I’ve been talking with professional groups about social media apps. One section dealt with scheduling apps, allowing users to create and share updates in batches.
This section will deal with metrics and social media, how we learn the numbers behind our posts.
Here are four tools that help me understand my social media marketing and interaction …
1. Facebook: http://facebook.com/PAGENAME/insights/
- Cost: Free
- Interface: Browser or free app
- What it does: Shows numbers behind a company page, including Likes, views, reach, engagement and other stats.
- Also: These metrics are tough to improve without paid advertising and boosted posts. They’ll sink further as Facebook adjusts its algorithm toward posts from friends and family.
- Wade says: Unless you pay to play, these numbers won’t help much.
2. Twitter
- Cost: Free
- Interface: Browser
- What it does: Rich statistics on recent tweets, including audience analysis.
- Also: Still possible to reach an engaged audience on this network, but like Facebook, buying ads boosts visibility and numbers.
- Wade says: Worth a look, though many brands are still stumbling on Twitter.
3. Bitly
- Cost: Free and paid accounts available
- Interface: Browser only (iOS app last updated in 2014)
- What it does: For shortened links from Bitly, see the stats behind each URL, including clicks, referrer and locations.
- Also: Add a plus sign + to any Bitly link to see its stats, whether or not you created it. Ex.: http://itswa.de/SHORTLINK+
- Wade says: A great way to track multiple links for free, which can be analyzed for trends and hot topics.
4. Hootsuite
- Cost: Free and paid accounts available
- Interface: Browser and free app (only Android app shows statistics)
- What it does: Allows scheduling of updates across one or more social networks at any date/time
- Also: Use the templates to see stats from each social network; Pro users have access to more reports and custom templates.
- Wade says: While the free features for scheduling social media are good, the reporting features are very limited. Reports can be purchased as needed or are available after upgrading to a Pro level.
This is just the starting point. Developers have many apps, websites and plugins to measure social media impact. It’s up to marketers to start somewhere in collecting data and studying all of it to ensure social efforts are working.
•
Our recommended apps for scheduling social media
•
I’m putting together an ebook with more social media tools.
Sign up for the Y’all Connect newsletter for your free copy …
|
|
