Category: WordPress & Social Media

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 look at a number of monitoring tools that allow you to:

• Search, find, segment, organize and target users according to demographics, psychographics, etc.
• Listen in on online social conversations
• Identify buying signals.

This information will let you start 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 you can use for monitoring social media activity. If you are searching for better ways to increase sales with social media, then here are 30 free or cost-effective social monitoring tools
for businesses and WordPress users.

WordPress And Social Media – Useful Social Tracking Tools

(Discover what consumers are saying about you, your brand, and your competitors on social media)

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a free and simple way to know what is new in your industry or niche that would save you a massive amount of time doing research? Well, there is. 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 news and information about all kinds of topics, stay informed about people and companies, and monitor what is being said online about you and your business.

Google Alerts is not only great for helping you manage your reputation online, but also for automatically sourcing the latest news about people, brands, companies, or any subject you are interested in.

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, you will automatically receive an email or RSS update.

We’ve created a simple tutorial on how to create a Google alert here: How To Set Up Google Alerts In Three Easy Steps

Hootsuite

(Hootsuite.com)

Hootsuite is a social media management application that lets you manage all of your social media activities from a single dashboard.

Hootsuite provides solutions for social media management, social marketing, social selling, and social customer service. Users can schedule Tweets and Facebook posts, track 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 teams.

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 info: Hootsuite

Buffer

(Buffer.com)

Buffer lets you schedule social content. You add updates to your Buffer account and Buffer will then post it for you at spaced intervals.

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 a web interface, Buffer also provides mobile apps and a web browser extension.

Go here for more info: Buffer

SocialMetrics

(Social Metrics Pro)

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

Some of the powerful features included in Social Metrics Pro include Excel-like conditional formatting, built-in and external widgets, sort, search and filter data, export data capabilities, 1-click auto-update functionality, and a simple social search improvement system.

We have written a detailed article on Social Metrics Pro. Go here to learn more about this useful tool: Social Metrics Pro

Sociocaster

(Sociocaster – Social media management for online marketers)

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

Sociocaster includes lots of powerful marketing and social features: image-sharing design templates, top viral video finder and posting tool, advanced link share customization for Facebook, unlimited social media account management (agency license), and much more.

Go here for more info: Sociocaster

SproutSocial

(SproutSocial.com)

SproutSocial is a robust 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, monitoring, support for teams and multiple profiles, helpdesk for customer support, team collaboration tools, security features, analytics and custom reports, mobile apps, RSS feed integration, etc.

Go here for more info: SproutSocial

SocialReport

(SocialReport.com)

SocialReport is an all-in-one social media management tool that lets you 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 returns your social channel data using a simple and intuitive dashboard. You can quickly and easily organize data by customers or business, and track your own social profiles as well as profiles of others.

More info: SocialReport

Followerwonk

(Followerwonk Twitter Analytics)

Followerwonk is a Twitter analytics tools that lets you search Twitter bios, compare users, analyze their tweeting habits, 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.

More information: Followerwonk Twitter Analytics

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, find out when most of your followers are online and schedule tweets appropriately, 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, manage multiple Twitter accounts, and more.

To learn more, visit this site: ManageFlitter

Beevolve

(Beevolve)

Beevolve.com is a social media monitoring tool for SMBs, community managers, analysts, content marketers, and online marketers. It lets you monitor your social media mentions, schedule and launch social media posts, and measure resulting engagement and sales, buzz, social sentiment, and more of all posts.

Go here for more information: Beevolve

HowSociable

(HowSociable.com)

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

HowSociable displays brand viability metrics on 30+ social media sites. It gives you a “social magnitude” score. This social numerical view lets you know how well you are doing across social sites, and which channels you can improve your marketing on.

More information: HowSociable

Mention

(Mention.com)

Mention is a social media monitoring tool for every type of business, CEOs, marketers, agencies, etc..

Mention uses algorithms that take billions of data points into account, so when someone mentions your keyword online, you have access to real time actionable data that can help you with your business goals. Mention has developed apps for mobile devices and desktop users.

Go here for more info: Mention

Google Analytics

(Google Analytics)

With so many great social media monitoring tools available, it’s easy to forget that applications like Google Analytics can also help you monitor social activities.

Visit the Hootsuite blog to read a six-step guide on how to track social media links with Google Analytics.

Facebook Insights

(Facebook Insights)

Facebook not only lets you integrate share, like, and follow social media buttons and commenting features with your website, it also provides a comprehensive analytics tool called Facebook Insights that lets you see how your site is performing on Facebook.

(Facebook Insights)

The Facebook Page Insights dashboard provides multiple metrics and analytics that can help analyze metrics like post reach, page likes, engagement, etc.. You can then use this data to improve your business marketing efforts.

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

Go here to learn more: Facebook Insights

Twitter Analytics

(Twitter Analytics)

Twitter Analytics let you see how your content is performing and provides a monthly break down of your profile visits, followers, top tweets, 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 strategy.

(Twitter.com – Tweet activity)

For more details, go here: Twitter Analytics

YouTube Analytics

(YouTube Analytics)

YouTube Analytics provides analytics to video publishers.

You can monitor views, audience demographics, sources of traffic, total estimated earning from playbacks, video viewing time, etc.

Go here to learn more: YouTube Analytics

Pinterest Analytics

(Pinterest)

Pinterest Analytics lets you explore what Pins and boards people like most, what they save from your website, what referral traffic you are getting from Pinterest, and how much traffic your site gets when you pin content to your boards. With Pin insights, you can get information that helps you learn what your audiences want.

More information: Pinterest Analytics

Other Social Media-Related Tools And Services

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.

Here are some other social media services. Keep in mind that new web technologies continually evolve. If anything changes in the list below, please let us know.

Wunderlist

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

SDL/Alterian

SDL acquired Alterian and transformed it into an all-in-one global web experience management solution that lets you create engaging digital experiences with your customers.

Answerbase

Create social Q&A communities. The Answerbase Q&A Platform allows users to ask questions, view Q&A content, and receive quality answers.

Appinions

Appinions, makers of an influence analytics marketing platform built on patented natural language processing and social network analysis technology is now part of ScribbleLive, a content marketing and live publishing SaaS platform for planning, creating and distributing content online. Appinions’ technology allows customers to optimize all stages of the content marketing lifecycle. The ScribbleLive acquisition enables brands to view the web through the lens of people’s opinions. The software provides answers to content marketers’ questions like ”who should we listen to or partner with?”, ”what keywords do we use to make our content more easily discoverable?”, etc.

ViralHeat

Viralheat is part of Cision, a global media intelligence software company. Viralheat is a powerful data analytics platform 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 access metrics and KPI, monitor conversations, publish and schedule updates, and deliver presentation-ready reports.

Bambuser

Broadcast live using your webcam or mobile device, share to your blog or favorite social network and interact with your viewers. Share via your smart device and stream content to your blog.

BlogDash

BlogDash links brands searching for ways to promote their products and services with bloggers who are willing to write content designed to bring brands the positive attention they are searching for.

BrandWatch

BrandWatch allows you to listen to conversations about your brand, your products or your market with pinpoint accuracy.

Buzzflash

Buzzflash is part of the Truthout community – an independent platform for transformative ideas that features daily headlines aimed at inspiring direct social action and participation.

CircleCount

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

Commun.it

Commun.it lets you manage your Twitter relationships, focus on customers and influencers, schedule posts and manage multiple profiles, and analyze Twitter data.

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 discussions on social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram.

SocialStudio

Social Studio helps you understand which topics are generating interest and where the most influential conversations are happening, then use that information to make informed business decisions.

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. Millions of websites covering just about every topic imaginable use Disqus.

Echofon

Echofon provides users with full featured, clean social apps for Facebook and Twitter. Echofon apps notify you of messages and mentions. Echofon for Twitter automatically keeps unread tweets in sync between apps on different devices, makes sharing media simple, and Echofon for Facebook provides real-time chat that lets you quickly send and receive messages to any of your online friends, browse your newsfeed and timelines, comment and like with ease and post videos or photos.

Everytime

Everytime is a collaboration app for creatives. If you work with videos, sounds, or images, 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.

Meltwater 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

With GroupHigh you can promote your products, company, or clients using a blogger outreach software that lets you search, sort, and filter 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 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 users social influence using a “Klout Score”. 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 gathered from the Know About It system from the past 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 marketing, management, and analytics tool. Tailwind lets you schedule pins, monitor Pinterest analytics, analyze industry trends and measure performance and results.

ViralWoot

Viralwoot helps you gain Pinterest followers, add pins for promotion, manage and grow multiple accounts, schedule pins with a free bookmarklet, track what people are pinning from your website, who is pinning the most and what images from your website are trending on Pinterest with pin alerts, find which are your top performing pins and boards, connect with influencers, and more.

TweetReach

TweetReach allows you to measure how well your tweets, hashtags, search queries, and keywords are doing on Twitter. TweetReach estimates the potential reach of your tweets for your given query.

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 view their performance results using easy to understand visual reports.

Riffle

Riffle integrates with every Twitter platform (Hootsuite, Shoutlet, Lithium, etc) and provides you with insight into the current and potential value of Twitter users, engagement, interest, 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 lets you link consumers, online merchants, and bloggers by tagging images on the web. Users can earn money from every purchase made.

MutualMind

MutualMind is 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 instantly route insights back to the enterprise.

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 form a complete marketing suite for top global brands and agencies to aggregate, warehouse and activate their social data.

Refollow

Refollow makes it easy to discover, manage, and protect your Twitter social circle.

RetweetRank

Find out how influential are you on Twitter.

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 lets you analyze and understand audiences, conversations, and competitors that matter to you across all social channels.

SocialBakers

SocialBakers delivers powerful social media stats that tell you how your social performance stacks against wider industry benchmarks and the competition. 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 insights about your audience, and track long-term brand performance.

Synthesio

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

Sysomos

Sysomos monitors billions of conversations and helps 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 networks. Discover influencers, find new and related topics, and get insights into the audiences 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 different channels across the Enterprise.

Trackur

Trackur provides simple, fast, and affordable social media monitoring and social analytics insights including trends, keyword discovery, automated sentiment analysis & influence scoring.

TrapIt

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

Tweepi

Tweepi provides different ways to search for users that might have an interest in your brand. Once you find 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 and email notifications, and if they are interested, they may check your profile and follow back.

Followadder

Followadder provides you with automated Instagram management tools. It lets you get real Instagram followers, real photo likes and comments, follow/unfollow Instagram users, schedule posts, like back photos, automate photo likes and direct messaging, search by hashtag, create lists, and more.

Twellow

Twellow is like the Yellow Pages for Twitter. You can search many relevant business categories, or your geographical area for followers on Twitter.

TwentyFeet

TwentyFeet was acquired by SumAll, and provides users with a powerful social reporting tool that lets you visualize your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube accounts along with any other service you use. You can quickly discover which of your tweets, posts, photos, or videos get the most engagement.

TwitterFall

Twitterfall allows users on Twitter to view upcoming trends and patterns posted by users.

Wajam

Wajam displays search results based on what your friends share on top of your normal search results.

Addict-o-matic

Instantly create a page with the latest buzz on any chosen topic.

Bitly

Bitly lets you share, track and analyze your links.

MyTopTweet

My Top Tweet shows your top 10 performing tweets.

SocialMention

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

Twazzup

Twazzup provides real-time analytics and monitoring for Twitter.

TweetDeck

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

***

We hope that you have found this information useful. To learn more about using WordPress to grow your business online, please see other articles and tutorials we have published on this site.

***