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What Three Social Media Tools Can’t You Live Without?

Ah analytics, I love them. I take all numbers with a grain of salt but it is nice to see if your efforts are paying off and what things people share or inspire a click. For example, a recent popular tweet, based on number of clicks, was a tweet about Klout with 177 clicks – clearly my followers are interested in Klout. Some tools allow you to see who has unfollowed you and who your new followers are or even help you find new people to follow. I also find it nice to know who my biggest retweeters or mentioners were for the week and acknowledge them. I am glad I picked this question, because I have some seriously smart friends answering and they had a few surprises for me.

My three favorite analytics tools are:

1. Social Bro – This has a site has graphs, pie charts and numbers – everything a geek girl like me loves! I like to check unfollows, best time to tweet and it is a great place to find new followers. You can search for followers by location or bio as well as other filters such as number of followers or tweets per day.

2. Social Mention – Fun information here such as how many people have mentioned you and the frequency that you are mentioned along with top key words, sentiment (positive, neutral and negative) and number of retweets. For me, analyzing my own tweet style and topics helps me be consistent and stay on target for my brand. You can look for mentions on blogs, comments, images and more.

3. Bit.ly – This is a link shortening tool that also has information on conversions, traffic and history. There is a handy tool bar and it works with Tweetdeck and Seesmic.

Thoughts from Miles Austin (@milesaustin)

One of the fastest growing categories in web tools, Social Media Analytics has new applications being added weekly. Three of my current favorites for small business, individuals and heavy duty marketers are:

1. Sprout Social helps manage multiple social networks from one place. Prices start at $9.99/month. Great for small businesses.

2. Gist integrates all of your contacts into one dashboard, pulling news and updates from across the social platforms, while integrating with your core communication platforms like Outlook or Gmail. Free at this time. Great for the individual user.

3. Involver is rumored to be used by Facebookโ€™s internal marketing team and consists of tools to review RSS Feeds, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and more. Multiple levels beginning at Free through $2,800/month. Recommended for the heavy duty marketer.

Thoughts from Jure Klepic (@jkcallas):

The 3 Analytics tools that I really would be lost without are:

1. @peoplebrowsr Playground application is real time data analytic tools which helps you improve and identify the influence in your community and around the web. Great analytic tool that will help any brand increase their market share.

2. @hashtracking Once you understand the power of a hashtag, hashtracking is incredible tool to help you analyzing and discover the performance of your branded hashtags. I really like to discover who are participants, top users of particular hashtag, impressions made and what was the user reach, during the chat or for particular community / topic.

3. @bufferapp Bufferapp has a built-in analytic tool which help discovering how many users press on link and how many users RT you tweet. You are as able to identify which content your users like and which topics are most popular in your hub.

Thoughts from Michelle Kay: (@thedomesticexec)

Here are my three SM analytics besides the obvious Google Analytics:

1. BO.LT is my very favorite because it has great sharing options and the service keeps track of the clicks you get. I am still surprised by the number of views I get to my blog from my BO.LT‘ed pages. Here's a great explanation from the Bo.LT blog: When you create a BO.LT, the analytics tags on the original page still function on the copied BO.LT โ€” and in fact may get a little better.It is easy to see the benefits to me as a blogger from BO.LTing pages: In a way it is a better bit.ly, one that lets me create a branded, shareable link for Twitter, Facebook and wherever I share. But it is nice to know that the original content creator is not going to be penalized. The other day I was talking to a blogger friend about using BO.LT to share content, and he asked about tracking. He was concerned that, because BO.LT was creating a copy of a webpage to a cloud server, the original content creator would lose their ability to collect metrics and site traffic. It occurred to me that if this was on one bloggerโ€™s mind, it might be on some others as well. So, we thought it prudent to reassure you all:BO.LT leaves your metrics intact!When a page is copied to the BO.LT network, itโ€™s parsed intelligently to move referenced files and images over to our servers while keeping outbound links. We also have an automated system for recognizing and preserving the integrity of tracking and targeting pixels. If you had a working analytics tag on a page we copy, our copy will continue to accurately record visits back to your original analytics account. The original content creator will still see the visitors who view the BO.LTed copy of the page and will get credit for those visits.

Here's the link to the BO.LT blog: http://blog.bo.lt/post/10810095790/bo-lt-for-better-analytics

2. MarketMeSuite I had drooled over this one for a long time. I love it. In fact I'm addicted. Itโ€™s so much better than any other social dashboard! They describe themselves as the social dashboard on steroids! And that it is! And itโ€™s now free for everyone!!

3. Crowdbooster Lets me know how, I'm doing overall, when's the best time to reach my followers and who recently mentioned me or followed me. Great for getting to know my new friends.

What analytic tools do you have in your belt? Please share!ย 



Feature photo courtesy of Creative Commons

Resources:
From Ben Parr: How to Measure and Track Social Media Analytics
Article by Peg Fitzpatrick

19 Comments

      1. Thank you so much, this is very helpful I am excited to look into some of these, as a SM newbie I learn somethign everyday!

  1. Bit.ly Making my life easier! Shortening links so my posts don’t become so busy AND letting me see how often they are clicked on.
    Hubspot: I use Hubspot to host a blog I manage. Easy to build, easy to manage and nice to view.
    Facebook Insights: Laggy, but still a great resource.

  2. Peggy Thank you for including me in your post ๐Ÿ™‚ Love your selection as well and thanks toย @thedomesticexecย  I discover the new app ๐Ÿ™‚ – BO.LTย 

    1. Thank YOU Jure! I greatly appreciate your sharing some of your tricks! You are always ahead of the curve.

      Peggy

  3. This post reminds me that I don’t spend enough time tracking hits from URL shorteners, But I spend a lot of time looking at my referral traffic. ย Thanks Peggy, a great list of a lot of tools I wasn’t familiar with!

    1. Hello Mack –

      Honored that you read my blog & commented. Happy analyzing!
      Positively,

      Peggy

  4. Peggy- thanks for sharing! There were some new ones here I can’t wait to check out.ย 

    1. Awesome Stephanie! Warning – they are addicting but really interesting too.
      Are there any others that you like?

      Peggy

      1. None that weren’t on the list. I am checking out MarketMeSuite now after reading your article… Just scratched the surface but liking it so far.ย 

        1. Awesome Stephanie! My friends had a few surprises for me too. This is a topic that can be updated frequently because there is always something new.

  5. Hey Ben!
    I have HootSuite Pro for my corporate account and need to play with the analytics more. I will check it out.
    Cheers

    Peggy

  6. One of the tools I love is Hyper Alerts. It makes it easy for me to keep tabs on our Facebook page as well as tabs on other company’s pages.ย  You can set up your alerts to be daily, hourly etc. One of my favorite features though is the weekly recap.ย  A great way to keep track and an easy, searchable record of all the conversations/comments on your Facebook page.

    1. Thanks for the tip Allison! I will check out Hyper Alerts – sounds great. I manage my company’s Facebook page so it could be very helpful.
      Appreciate you sharing with me.
      Peggy

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