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, sort, filter and organize users according to specific demographic criteria, psychographic indicators, etc.
- Listen in on social conversations online
- Identify key buying signals.
With this information, you can 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 and applications you can use for monitoring social media content. If you are searching for cost-effective ways to increase sales using social media, then here are dozens of social analytics tools for tracking your business results.
Social Media Tracking Resources For WordPress Users
(Discover what consumers are saying about you, your business, and your competitors on social media)
Wouldn’t it be great if there was a free, simple and easy way to know what is going on in your industry or niche so that you are not wasting a huge amount of time doing research? Well, there is. It’s called …
Google Alerts
(Google Alerts lets you monitor the web for new content)
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, brands and companies, and monitor what other people are publishing about you and your business online.
Google Alerts is not only only a useful social media monitoring tool for managing your reputation online, but also for sourcing news about people, brands, companies, or any subject you want to know about.
With Google Alerts, you just subscribe to a keyword or topic and you’re done. Whenever Google’s bots crawl a new web site, blog post, news update, press release, a tweet, video, or any other indexable content related to that topic, it will automatically send you an email or RSS update.
If you would like to learn how to set up alerts with Google, see this step-by-step tutorial: How To Set Up Google Alerts - 3 Simple Steps
Hootsuite
(Hootsuite)
Hootsuite is a social media management application that lets you manage all of your social activities from a single 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, streamline workflows 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 leading social media management tools (SMMT). It allows you to post to many social networks, and offers integration with Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Foursquare, WordPress and more.
To learn more, visit this website: Hootsuite
Buffer
(Buffer)
Buffer lets you schedule 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 browser extension.
Go here for more information: Buffer
Social Metrics Pro
(Social Metrics)
SocialMetrics is a plugin that monitors Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and other social signals from your WordPress 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, one-click auto-update functionality, and a simple social SEO improvement system.
Go here if you would like to learn more about SocialMetrics: Social Metrics Social Analytics Plugin For WordPress
Sociocaster
(Sociocaster – Social media management for entrepreneurial marketers)
Sociocaster is easy to use and works for any marketing campaign. You can easily manage your social media networks, engage your audiences, schedule post messages, and measure ROI from one easy-to-use dashboard.
Sociocaster includes loads of powerful social and marketing features: a powerful visual designer, social stream, smart inbox tool, unlimited social media account management (agency license), and more.
To learn more, go here: Sociocaster
SproutSocial
(SproutSocial.com)
SproutSocial is a robust social media management tool aimed at small to large businesses as well as the enterprise sector.
SproutSocial has a built-in Customer Relationship Management system (CRM), advanced scheduling tools, monitoring, support for teams and multiple profiles, helpdesk for customer support, team collaboration tools, permission levels and roles, analytics and reports, mobile apps, RSS feed integration, etc.
To learn more, go here: SproutSocial
SocialReport
(SocialReport)
SocialReport is an all-in-one social media management solution that lets you track and manage all of your social network 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 using a simple and intuitive dashboard. You can quickly and easily organize your data by business or customers, and track competitor profiles in addition to your own.
To learn more, visit this website: SocialReport
Followerwonk
(Followerwonk Twitter Analytics)
Followerwonk is a Twitter analytics tools that 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 details, 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 your 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 the right accounts for your business, use tweet analytics to track keywords and beat your competitors, manage multiple Twitter accounts, and more.
Visit this site to learn more: ManageFlitter
Beevolve
(Beevolve)
Beevolve is a social media monitoring platform for SMBs, analysts, online marketers, community managers, and content marketers. It allows you to monitor your brand mentions, schedule and launch social media posts, and measure sales and engagement, social sentiment, buzz, and more of all posts.
To learn more, go here: Beevolve
HowSociable
(HowSociable)
HowSociable is a simple social media measuring tool that allows you to monitor brand mentions on the social web.
How Sociable displays brand viability metrics and delivers you a “social magnitude” score. This social numerical view lets you know how well you are doing on social media.
For more details, go here: HowSociable.com
Mention
(Mention.com)
Mention provides media monitoring for businesses, agencies, marketers, CEOs, etc..
Mention’s algorithms 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 can also be used for collaborative monitoring (e.g. sharing alerts with your team members), and has developed apps for both desktop and mobile users.
Visit this website to learn more: Mention
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics is not just a web analytics tool, it can also help you monitor posts made from your WP website or blog to your social accounts.
Hootsuite has published a simple six-step guide on how to track your social media links with Google Analytics on their blog.
Facebook Insights
(Facebook Insights)
Facebook not only lets you add share, like, and follow social media buttons and commenting features to your website, it also provides a comprehensive analytics tool called Facebook Insights that lets you understand how your campaigns are performing on the Facebook social networking platform.
(Facebook.com – Insights)
The Facebook Page Insights dashboard can be viewed by any admins of your page and can help you improve your marketing efforts by allowing you to track active users on your Page.
You can use Page Insights to learn about your posts — which have attracted the most likes, comments, and shares and to learn about your the demographics of your audience. You can then use this data to publish targeted content when your audience is on Facebook.
For more details, visit this site: Facebook Insights
Twitter Analytics
(Twitter.com)
Twitter Analytics let you see how your content is performing and provides a break down of your tweet impressions, followers, tweets, profile views, and tweets linking back 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 strategy for marketing Twitter.
(Twitter Analytics – Tweet activity)
More info: Twitter Analytics
YouTube Analytics
(YouTube.com)
YouTube Analytics provides analytics to publishers.
You can monitor the performance of your channel and videos with up-to-date metrics and reports like the realtime, overview, engagement, earnings, and watch-time reports.
Go here for more details: YouTube Analytics
Pinterest Analytics
(Pinterest)
Pinterest Analytics helps you explore metrics about the people who engage with your business, what people like from your profile, what they save from your website, and how much traffic your site gets when you pin new content. You can get data about your audiences so you can learn what they want more of.
More info: Pinterest Analytics
Additional Social Media-Related Web Tools
New tools and technologies are being launched each year to help businesses take advantage of social media.
Here are some other social media-related tools and services. Keep in mind that web technologies change. If anything changes in the list below, please let us know in the comment section.
Wunderlist
A task management tool with a social twist. It lets you create personal and professional task 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 allows you to create engaging digital experiences with your customers.
Answerbase
Create your own social Q&A community. The Answerbase Q&A Platform facilitates users being able to ask questions, view Q&A content, and get their questions answered.
Appinions
Appinions is a content marketing and live publishing SaaS platform that lets you plan, create and distribute content online. 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. Appinions enables brands to view the web through the lens of people’s opinions. This tool 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 tool 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 access metrics and KPI, follow conversations, publish and schedule updates, and deliver presentation-ready reports.
Bambuser
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 to your blog.
BlogDash
BlogDash connects brands looking for ways to promote their services and products with bloggers willing to write content aimed at bringing brands the positive media attention they are searching for.
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 that features daily headlines whose goal is to inspire direct action and participation.
CircleCount
CircleCountCircleCount helps users better understand how to use GooglePlus. CircleCount lets you discover all of the Google Plus circles that include your profile. If your profile isn’t already being tracked on CircleCount.com, you can easily add the url of your Google+ 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 can be used to track your friends and followers on Twitter and other social networks.
Conversocial
Conversocial provides cloud-based social customer service solutions that help global brands improve their 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 build more meaningful relationships with customers by tapping into the power of social media across your customer service, marketing, and sales organizations..
Disqus
Disqus is a free service that connects people online through blog comments and discussions. Disqus is used by millions of websites covering just about every topic imaginable.
Echofon
Echofon provides users with social apps for Twitter and Facebook. 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 videos and photos.
Everytime
Everytime is a collaboration app for creatives. With Everytime, you can save moments from Youtube, Vimeo, Soundcloud and any media to your computer. Those moments are then easy to share, publicly or privately, 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
With GroupHigh you can promote your products, company, or clients using a blogger outreach tool 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’s blog search makes it easy to build a list of bloggers based on topics, content, location, and more.
Klout
Klout is a website and mobile app that uses social media analytics to rank its users according to online social influence via the “Klout Score”, which is a numerical value between 1 and 100. You can use Klout to suggest shareable content that your friends, fans, and followers haven’t seen yet, and track how retweets, likes, and shares change your Klout Score.
KnowAboutIt
KnowAboutIt is a simple service that monitors popular news sources for stories that are generating a lot of conversation. The stories are gathered from the KnowAboutIt 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 Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook content from fans into an interactive display.
TailWind
Tailwind is a social media monitoring tool designed specifically for Pinterest. It lets you schedule pins, monitor analytics, analyze industry trends and measure results across Pinterest.
ViralWoot
ViralWoot helps you gain Pinterest followers, promote Pinterest pins, manage and grow multiple accounts, schedule pins with a free bookmarklet, create pin alerts, track your Pinterest performance, connect with influencers, and more.
TweetReach
TweetReach allows you to measure the reach of your tweets for hashtags, specific keywords, and search queries. 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 assess their analytics using easy to understand visual reports.
Riffle
Riffle integrates with every Twitter platform (Hootsuite, TweetDeck, Spinklr, etc) and provides you with insight into the current and potential value of Twitter users, 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 bloggers, consumers, and online merchants by tagging images on the web. You can earn money from every purchase made.
MutualMind
MutualMind provides 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 trends or moments in social data and instantly route insights back to the enterprise.
Unified Social / PageLevel
Unified Social acquired PageLever, a leading Facebook analytics company, 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 provides powerful tools designed to grow and manage your social media presence.
RetweetRank
RetweetRank lets you get insights into your tweets, track engagement and monitor your brand.
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, the audiences, and competitors that matter to you across all social channels.
SocialBakers
SocialBakers delivers powerful social media stats that let you see how your social performance stacks against the competition and wider industry benchmarks. You can create, manage, and optimize all of your Facebook and Twitter ads in one place, quickly identify your best content and top posting times, gain insights about your audience, and track your brand’s performance over the long term.
Synthesio
Synthesio is a social media intelligence tool. Synthesio provides scalable monitoring and analytics solutions to hundreds of global agencies and brands. Users can cut through the social noise, find the conversations that matter, measure online 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 products and services 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. Discover influencers, find new and related topics, and get insights into the audiences that matter most to you.
ThisMoment
ThisMoment helps businesses engaging with everyone everywhere. Depending on what business you run, ThisMoment’s Content Cloud helps you find, mix and share a variety of content through different channels across the Enterprise.
Trackur
Trackur provides fast, simple, and affordable social media monitoring.
TrapIt
Trapit is a social selling, employee advocacy and content marketing tool. With one click of a button, your teams can share content with their prospects, social networks, and customers.
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 users with automated social networking management tools. 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. Twellow lets you search for followers on Twitter in dozens 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 Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube accounts along with any other social service you use. Discover which of your tweets, posts, photos, or videos get the most engagement in seconds.
TwitterFall
Twitterfall is based in the UK and lets users on Twitter view upcoming trends and patterns posted by users.
Wajam
Wajam is a tool that displays search results of what your friends are sharing above your normal search results.
Addict-o-matic
Addictomatic 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 shows your top performing tweets.
SocialMention
SocialMention is a real-time social media 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 using WordPress to grow your business online, please see our related posts section below.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now