In Part 1 of this article, we looked at some of the reasons why WordPress provides an ideal platform to market your business on social media.
In this section, we examine a number of monitoring tools that let you:
- Search, find, sort, organize and target users according to demographic criteria, their interests, etc.
- Listen in on social conversations online
- Identify buying signals.
This information will allow you to 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 are looking for ways to increase sales with social media, then here are 25+ social management tools & resources for social marketers.
Essential Media Tracking Resources Every Business Owner Should Know About
(Discover what consumers are saying about you, your business, or your competition on social media)
Is there a simple and easy (and free) way to access information about what is new in your niche or industry so that you are not wasting a huge amount of time doing research? Yes, 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 with the latest news and information about all kinds of topics, stay informed about people and companies, and track what is being said online about you and your business.
Google Alerts is not only useful for managing your reputation online, but also for automatically receiving information about people, brands, companies, or any topic you need to know about.
With Google Alerts, you just subscribe to a keyword or topic and you’re done. Whenever Google’s indexing bots (Googlebot) 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.
If you need to learn how to set up alerts with Google, see this simple step-by-step tutorial: Setting Up Google Alerts – A Step-By-Step Guide
Hootsuite
(Hootsuite)
Hootsuite is a social management application that lets you manage all of your social profiles from a single dashboard.
Hootsuite provides social media management, social selling, social marketing, and social customer service solutions. Users can schedule Tweets and Facebook posts, track 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 collaborate with teams.
Hootsuite is one of the leading social media management tools (SMMT). It allows you to post to a large number of social networks (including their app directory), and provides integration with Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Foursquare, WordPress and more.
For more information, go here: Hootsuite
Buffer
(Buffer)
Buffer lets you schedule social content. Add updates to your Buffer account and Buffer will then automatically post it 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 using a web interface, Buffer is also available as a browser extension and as a mobile app for Android and iOS devices.
For more information, go here: Buffer
Social Metrics Pro
(Social Metrics)
SocialMetricsPro 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 SocialMetricsPro include Excel-like conditional formatting, built-in and external widgets, sort, search and filter data, export data capabilities, 1-click autoupdate functionality, and a simple social SEO improvement system.
If you want to learn more about Social Metrics, refer to this article: SocialMetrics
Sociocaster
(Sociocaster)
Sociocaster is easy to use and works in any business marketing campaign. You can easily engage with audiences, schedule post messages, manage your social networks, and measure ROI from one easy-to-use dashboard.
Sociocaster includes loads of powerful marketing and social features: image-sharing templates, top viral video finder and posting tool, responsive mobile user interface, unlimited social account management (agency license), and more.
Visit this website for more information: Sociocaster
SproutSocial
(SproutSocial.com)
SproutSocial is a premium tool built for small to large businesses as well as the enterprise sector.
SproutSocial has a built-in CRM, advanced scheduling tools, social 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.
To learn more, go here: 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.
It tracks the performance of your Facebook pages and Twitter profiles, website performance and blogs, and returns your social channel data using a simple and intuitive dashboard. You can quickly and easily organize data by business or customers, and track competitor profiles in addition to your own.
Go here for more info: SocialReport
Followerwonk
(Followerwonk)
Followerwonk is a Twitter analytics tools that lets you search Twitter bios, compare users, analyze, 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.
For more details, go here: Followerwonk Twitter Analytics
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 followers and following lists by a range of criteria, find out when most of your followers are online and schedule tweets appropriately, search twitter bios to easily find and follow influencers for your business, use tweet analytics to track keywords and beat your competitors, clean up and manage who you follow, and more.
More info: ManageFlitter
Beevolve
(Beevolve)
Beevolve is a social monitoring tool for SMBs, content marketers, analysts, online marketers, and community managers. It allows you to track your social media mentions, schedule and launch social media posts, and measure engagement, sales, and conversion metrics, buzz, sentiment, etc. for your posts.
To learn more, visit this website: Beevolve
HowSociable
(HowSociable.com)
HowSociable is a simple tool that allows you to see how brands are mentioned on the social web.
HowSociable.com displays brand viability metrics on dozens of social channels and delivers you a “social magnitude” score. This social numerical view lets you know how well you are doing across those social sites, and which channels can be improved.
Go here for more info: HowSociable
Mention
(Mention)
Mention is a social monitoring tool for every kind of business, CEOs, marketers, agencies, 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.
More info: Mention
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
With so many great social media monitoring tools available, it’s easy to forget that powerful, free software applications like Google Analytics can also help track posts made from your WP blog to your social sites.
Hootsuite has published a step-by-step guide that shows you how to track your social media links with Google Analytics on this blog post.
Facebook Insights
(Facebook Insights)
Facebook not only lets you add like, share, and follow social buttons and commenting features to your website, it also provides a comprehensive analytics tool called Facebook Insights. This application lets you understand how your site is performing on the Facebook platform.
(Facebook – Insight Types)
Facebook Insights provides multiple metrics and analytics that can help you track when users are on Facebook. You can then use this data to improve your business marketing efforts.
You can use Page Insights to learn about your posts — which are attracting the most shares, likes, and comments and to learn about audience demographics. You can then use this information to publish more of the types of posts that your audience is interested in reading.
For more details, go here: Facebook Insights
Twitter Analytics
(Twitter.com)
Twitter Analytics let you see how your tweets are performing and provides a monthly break down of your tweets, profile visits, followers, tweet impressions, and top tweets linking back to you.
Twitter’s 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 Analytics – Tweet activity)
Go here for more info: Twitter Analytics
YouTube Analytics
(YouTube.com)
YouTube Analytics provides analytic reports to publishers.
You can see demographics, views, sources of traffic, video viewing time, total estimated earning from playbacks, and more.
Go here for more details: YouTube Analytics
Pinterest Analytics
(Pinterest.com)
Pinterest Analytics lets you explore what people like from your profile, what they save from your website, and how much traffic your site gets when you pin content to your boards. You can get information that helps you learn who your audience is and what your customers want.
To learn more, go here: Pinterest Analytics
Additional Social Media Tools
New tools and technologies are being launched each year to help businesses make sense of social media.
Here are some other social media-related worth knowing about. Keep in mind that web technologies continually evolve. 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 to-do 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 lets you create engaging digital experiences with online consumers.
Answerbase
Create social Q&A communities. The Answerbase Q&A Platform facilitates users being able to ask questions, browse Q&A content, and get their questions answered.
Appinions
Appinions is a content marketing and live publishing SaaS platform for planning, creating and distributing content online. Appinions’ technology allows customers to optimize every stage of the content marketing lifecycle. Appinions 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?”, “where should we publish?”, etc.
ViralHeat
Viralheat (formerly ArgyleSocial – a social media marketing platform for marketers) is part of Cision, a global media intelligence software company. 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 combining monitoring, publishing, analytics and reporting for all major social networks in an intuitive interface. Users can access metrics and KPI, schedule and publish updates, follow conversations, and deliver presentation-ready reports.
Bambuser
Bambuser lets you broadcast live using your webcam or mobile device, share to your blog or favorite social network and engage with viewers. Share via your smartphone and stream to your blog.
BlogDash
BlogDash connects brands looking to promote their products and services with bloggers willing to write content aimed at bringing brands the positive attention they are searching for.
BrandWatch
accurately listen to conversations about your brand, your products or your market.
Buzzflash
Buzzflash is part of the Truthout community – an independent platform for transformative ideas that features daily headlines whose goal is to inspire direct social action and participation.
CircleCount
CircleCount helps users better understand how to use Google+. 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 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, manage multiple profiles and schedule posts, and analyze Twitter data.
Contax.io
Contax.io allows you to track your friends and followers on Twitter and other social networks.
Conversocial
Conversocial provides cloud-based social customer service solutions that help brands improve their customer experience and operational efficiency by managing customer service flow and social media discussions on channels like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram.
SocialStudio
Social Studio lets 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 social tool that helps improve conversations online. Disqus is used by millions of websites covering just about every topic imaginable.
Echofon
Echofon provides users with social apps for Facebook and Twitter. 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 videos and photos.
Everytime
Everytime is a creative social media tool. If you work with sounds, images, or videos, you can save any moment from Youtube, Vimeo, Soundcloud and any media on your computer. Those moments are then easy to share, publicly or privately, easy to discuss about and easy to find.
Meltwater Icerocket
Meltwater 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
With GroupHigh you can promote your company, clients, or products using a blogger outreach software that lets you filter, search, 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 location, content, topics, and more.
Klout
Klout is a website, mobile app, and social media monitoring and performance analyzing tool. Klout brings influencers and brands together, rewards experts in specific topics and areas of interests with Perks, and ranks your social influence using a “Klout Score”. 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 lets you discover the most engaging and relevant content lost in your social stream. The stories are collected from the Know About It 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 Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook content from fans into an interactive display.
TailWind
Tailwind is a Pinterest marketing, management, and analytics tool. It lets you schedule pins, monitor Pinterest analytics, analyze industry trends and measure results and performance.
ViralWoot
ViralWoot helps you grow Pinterest followers, add pins for promotion, manage and grow multiple accounts, schedule pins with a bookmarklet, create pin alerts, track your Pinterest performance, connect with influencers, and more.
TweetReach
TweetReach lets you measure the reach of your tweets for hashtags, chosen keywords, and searches. TweetReach gives you insights about Twitter and snapshot reports with the estimated reach of your tweets based on various methods of measuring performance.
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 by CrowdRiff integrates with every Twitter platform (Mention, SocialFlow, Twilert, etc) and provides you with Twitter analytics, engagement, and activity 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. Users can earn money from every purchase made.
MutualMind
MutualMind is 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 moments or trends 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 then, Pagelever’s comprehensive, real-time reporting has been integrated with Unified Social’s operating platform. These tools are part of 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 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 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 leading brands and agencies around the globe. Users can cut through social noise, listen into the conversations that matter, measure their digital reputation, manage 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 both historically and in real-time on any topic across all social networks. Find new and related topics, discover influencers, and get insights into communities that matter most to you.
ThisMoment
ThisMoment provides brands with opportunities to engage their customers online. Depending on what business you run, ThisMoment’s Content Cloud helps you find, mix and share a variety of content through various channels across the Enterprise.
Trackur
Trackur provides fast, simple, and affordable social media monitoring of all social media and mainstream news, including Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and many more.
TrapIt
Trapit is lets you easily support your sales enablement, social selling, and employee advocacy efforts by providing relevant content to your employees. With the click of a button, your teams can share content with their social networks, prospects, and customers.
Tweepi
Tweepi provides a number of different ways of searching for users that might be interested in your brand. After finding your targeted group of users, you can easily interact with users by ‘following’, ‘adding to list’ or ‘@mentioning’ them. Twitter then notifies those users via email and mobile notifications, and interested users 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, create lists, search by hashtag, and more.
Twellow
Twellow is like the Yellow Pages for Twitter. You can search for Twitter followers in dozens of business categories or search your geographical area.
TwentyFeet
TwentyFeet provides users with a powerful social reporting tool that can visualize your Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram accounts along with any other social service you use. You can quickly know which of your tweets, posts, photos, or videos get the most engagement.
TwitterFall
Twitterfall is a UK-based service that lets Twitter users access upcoming trends and patterns posted by users in the form of tweets.
Wajam
Wajam displays search results based on what your friends share above your normal search results.
Addictomatic
Addict-o-matic lets you instantly create a page with the latest buzz on any topic.
Bitly
Bitly lets you share, track and analyze your links.
MyTopTweet
My Top Tweet is a simple social monitoring tool that displays 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 Twitter tool for real-time tracking, organizing, and social engagement.
***
We hope 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.
***
"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)