In Part 1 of this article, we looked at some of the reasons why WordPress makes an ideal platform to market your business on social media.
In this section, we look at a number of tracking tools, services and applications that let you:
- Search, find, segment, filter and organize users according to demographic criteria, psychographic indicators, etc.
- Monitor social conversations online
- Identify consumer buying signals.
This information lets 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 to monitor social media content. If you’ve been looking for ways to increase sales with social media, then check out our list of 30 free or cost-effective social media monitoring tools & resources for business marketing.
WordPress And Media Monitoring
(Discover what people are saying about you, your brand, or your competitors on social media)
Wouldn’t it be great if there was a free, simple and easy way to find out what is new in your niche or industry that could save you a massive amount of time doing research? Well, there is, and it’s called …
Google Alerts
(Google Alerts lets you monitor the web for new content)
Google Alerts is one of the easiest and most useful tools available online for keeping up with the latest news about all kinds of topics, staying informed about people, brands and companies, and monitoring what other people are posting online about you and your business. Google Alerts is also free.
Google Alerts is not only useful for helping you manage your reputation online, but also for automatically sourcing news about people, brands, companies, and any other subject you want to know about.
With Google Alerts, you just subscribe to a keyword or topic and you’re done. Whenever Google’s indexing bots crawl a new web page, news update, press release, blog post, a video, tweet, or any other indexable content related to that topic, you will automatically receive an email or RSS update.
To learn how to set up alerts with Google, see this tutorial: How To Set Up Google Alerts In 3 Simple & Easy Steps
Hootsuite
(Hootsuite.com)
Hootsuite is a social media management platform that lets you manage all of your social profiles 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, 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 collaborate with team members.
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 provides integration with Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Foursquare, WordPress and more.
Go here for more details: Hootsuite
Buffer
(Buffer.com)
Buffer lets you schedule your social content. Add updates to your Buffer account and it will be posted 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 using a web interface, Buffer also provides mobile apps for Android and iOS devices and a web browser extension.
More info: Buffer
Social Metrics Pro
(SocialMetricsPro)
SocialMetrics is a plugin for WordPress that lets you monitor social activity from many leading social networks like Google Plus, Twitter, Facebook, Digg, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, and Pinterest.
Some of the powerful features included in SocialMetricsPro 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 on Social Metrics Pro. Go here to learn more about this useful plugin: SocialMetricsPro
Sociocaster
(Sociocaster – Social media management for entrepreneurial marketers)
Sociocaster is easy to use and works for any marketer or business. You can easily engage your audiences, schedule post messages, manage your social media networks, and measure ROI from one easy-to-use dashboard.
Sociocaster is a powerful tool for entrepreneurs and internet marketers. It includes powerful social and marketing features: professional image-sharing designs, top viral video finder and posting tool, smart inbox tool, unlimited social account management (agency license), and more.
Go here to learn more: 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, social monitoring, support for teams and multiple profiles, helpdesk for customer support, team collaboration tools, security features, analytics and reports, mobile apps, RSS feed integration, etc.
To learn more, visit this website: 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.
Social Report 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 quickly and easily organize data by customers or business, and track your own social profiles as well as competitor profiles.
To learn more, go here: 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, track and sort 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.
To learn more, 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 your 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.
Go here for more info: ManageFlitter
Beevolve
(Beevolve.com)
Beevolve.com is a social media monitoring platform designed for small and medium sized businesses, community managers, online marketers, analysts, and content marketers. Beevolve allows you to monitor your brand mentions, schedule and launch social media posts, and measure engagement and sales, sentiment, buzz, and more of all your posts.
Go here to learn more: Beevolve
HowSociable
(HowSociable.com)
HowSociable is a simple social monitoring service that allows you to monitor how your brand or business is mentioned on the social web.
HowSociable displays brand viability metrics. It gives 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 to learn more: HowSociable
Mention
(Mention.com)
Mention is built on a simple idea of allowing anyone to know what’s being said about them online and on social media.
Mention’s algorithms take billions of data points into account, so when someone mentions your keyword online, you have real time actionable data that can help you with your business goals. Mention is cross-device compatible.
For more details, go here: Mention
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics is not only a web analytics software application, it can also help you track posts made to your social media campaigns.
Hootsuite has published a step-by-step tutorial on tracking your social media links with Google Analytics on their blog.
Facebook Insights
(Facebook)
Facebook not only lets you integrate follow, share, and like social plugins and commenting features with your site, it also provides a comprehensive analytics tool called Facebook Insights. This lets you understand how your campaigns are performing on Facebook’s social networking platform.
(Facebook – Insight Types)
Facebook Insights helps you better understand metrics about how users are engaging with your Page to help you with your marketing efforts.
You can use Facebook’s Page Insights to learn about your posts — which have attracted the most comments, likes, and shares and to learn about the demographics of your audience. You can then use this information to publish more of the types of posts that your audience finds relevant.
More info: Facebook Insights
Twitter Analytics
(Twitter Analytics)
Twitter Analytics let you see how your content is performing and gives you a monthly break down of your top tweets, profile views, tweet impressions, followers, 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 plan your Twitter marketing strategy.
(Twitter – Tweet activity)
More info: Twitter Analytics
YouTube Analytics
(YouTube)
YouTube Analytics provides analytics to publishers.
You can monitor audience demographics, views, traffic sources, video viewing duration, revenue from video playbacks, etc.
More info: YouTube Analytics
Pinterest Analytics
(Pinterest.com)
Pinterest Analytics helps you explore metrics about the people who engage with your business, what Pins and boards people like most, and what they save from your website. With Pin insights, you can get information that helps you learn who your audience is and what your customers want.
More info: Pinterest Analytics
Additional Social Media Web Tools
New tools and technologies are being launched each year to help businesses make sense of social media.
The list below contains a number of other social media worth knowing about. Keep in mind that new web technologies continually evolve. If any of the tools below change, please let us know in the comment section.
Wunderlist
Wunderlist is a task management tool with a social twist. Create professional and personal to-do lists and share your lists with family, colleagues and friends.
SDL/Alterian
SDL Web (formerly Alterian) is 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, browse 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. You can optimize 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. 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 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 combining monitoring, publishing, analytics and reporting for all major social networks in an intuitive interface. Users can track conversations, schedule and publish updates, access metrics and KPI, 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 smartphone and stream to your blog.
BlogDash
BlogDash links brands looking to promote their products and services with bloggers who are willing to write content designed to bring brands positive media attention.
BrandWatch
Brandwatch Analytics is a powerful social media monitoring and analytics platform that allows you to 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 action.
CircleCount
CircleCount is a Google+ education resource. CircleCount lets you discover all of the GooglePlus circles that include your profile. If your profile isn’t already being tracked on CircleCount.com, you can easily add 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
Contax.io monitors your friends and followers on Twitter and provides detail to help 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 the flow of customer service enquiries and discussions on social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram.
SocialStudio
Social Studio helps you discover what consumers are saying about your brand, your products, and your competitors, and empower your team to plan, execute, and track compelling social media marketing..
Disqus
Disqus is a social tool that aims to help improve conversations online. Millions of websites covering just about every topic imaginable use Disqus.
Echofon
Echofon provides users with social apps for Twitter and Facebook. Echofon apps notify you of mentions and messages. Echofon for Twitter automatically keeps unread tweets in sync between apps 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 and videos.
Everytime
Everytime is a collaboration app for creatives. With Everytime, you can save moments from Youtube, Vimeo, Soundcloud and any media on your computer. Those moments can then be easily discussed, shared, and found online with social collaboration.
Icerocket
Meltwater IceRocket is a social media search engine which allows you to search Facebook, Twitter, the blogosphere, or all at once for any keywords you like.
GroupHigh
With GroupHigh you can promote your products, company, or clients using a blogger outreach software that lets you filter, sort, 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, content, location, and more.
Klout
Klout is a website and mobile app that helps you analyze user’s social media influence using the “Klout Score”, which is a numerical value between 1 and 100. 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 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 past 24 hours, and are ranked by the number of comments that the KnowAboutIt 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, Instagram, and Facebook 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 is a social media marketing platform for small and medium sized businesses using Pinterest. Viralwoot lets you view the performance of your pins with the built-in analytics reports.
TweetReach
TweetReach lets you measure how well your tweets, keywords, search queries, and hashtags are doing on Twitter. TweetReach gives you the estimated potential of the tweets for any given query.
Keyhole
Keyhole is a real-time social media tracking service that lets you track URLs, #hashtags, and keywords on Twitter and Instagram. Analytics are displayed to users in an easy to understand visual reports.
Riffle
Riffle integrates with over a dozen Twitter platforms (Hootsuite, SocialFlow, Twilert, etc) and provides you with insight into the current and potential value of Twitter users, 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 lets you link consumers, bloggers, 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 gives you all the tools you need to display data on collaborative screens, detect trends or moments in the data and route the insights back to the enterprise instantly.
Unified Social / PageLevel
Unified Social acquired PageLever, a leading Facebook analytics company, in January 2013. Since being acquired, 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 help you grow and manage 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 powerful social media analytics that let you see how your social performance stacks against wider industry benchmarks and the competition. 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 powerful insights about your audience, and track your brand’s performance over the long term.
Synthesio
Synthesio is a social media intelligence and social listening tool. Synthesio provides scalable monitoring and analytics solutions to hundreds of agencies and leading brands around the world. Users can cut through social noise, find conversations that matter, measure digital reputation, manage their consumer relationships and boost the ROI of their social activities.
Sysomos
Sysomos provides powerful social media analytics that lets 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 on any topic both historically and in real-time across all social networks. Find new and related topics, discover influencers, and gain valuable insights into the communities that matter most to you.
ThisMoment
ThisMoment allows businesses to engage 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 affordable, simple, and fast social media monitoring of all social media and mainstream news, including Twitter, Facebook, GooglePlus and many more.
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 a number of different ways of searching for users that could 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 then notifies those users via mobile and email notifications, and interested users can check your profile and follow you back.
Followadder
Followadder provides automated social networking 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 hundreds of 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 can visualize your Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram accounts and any other service you use. Discover which of your tweets, posts, photos, or videos get the most engagement in seconds.
TwitterFall
Twitterfall is a UK-based service that lets users on Twitter view upcoming trends and patterns posted by users in the form of tweets.
Wajam
Wajam displays search results based on what your friends share on top of your normal search results.
Addictomatic
Addict-o-matic lets you instantly create a page that displays the latest buzz on any topic.
Bitly
Bitly lets you optimize content, analyze social media engagement, and measure how you’re spending your budget.
MyTopTweet
My Top Tweet is a simple social monitoring tool that displays your top performing tweets.
SocialMention
SocialMention is a real-time social search and analysis platform.
Twazzup
Twazzup provides real-time analytics and monitoring for Twitter.
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 using WordPress to grow your business online, please see our related posts section below.
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