In Part One 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 tracking tools that let you:
- Search, find, segment, filter and organize users according to demographic criteria, their interests, etc.
- Listen in on online social conversations
- Identify consumer buying signals.
With this information, you can start a meaningful conversation with prospects 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’ve been looking for better ways to increase sales using social media, then here are 30 social media analytics tools and resources for better understanding your ideal customers.
Essential Social Media Measurement Tools For WordPress
(Discover what people are saying about you, your business, and your competitors on social media)
Is there a free and simple way to access information about what is new in your industry or niche that can save you time doing research? Yes, there is. It’s called …
Google Alerts
(Google Alerts – free web monitoring service)
Google Alerts is one of the easiest and most useful tools available online for keeping up-to-date with news and information about all kinds of topics, staying informed about people, brands and companies, and monitoring what is being written about you and your business online. Google Alerts is also free.
Google Alerts is not only only a useful social media monitoring tool for managing your reputation online, but also for sourcing the latest news about people, brands, companies, or any topic you want to know about.
With Google Alerts, you just subscribe to a keyword or topic and you’re done. Whenever Google’s indexing robots crawl a new web site, press release, blog post, news update, a tweet, video, or any other indexable content related to the topic you’ve subscribed to, it will automatically send you an email or RSS update.
To learn how to set up alerts with Google, see this tutorial: Google Alerts – A Step-By-Step Guide
Hootsuite
(Hootsuite)
Hootsuite is a social media management platform 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. 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 from the dashboard, 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 a large number of social networks, and offers integration with Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Foursquare, WordPress and more.
For more details, visit this site: Hootsuite
Buffer
(Buffer.com)
Buffer lets you schedule your social content. You add updates to your Buffer account and it will be posted for you at spaced out intervals over the day.
Buffer allows you to 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 also provides mobile apps for iOS and Android devices and a browser extension.
Go here for more information: Buffer
Social Metrics
(Social Metrics Social Plugin For WordPress)
Social Metrics Pro is a plugin for WordPress that tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and other social signals from your Dashboard.
Some of the powerful features included in SocialMetrics include Excel-like conditional formatting, built-in and external widgets, sort, search and filter data, export data capabilities, one-click autoupdate functionality, and a simple social search improvement system.
We have written a detailed article about SocialMetricsPro. Go here to learn more: SocialMetrics Social Analytics Plugin For WordPress
Sociocaster
(Sociocaster)
Posting to Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and WordPress can be very time-consuming and to get all these tasks done you usually need to use different plugins, tools, or web apps. Sociocaster lets you do it all from one single location.
Sociocaster includes powerful marketing and social features: a powerful visual designer, the ability to spy on your competition, advanced link share customization for Facebook, agency license to manage unlimited social accounts, and much more.
More info: Sociocaster
SproutSocial
(SproutSocial.com)
SproutSocial is a premium social media management tool built for small to large businesses as well as the enterprise sector.
SproutSocial has a built-in social CRM, advanced scheduling tools, monitoring, support for teams and multiple profiles, helpdesk, team collaboration tools, security features, reports and analytics, mobile apps, RSS feed integration, etc.
More information: SproutSocial
SocialReport
(SocialReport)
SocialReport is a social intelligence platform 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 on a simple and intuitive dashboard. You can organize your data by customers or business, and track your own social profiles as well as competitor profiles.
Go here for more details: SocialReport
Followerwonk
(Followerwonk Twitter Analytics)
Followerwonk is a Twitter analytics tools that provides insights into your Twitter followers and 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, find and connect with new influencers in your niche, where they are located, when do they tweet, hone your social graph by following and unfollowing users, etc.
Visit this site to learn more: Followerwonk
ManageFlitter
(ManageFlitter)
ManageFlitter provides a set of powerful tools that help you work smarter and faster with Twitter.
ManageFlitter lets you sort your followers and following lists by a range of criteria, post tweets at the best time to reach your followers, search twitter bios to easily 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.
Visit this website to learn more: ManageFlitter
Beevolve
(Beevolve.com)
Beevolve is a social media monitoring platform for small and medium sized businesses, community managers, analysts, content marketers, and online marketers. It allows you to track your social media mentions, schedule and launch social media posts, and measure sales, conversion, and engagement metrics, sentiment, buzz, and more of posts from one easy-to-use platform.
Visit this website to learn more: Beevolve
HowSociable
(HowSociable)
HowSociable is a simple tool that allows you to see how brands and businesses are mentioned across various social properties.
HowSociable.com displays brand viability metrics on more than 30 social channels and delivers you a “social magnitude” score. This social numerical view lets you know how well you are doing on social media, and which channels can be improved.
Go here for more details: HowSociable.com
Mention
(Mention)
Mention can help any type of business monitor the web.
Mention uses algorithms that take billions of data points into account, so when someone mentions your brand online, you have real time actionable data that can help you with your business goals. Mention also allows you to collaborate with different team members.
More information: 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 help you track social activities.
Hootsuite has published a simple step-by-step guide on tracking your social media links with Google Analytics on their blog.
Facebook Insights
(Facebook)
Facebook not only lets you add like, share, and follow social media plugins and commenting features to your website, it also provides a comprehensive analytics tool called Facebook Insights that lets you analyze how your campaigns are performing on Facebook.
(Facebook – Insight Types)
Facebook Insights can help you see when users are on Facebook. This can help improve your business marketing efforts.
You can use Page Insights to learn about your posts — which have attracted the most comments, shares, and likes and to learn about your the demographics of your audience. You can then use this data to publish content when your posts are most likely to reach more targeted people.
More information: Facebook Insights
Twitter Analytics
(Twitter)
Twitter Analytics let you see how your tweets are performing and gives you a monthly breakdown of your followers, top tweets, tweet impressions, 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 strategy.
(Twitter – Tweet activity)
Go here for more information: Twitter Analytics
YouTube Analytics
(YouTube)
YouTube Analytics lets you see how your channel is performing on the YouTube platform.
You can see visitor demographics, views, sources of traffic, how many minutes users watched a video, total estimated earning from playbacks, etc.
For more details, go here: YouTube Analytics
Pinterest Analytics
(Pinterest)
Pinterest Analytics helps you explore metrics about the people who engage with your business, what Pins and boards people like most, what they save from your website, and how much traffic your site gets when you pin content to your boards. You can get data about your audience so you can learn what they want more of.
Go here for more info: Pinterest Analytics
Other Social Media-Related Web Applications
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-related services. Keep in mind that new web technologies continually evolve. If anything changes in the list below, please let us know in the comment section.
Wunderlist
Wunderlist is a task management tool with a social twist. Create professional and personal lists and share your lists with friends, family and colleagues.
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 online consumers.
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 has been acquired by ScribbleLive, a content marketing and live publishing SaaS platform for planning, creating and distributing content. Appinions’ technology enables customers to optimize every stage 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 questions like ”who should we listen to or partner with?”, “where should we publish?”, etc.
ViralHeat
Viralheat runs 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 monitor conversations, access metrics and KPI, schedule and publish updates, 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 your viewers. Share via your smart device and stream content to your blog.
BlogDash
BlogDash brings brands and bloggers together. Bloggers can choose the types of opportunities they are open to being 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 an independent platform for transformative ideas featuring daily headlines aimed at inspiring direct social action and participation.
CircleCount
CircleCountCircleCount is a GooglePlus education resource. CircleCount lets you discover all of the GooglePlus circles that include your profile. If your profile isn’t already being monitored on CircleCount.com, you can easily add the url of your GooglePlus 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
Contax.io 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 global brands improve customer experience and operational efficiency by managing customer service flow and discussions on social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
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 is a free service that connects people online through blog comments and discussions. Millions of websites covering just about every topic imaginable use Disqus.
Echofon
Echofon provides users with social apps for Facebook and Twitter. Echofon apps notify you of mentions and messages. Echofon for Twitter means you’ll never read a tweet twice by avoiding duplicate alerts 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 creative social media tool. If you work with images, videos, or audio, you can save any moment from Youtube, Vimeo, Soundcloud and any media to your computer. Those moments can then be easily discussed, shared, and found online using social collaboration.
Icerocket
Icerocket is a social media search engine which allows you to search Facebook, the blogosphere, Twitter, or all at once for any keywords you like.
GroupHigh
GroupHigh is a blogger outreach software that lets you sort, filter, 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 topics, location, content, and more.
Klout
Klout is a social media monitoring and performance analysis tool. Klout brings influencers and brands together, rewards experts in specific topics and areas of interests with Perks, and ranks users 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
Know About It is a simple service that monitors popular news sources for stories that are generating a lot of conversation. The stories are collected from the KnowAboutIt system from the previous 24 hours, and are ranked by the number of comments that the Know About It system is aware of in relation to that story.
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 Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram content from fans into an interactive display.
TailWind
Tailwind is a Pinterest marketing tool. Tailwind lets you schedule pins, monitor Pinterest analytics, analyze industry trends and measure results and performance across the entire Pinterest network.
ViralWoot
Viralwoot helps you gain Pinterest followers, promote Pinterest pins, manage and grow multiple accounts, schedule pins with a 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, track your Pinterest performance, connect with influencers, and more.
TweetReach
TweetReach lets you measure how well your tweets, keywords, hashtags, and search queries are performing on Twitter. TweetReach shows you the estimated potential of the tweets for any 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 analytics using easy to understand visual reports.
Riffle
Riffle integrates with every Twitter platform and provides you with Twitter analytics, engagement, and real-time tracking 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, bloggers, and consumers 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 is a complete social data platform for conducting social business One web-based solution provides you with all the tools you need to display data on collaborative screens, detect moments or trends in the 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 being acquired, Pagelever’s comprehensive, real-time reporting has been integrated in the Unified Social operating platform. These tools are part of a complete marketing suite allowing top global brands and agencies to aggregate, warehouse and activate their social data.
Refollow
Refollow lets you find a targeted audience, measure, manage, optimize and monetize your social media presence.
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 provides a powerful social analytics solution for global brands.
SocialBakers
SocialBakers delivers deep, competitive social media stats that let you see how your social performance stacks against wider industry benchmarks and the competition. 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 powerful 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 global agencies and brands. Users can cut through social noise, find 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 aimed at creating better products and services for your customers. Simply type in your keyword and instantly see what people are saying on any topic both in real-time and historically across all social channels. Find new and related topics, discover influencers, and gain valuable insights into the communities that matter 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 many channels across the Enterprise.
Trackur
Trackur provides simple, fast, and affordable social media monitoring.
TrapIt
Trapit is lets you easily support your sales enablement, social selling, and employee advocacy efforts by providing relevant content to your employees. With one click of a button, your teams can share content with their customers, social networks, and prospects.
Tweepi
With Tweepi, you can follow a @user’s followers, follow a @user’s friends, follow using a Twitter list, and follow by copy/pasting lists.
Followadder
Followadder provides you with 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, automate photo likes and direct messaging, search by hashtag, create lists, and more.
Twellow
You can think of Twellow as being like the Yellow Pages for Twitter. Twellow lets you search for Twitter followers in hundreds of relevant business categories or search your geographical area.
TwentyFeet
TwentyFeet was acquired by SumAll, and provides users with a powerful social reporting tool that lets you visualize your Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram accounts and any other social service you use. You can quickly find out which of your posts, tweets, videos or photos get the most engagement.
TwitterFall
Twitterfall is based in the UK and lets Twitter users view upcoming trends and patterns posted by users.
Wajam
Wajam displays search results based on what your friends share above your normal search results.
Addict-o-matic
Addictomatic lets you instantly create a page with the latest buzz on any topic of your choice.
Bitly
Bitly lets you analyze social media engagement, optimize content, and measure how you’re spending your budget.
MyTopTweet
MyTopTweet is a simple social monitoring tool that shows your top 10 performing tweets.
SocialMention
SocialMention is a real-time social search engine and analysis platform.
Twazzup
Twazzup provides real-time Twitter monitoring and analytics.
TweetDeck
TweetDeck is a powerful 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 WordPress to grow your business online, please see our related posts section below.
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)