Social interactions and recommendations like Twitter retweets and mentions, Facebook comments, shares, and likes, etc. are called social signals.
With the increased importance of social sites like Twitter and Facebook, search engines like Bing and Google now take into account a range of social signals when determining website ranking.
Note: Google encourages businesses to build their brand on social media as a long-term investment to drive qualified traffic, rather than aiming for short-term benefits like search ranking placement. Google’s own head of the web spam team Matt Cutts has stated that Google takes a cautious approach when it comes to assessing social media signals, as social trends and relationships can change at a moment’s notice. Without a reliable ‘map,’ Google is understandably reticent to assign more importance to the social sphere over other aspects of their search algorithm. In summary, Google’s strategy is to “wait and see” how things develop over time, as websites that provide value tend to develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the websites that Google naturally wants to display higher in its search listings.
Social Signal Sources
Social sites that search engines like Google look to when measuring social signals include:
With almost 2 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the most influential social community in the world. It has been estimated that a single post can reach over 100,000 users, so even if no one seems to be buying your products or services on Facebook, don’t be quick to dismiss the importance of Facebook in your business strategy, as Google processes data and information from Facebook to help determine your search rankings. In fact, research indicates that Facebook seems influence search rankings more than other social media sites.
(Number of monthly active Facebook users. Source: Statista.com)
After Facebook, Twitter is the second biggest social media site in the world, with over half a billion tweets sent out each day. Twitter plays a significant role as a global influencer on the cybersphere and places great importance on tweeting posts that provide great value to followers over the amount of tweets sent …
(Over 500 million tweets are sent every day. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
Google Plus
As Google’s own social site, GooglePlus naturally carries great authority online, even if it has not reached the same level of growth and take up as Twitter and Facebook.
(More people are interacting socially on GooglePlus every month. Source: Internet Live Stats)
In addition to the big 3 social sites listed above, there are a number of other social sites that should not be ignored, like Pinterest, LinkedIn, Reddit, Digg, and StumbleUpon.
(Social media sites provide important signals that could affect your search rankings)
Which Social Signals Should You Be Paying Attention To?
Social signals tracked by search engines like Google and Bing include:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook shares, likes, and comments a person has, growth rate of likes and shares, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. tweets and retweets, the number of people sharing your URL, trending topics, etc.
- GooglePlus – e.g. who is following you (influential users), how many people follow you, number of adds and shares, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. number of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, upvotes on Digg, etc.
- Other signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious factors that can influence search traffic. These include desirable and undesirable factors, such as backlinks from authority sites (not as important as they once were, but still a factor) [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be irrelevant by visitors [negative].
As a business owner, it’s important to not only develop your social media presence, but also to be able to track, measure and analyze your social media in order to improve your business results.
(Use social media marketing to improve your results online)
Social media monitoring allows you to find insights into your company’s overall visibility on social media, spot market opportunities, measure the impact of your marketing campaigns, be alerted to crises, and spy on your competitors. It can also provide you with vital information about emerging trends and what consumers and clients are thinking about specific businesses, topics, products, or brands.
As a tool for business intelligence, being able to monitor social media is invaluable. Using social media monitoring as a form of business intelligence, however, is a complex undertaking, often carried out by a cross-section of people including PR staff, market researchers, marketing teams, social engagement and community staff, agencies, and sales teams. Typically, small businesses do not have the budget to pay social media monitoring professionals to track their coverage in the and actively monitor their digital reputation.
Fortunately different providers have developed affordable tools to facilitate the active monitoring of a wide spectrum of social media channels, allowing companies to track consumer behavior around their brands allowing them to react to conversations and engage with consumers in a timely manner.
We have created a detailed article where we explore many social media measurement tools and technologies that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives. More information:
(Are you measuring social signals effectively?)
In this article, we explore a simple plugin for WordPress websites and blogs for monitoring social media signals and increasing your social media exposure online.
Let’s Review …
Social Metrics Pro – Social Media Analytics Plugin
Plugin Description
SocialMetricsPro is an easy-to-install social media analytics WordPress plugin that is designed to help users increase their social media influence online in an uncomplicated way. It is built on a simple premise – SocialMetricsPro measures how each signal is performing and displays either a green or red indicator. The user’s task is simple … turn more red squares into greens.
(A system that any website owner can follow … turn reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. Posts that get shared the most are colored green. Posts with low social media activity show up amber and red.
The plugin developers tested Social Metrics Pro on a network of 2,000+ websites over a period of 3 months. During this period, all they focused on was turning the “reds” to “greens” and then keeping everything “green”. From these tests, they noticed that their top 10 best performing sites saw an improvement of up to 360% more traffic, 410% more keywords ranked in the first page of Google and they also experienced a 310% increase in revenues.
(According to the plugin developers, improving your social media marketing can result in higher search engine rankings, more traffic and an increase in revenue!)
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Benefits Of Using SocialMetricsPro
Here are just a few of the benefits of using SocialMetricsPro to track Likes, Tweets, Pins, +1s and more from your WordPress Dashboard on your web site:
Be Up And Running In No Time
Social Metrics Pro installs just like any regular plugin. Just upload a zip file that contains the plugin to your Plugin folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate.
Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, the site owner’s objective is to turn more reds into greens. SocialMetricsPro tracks and measures social signals so you know where to invest more effort and where to optimize.
Track Only Social Signals From Social Networks You Care About
Social Metrics Pro provides a powerful dashboard to centrally monitor social media activity from social media networks like GooglePlus, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, Pinterest, and StumbleUpon.
SocialMetricsPro helps you get answers to questions like:
- Which social networks work best for my site?
- Which posts are performing the best on these social networks?
- Which of my posts are the most popular?
- And more …
With SocialMetricsPro, all of this information can be accessed with a single click.
(Social Metrics Pro actively monitors social signals from the social media sites that you care most about!)
Features
Social Metrics Pro provides many great features to WordPress users. Below we have listed just a few of these:
- Quick and simple to install and configure. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Widgets And Extensions Ready. You can extend its functionality with built-in and external widgets. Access updated stats from your WordPress admin bar, add socially popular content to your blog sidebar or anywhere in your site using widgets.
- 1-click updating. Update Social Metrics Pro in one click via the WordPress Updates page, or update it manually. You can also choose to receive email notifications when new versions are released.
- Plugin works even on the smallest hosting configuration. The plugin generates social metrics reports in seconds, consuming very little server resources. Report generation also displays the amount of time spent retrieving information and the server resources used to gather data.
Additional plugin features include:
- Sorting, Searching And Filtering Features: Social Metrics Pro allows you to sort and filter the data however you like. You can perform keyword searches to study topic-related posts, and even filter the results by post type, category, publishing date, or post authors.
- Export Data: You can export and plot filtered, sorted data and custom queries in Excel for further analysis. Data can be exported in tab-delimited and comma-separated file formats, and imported to Excel or the spreadsheet application of your choice.
(Social Metrics Pro is really simple to use … just change all the red squares into greens!)
User Feedback
Here are a couple of the testimonials and feedback plugin users have written about the Social Metrics Pro plugin:
”Our entire marketing strategy relies on social media. Each post on the site has viral potential, but we needed one place to see which social networks are performing the best for us…We went ahead and got the PRO Version of Social Metrics.” Syed Balkhi, Founder of List25 and WPBeginner.com
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”If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve.” Goes one of the most important sayings in business. And this is particularly true for tracking of your social mentions I found. There were two things that helped me a great deal to increase sharing after installing Social Metrics: First, I was able to see that some of my articles would perform much better on networks I wasn’t particularly using, such as StumbleUpon for example. Secondly, I could filter out the best performing content more easily and analyse what makes my readers share. Since then I have focused strongly on producing and replicating those posts that performed best.” Leo Widrich, Co-Founder of Buffer
Useful Tips
A step-by-step, practical guide showing you how to optimize your social media strategy (i.e. how to turn reds into greens) is also included.
SocialMetricsPro Support
SocialMetricsPro is well-supported, and users get lifetime software upgrades and new releases for free with their purchase, backed by a risk-free, sixty-day, full money-back guarantee.
Product Cost
Social Metrics Pro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site License – This lets you use Social Metrics Pro on one web site only. It includes free lifetime updates and free support. Price = $27.00 (one-time).
- Unlimited Sites Edition – This lets you configure SocialMetricsPro on all websites that you own. Includes free lifetime updates and free support. Cost = $47.00 (one-time).
Note: Price details for the Social Metrics Pro product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The above reflects the pricing at the time this review was published. This may or may not be the actual pricing set by the software developer when you visit the product website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details:
Additional Info
SocialMetricsPro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
We Highly Recommend This
As mentioned earlier, with the growth of social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, search engines like Google and Bing are now taking into account a range of social signals when determining website ranking.
No website owner can afford to ignore how important social media is to their online success. Social Metrics Pro solves the problem of how to find a simple, time-saving solution that gives users instant feedback on the success of their social media marketing campaigns and guides them where and how to direct their efforts in order to improve their results.
Social Metrics Pro is an ideal tool for beginners and advanced users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more directly from your WP admin area.
Get this plugin if you own or manage WordPress sites and want to measure your social marketing results professionally.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Social Metrics Pro – Social Media Analytics For WordPress
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