With social media being such a large part of your online business strategy it can become overwhelming and confusing. You may be wondering just what exactly are you meant to be doing with all of these channels and if they are even effective.
Some obvious questions might be…
How does your social media presence compare to that of your competitors?
Are people engaging with and sharing your content?
How are you supposed to know if any of your website visitors are coming from social media sites?
How do you know if those visitors are becoming buyers?
Without the answers to these questions we are flying in the dark. We really don’t know whether social media is working for us at all.
That’s where social media analytics tools come in. They are designed to help you understand how your company or brand is being seen in the social media world. It is imperative you have an efficient tool to help you make big business decisions and understand all of the data you collect.
social-media-tools
Some key metrics that you will want to monitor include…
How many followers, fans, subscribers etc are new connections each month
How many of those followers, fans, subscribers, etc are actually engaging with your brand by liking, commenting or sharing on your posts
How many people are leaving or unsubscribing from your social channels each month
Which pieces of your own content are the most popular
How many people visit your website or blog as a direct result of seeing something on the social networks
How many times your brand is mentioned by the public using social media
How your well brand is doing on social media in relation to its competitors
An estimate of how much money is being made as a result of your social media efforts
Below is a list of some of the best tools which can help you in understanding your company’s social media presence. Between these 4 tools you should be able to make sense of all the suggestions above. Some are free or offer a free trial so you can test the service. Some are paid, so if you’re thinking about investing then it’s best to read up on the tool you are going to use as they vary in functions and layouts, with a little research you will be able to find one that fits your business needs. If possible take the free trial to test if the tool is right for you.
Google Analytics – Google analytics breaks down the data collected in to handy reports so you can easily understand different aspects of your business. For example the conversions report lets you know the value of social for your online business. The report shows each of the social networks and the number of conversions and the amount of monetary value of conversions that have happened on each. This will help you see which networks may work better for you so you can adjust business strategies as you see fit. Google analytics also offers other reports such as social sources which show the path of how visitors from social networks got to your site. They also have the social plug-ins report that shows the most shared articles from your site and tells you which social buttons they are clicking to share them. This tool is free to use.
Simply Measured – Offers you 16 free reports that will give you some incredible insights into your social media marketing campaigns. If you are a subscriber you can get up to 33 different reports showing you an even greater amount of data. The free reports you can get include a twitter follower report showing you data about your twitter audience and analysis by locations, behavior, interests and more. The facebook fan page report will show how well your brand is engaging people on facebook and which posts have worked well for you in the past giving you insight for the future. They also have competitive reports for facebook and youtube which shows how well you are performing against your competitors. Facebook allows you to compare up to 10 facebook pages and youtube allows you to compare up to 200 videos. Other reports also include the social networks such as Instagram, Klout, Google plus, Pinterest, LinkedIn and many other helpful reports.
Social Snap – Offers a professional interface which allows you to gain deeper insights into different data such as customer’s opinions and their behavior. Social snap allows you to easily navigate through all of your social media networks and find the relevant data you need to improve your performance for example; what sort of “Buzz” you are making online, keep an eye on the mentions of you and your brand and even your competitors, it can also help with defining keywords and much more. Social snap pride themselves as having a team of social media analysts and offer a great analytic support just in case the data is a bit too much or you need to understand something they will help out by translating the information into meaningful analysis.
Sprout Social – Sprout social is a social media management tool which can do a lot of things even beyond the scope of analytics. You can publish updates across several networks with a single click, manage a team of social media managers and assign them different tasks and even manage all your social media conversations in one place, regardless of the social network the conversation might be taking place on. In addition to all this their social media analytics reporting is great quality and very detailed. It publishes the information into an easy, presentation ready format to be shared in meetings with colleagues or clients. At the time of writing sprout social do offer a free 30 day trial with which you can test the service.
These are all very different sites, offering you social analytics in a variety of ways. By combining a few of these tools or even all of them, you can reinforce your social media strategy and be far more effective with your online marketing efforts.
