Every marketer appreciates the important role that social media has to play in their business. Sadly, some of them are not able to fully maximize this great potential. To reap the benefits of your social media presence, you need to have a solid social marketing strategy. Having social media analysis tools is an essential part of this strategy.
An analytics tool will help gauge the impact of your actions on various social media platforms. You can assess what is working and what is not and decide what you may need to change to better your strategy.
What Do the Tools Do?
A good analytics tool should be able to monitor the following essential elements.
- Audience size;
- Audience profile;
- Reach and engagement;
- Traffic;
- Content analysis;
- Competitor benchmark.
There are two types of social media analysis tools that you can use to track the analytics above.
- There are platform social media analysis tools. These are tools that help you analyze your efforts within the various social media platforms. Although they may be a little bit restrictive, they are free and can be a great place to start.
- The second type of tools are the cross-platform social media analysis tools. These allow you to analyze your efforts across many social media platforms. They are usually paid tools. Yet, they may include free features or offer free trials.
5 Social Media Analysis Tools to Use for Success
1. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a handy web analytics tool. However, it also has some social media analytics features that most people usually ignore. This tool is absolutely free! Here are some of its features.
- Enables you to track traffic generated from each social media platform;
- Allows you to isolate traffic generated from a particular channel by creating a segment;
- Allows you to create a graphical dashboard that contains a summary of your actions on social media and the results of the generated traffic;
- Enables you to view real-time traffic on your website every time you share links on social media;
- You can track your conversions on social media by setting goals for each social channel and tracking their conversion rates.
2. Simply Measured
Simply Measured is a comprehensive social media reporting tool that cuts across a wider range of social networks. It contains free reports, which you can use to get a taste of the platform. You will have to pay a standard fee every month to get access to the paid reports. The sum of $500 every month will give you ten social profiles and 250,000 audience members. Its features include:
- Supports Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Vine;
- You are able to connect to Google Analytics to analyze web traffic and conversion rates;
- You can compare your reports against those of your competition to assess your performance;
- Allows you to identify key influencers you can connect with to track and analyze trends;
- Provides professional reports which you can access through PowerPoint and Excel;
- The reports are scheduled and will be delivered to you automatically.
3. Rival IQ
Rival IQ is a social media analysis tool that enables you to analyze competitors. It allows you to connect your social profiles and then add competitors that you would want to track. You can group companies under different landscapes for easy tracking. The lowest price limit is $199, and it will allow you to track 15 companies and add 90 social profiles. The price of $299 gives you 25 businesses and 150 social profiles. Its main features include:
- Supports Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, LinkedIn and Pinterest;
- Its different landscapes allow you to track multiple competitors or clients;
- Monitors the most engaging content that you and your competitors share;
- Analyzes data relevant to SEO;
- Monitors and improves on social bio information;
- Monitors AdWords traffic generated.
4. Zuum
Zuum is a social media analysis tool that is useful for comparing your performance against competitors, looking for engaging content and identifying relevant influencers. Prices start at $249 every month. This allows you to use all the platforms, have as many fans as you want and add four of your competitors. Its main features include:
- Supports Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and YouTube;
- Enables you to compare your activity and strategy against competitors;
- Has a leader board that shows your performance and that of your competitors;
- Helps you identify the most engaging posts to help you determine which topics to focus on;
- Enables you to identify the most influential users in terms of engagements, shares and likes;
- Allows Google Analytics Integration.
5. SoTrender
SoTrender is a social media analytics tool that covers various social media platforms. Apart from providing analytics, it also offers recommendations on how to solve some of the problems that arise. The price starts at $15 every month. This gives you access to 10,000 profiles limited to one brand. Then, $70 a month gives you 100,000 profiles and the ability to track and analyze three brands. Its main features are:
- Supports Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube;
- Gives you tips and recommendation based on the data collected to help you improve your performance;
- Its reports have high customization options;
- Enables you to track competition;
- Workflow management through tasks.
4 Famous Social Media Platforms with In-House Analytical Tools
- Facebook: Facebook enables you to analyze your social media activities through their Facebook Insights platform. The tool gives you detailed information about your posts and how much engagement they earned.
- Pinterest: Pinterest has Pinterest Analytics. The tool allows you to track traffic flow between Pinterest and your website, identify which pins attract the most traffic and access audience information such as their gender or language.
- Twitter: Twitter has an analytic platform. It allows you to track your most popular tweets, visits made to your profile and the number of followers and mentions.
- YouTube: The YouTube analytics tool enables you to monitor the performance of your videos. You can know who watched the video, where they come from and how long they watched.
Going Digital
Users on the internet have an average of 5.54 accounts on social media. As a marketer, you should, therefore, consider having accounts on many of these social networks. You can choose to have social media analysis tools for every account. Also, you can decide just to have one comprehensive tool that will cut across all your social media accounts.
There are many options to choose from. What you ultimately opt to use will depend on your specific marketing needs.
Images: pixabay.com.