sector.
SproutSocial has a built-in social Customer Relationship Management system, advanced scheduling tools, social monitoring, support for teams and multiple profiles, helpdesk for customer support, team collaboration tools, security features, custom reports and analytics, mobile apps, RSS feed integration, etc.
For more details, go here: SproutSocial
SocialReport
(SocialReport)
SocialReport is a social intelligence platform that allows you to track and manage all of your social media accounts from one place.
It 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 competitor profiles in addition to your own.
More information: SocialReport
Followerwonk
(Followerwonk)
Followerwonk is a Twitter analytics tools that provides insights into your Twitter followers and lets you search Twitter on any profile data: bio, location, name, URL, compare followers of other users to find overlaps and new audiences, view interactive charts of new followers and unfollows, contrast your relationships with your competitors and friends, and explore and grow your social graph..
For more information, go here: Followerwonk
ManageFlitter
(ManageFlitter)
ManageFlitter provides you with a set of easy to use tools that empowers work smarter and faster with Twitter.
ManageFlitter lets you sort followers and following lists using a range of criteria, post tweets at the best time to reach your followers, search twitter bios to easily find and follow influencers for your business, use tweet analytics to track keywords and beat your competitors, manage follows and unfollows, and more.
To learn more, visit this website: ManageFlitter
Beevolve
(Beevolve)
Beevolve.com is a social media monitoring platform designed for small and medium sized businesses, analysts, content marketers, community managers, and online marketers. It lets you track your brand mentions, schedule and launch social media posts, and measure resulting conversion, engagement, and sales ROI, sentiment, buzz, etc. of all posts.
More info: Beevolve
HowSociable
(HowSociable)
HowSociable is a simple tool that lets you see brand mentions across different social media properties.
How Sociable displays brand viability metrics across 30+ social media sites. It delivers you a “social magnitude” score that lets you know how well you are doing on social media.
Go here to learn more: HowSociable
Mention
(Mention)
Mention provides media monitoring for all kinds of businesses, agencies, CEOs, marketers, etc., and allows anyone to know what’s being said about them online and on social media in real time.
Mention’s algorithms monitor billions of data points, so when someone mentions your keyword online, you have the ability to detect this, and access to intelligent, actionable data that can help you with your business goals. Mention has developed apps for mobile devices and desktop users.
More info: Mention
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
With so many great social media monitoring tools available, it’s easy to forget that tools like Google Analytics can also help track social activities.
Hootsuite has published a simple tutorial on how to track your social media links with Google Analytics on their blog.
Facebook Insights
(Facebook Insights)
Facebook not only lets you integrate share, follow, and like social plugins and commenting features with your site, it also provides a comprehensive analytics tool called Facebook Insights that lets you see how your site is performing on Facebook.
(Facebook – Insight Types)
Facebook Insights can help you track active users on your page. This helps you improve your marketing efforts.
You can use Facebook’s Page Insights to learn about your posts — which are attracting the most likes, comments, and shares and to learn about your audience demographics. You can then use this information to publish targeted content to Facebook users.
More info: Facebook Insights
Twitter Analytics
(Twitter)
Twitter Analytics let you see how your content is performing and gives you a monthly breakdown of your followers, tweet impressions, tweets, profile views, and top 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.com – Tweet activity)
More info: Twitter Analytics
YouTube Analytics
(YouTube)
YouTube Analytics lets you better understand how your channel is performing on the YouTube platform.
You can monitor the performance of your YouTube channel and videos with up-to-date metrics and reports like the real-time, overview, engagement, earnings, and watch-time reports.
For more details, go here: YouTube Analytics
Pinterest Analytics
(Pinterest Analytics)
Pinterest Analytics lets you see what Pins and boards people like most, what they save from your website, what devices people are using, and how much traffic your site gets when you pin content to your boards. You can use the information to improve the way you pin.
More info: Pinterest Analytics
Additional Social Media Tools
With the explosive growth of social media predicted to continue rising, many new tools and technologies are being developed to help business engage and make sense of social data.
The list below contains a number of other social media applications. Keep in mind that web technologies continually evolve. If any of the tools below change, please let us know.
Wunderlist
Wunderlist is a task management tool with a social twist. Create personal and professional lists and share these lists with friends, colleagues and family.
SDL/Alterian
SDL Web (formerly Alterian) is an all-in-one global web experience management solution that allows you to create engaging digital experiences with your customers.
Answerbase
Create social Q&A communities. The Answerbase Q&A Platform facilitates users being able to ask questions, view Q&A content, and receive quality answers.
Appinions
Appinions is a content marketing and live publishing SaaS platform for planning, creating and distributing content online. Appinions’ technology allows customers to optimize every stage of the content marketing lifecycle. Appinions enables brands to view the web through the lens of people’s opinions. The software provides answers to questions like “what should we write about?”, ”what keywords do we use to make our content discoverable?”, etc.
ViralHeat
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 that combines monitoring, publishing, analytics and reporting for all major social networks in an intuitive interface. Users can schedule and publish updates, access metrics and KPI, track conversations, and deliver presentation-ready reports.
Bambuser
Broadcast live using your mobile device or webcam, share to your favorite social network or blog and engage with your viewers. Share via your smartphone and stream to your blog.
BlogDash
BlogDash brings brands and bloggers together. Bloggers can choose the types of opportunities they would like to be contacted about.
BrandWatch
Brandwatch Analytics is a powerful social media monitoring and analytics platform that lets you collect, analyze and report on your social media data.
Buzzflash
Buzzflash is part of the Truthout community – an independent platform for transformative ideas featuring daily headlines whose goal is to inspire direct social action.
CircleCount
CircleCountCircleCount helps users better understand how to use Google Plus. CircleCount lets you discover all of the Google Plus circles that include your profile. If your profile isn’t already being monitored on CircleCount.com, you can easily add the url of 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 allows you to track your friends and followers on Twitter and other social networks and manage relevant, real-time relationship data.
Conversocial
Conversocial provides cloud-based social customer service solutions that help brands improve customer experience and operational efficiency by managing customer service flow and discussions on social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram.
SocialStudio
Social Studio lets you understand which topics are generating interest and where the most influential conversations are happening, and use that information to make informed business decisions.
Disqus
Disqus is a social tool that aims to help improve conversations online. Millions of websites covering pretty much any topic imaginable use Disqus.
Echofon
Echofon provides users with social apps for Facebook and Twitter. Echofon apps notify you of messages and mentions. Echofon for Twitter means you’ll never read a tweet twice by avoiding duplicate alerts on different devices, makes sharing media 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 audio, images, or videos, you can save moments from Youtube, Vimeo, Soundcloud and any media to your computer. Those moments are then easy to share, privately or publicly, easy to discuss about and easy to find.
Icerocket
Meltwater IceRocket is a social search engine which lets you search Facebook, Twitter, the blogosphere, or all of these for any keywords you like.
GroupHigh
GroupHigh is a blogger outreach software that lets you search, filter, and sort to find and prioritize your blogger outreach based on which bloggers are active and building communities on popular social networks. GroupHigh makes it easy to build a list of bloggers based on content, location, topics, and more.
Klout
Klout is a website, mobile app, and social media monitoring and performance analysis tool. Klout rewards experts in specific topics and areas of interests with Perks, brings influencers and brands together, and ranks your social influence using a “Klout Score”. You can use Klout to suggest shareable content that your users haven’t seen yet, and track how retweets, likes, and shares change your Klout Score.
KnowAboutIt
KnowAboutIt lets you discover the most engaging and relevant content lost in your social stream. The stories are gathered from the Know About It 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 Pinterest management, analytics, and marketing tool. It lets you schedule pins, monitor analytics, analyze industry trends and measure performance and results across the Pinterest network.
ViralWoot
ViralWoot helps you gain Pinterest followers, promote Pinterest pins, manage and grow multiple accounts, schedule pins with a free bookmarklet, create pin alerts, find which are your top performing pins and boards, connect with influencers, and more.
TweetReach
TweetReach lets you measure how well your tweets, search queries, keywords, and hashtags are performing on Twitter. TweetReach estimates the potential reach of your tweets for any given query.
Keyhole
Keyhole is a real-time social media tracking service that allows you to track hashtags, keywords, and URLs on Twitter and Instagram. Users can view their performance results using easy to understand visual reports.
Riffle
Riffle by CrowdRiff integrates with every Twitter platform (Mention, Shoutlet, Zendesk, etc) and provides you with Twitter analytics, engagement, and social monitoring tools. It integrates with most popular Twitter platforms allowing users to easily add it into their existing social media activities.
Merchii
Merchii links online merchants, consumers, and bloggers by tagging images on the web. Merchii provides a financial incentive for creating social engagement. Approved users can earn money from every purchase made.
MutualMind
MutualMind provides a complete social data platform for conducting social business 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
PageLever, a leading Facebook analytics company, was acquired by Unified Social in January 2013. Since then, Pagelever’s comprehensive, real-time reporting has been integrated in the Unified Social operating platform. These tools are part of 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, manage, optimize and monetize your social media presence.
RetweetRank
Get insights into your tweets, track engagement and monitor your brand with Retweet Rank.
Searchmetrics
Searchmetrics delivers enterprise SEO and content marketing analysis, recommendations, forecasting and reporting for companies that want potential customers to find them faster.
SimplyMeasured
SimplyMeasured provides easy social media analytics for all of your data in a single place.
SocialBakers
SocialBakers delivers deep, competitive social media analytics that let you see how your social performance stacks against the competition and wider industry benchmarks. You can create, manage, and optimize all your Twitter and Facebook ads in one place, quickly identify your best content and top posting times, gain insights about your audience, and track long-term brand performance.
Synthesio
Synthesio is a social intelligence tool. Synthesio provides scalable monitoring and analytics solutions to hundreds of global agencies and brands. Users can cut through social noise, listen into the conversations that matter, measure their online reputation, manage their consumer relationships and boost the ROI of their social activities.
Sysomos
Sysomos monitors billions of conversations and helps you monitor, analyze, gather insights and make decisions that allow you to create better services and products for your customers. Type in your keyword and instantly see what people are saying both historically and in real-time on any topic across all social channels. Discover influencers, find new and related topics, and get insights into the audiences and communities that matter most to you.
ThisMoment
ThisMoment provides brands with opportunities to engage their customers online. Depending on your business, ThisMoment’s Content Cloud helps you to find, mix and share a variety of content through various channels across the Enterprise.
Trackur
Trackur provides simple, fast, and affordable 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 multiple ways to search for users that might be interested in your brand. After finding your targeted group of users, you can easily interact with them by ‘following’, ‘adding to list’ or ‘@mentioning’ them. Twitter notifies those users via mobile notifications and email, and if they are interested, they may check your profile and follow back.
Followadder
Followadder provides automated social networking Instagram management software. It lets you get real Instagram followers, real photo likes and comments, follow/unfollow Instagram users, schedule posts, 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 for Twitter followers in many relevant business categories or search your geographical area.
TwentyFeet
TwentyFeet was acquired by SumAll, and provides users with a powerful social reporting tool that can visualize your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube accounts along with any other social service you use. Find out which of your tweets, posts, photos, or videos get the most engagement in seconds.
TwitterFall
Twitterfall is based in the UK and allows users on Twitter to access upcoming trends and patterns posted by users in the form of tweets.
Wajam
Wajam is a tool that displays search results based on what your friends share above your normal search results.
Addictomatic
Addict-o-matic lets you instantly create a page with the latest buzz on any topic of your choice.
Bitly
Bitly lets you optimize content, analyze social media engagement, and measure exactly how you’re spending your budget.
MyTopTweet
MyTopTweet displays your top 10 performing tweets.
SocialMention
SocialMention is a real-time social search engine and analysis platform.
Twazzup
Twazzup provides real-time Twitter analytics and monitoring.
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 the benefits of using the WordPress software to grow your business online, please see other articles and tutorials we have published on this site.
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)