It's been said that what gets measured gets improved upon. For the social media manager engaging with communities across multiple channels, analytics are critical to proving ROI and honing future campaigns. Many social networks have built-in analytics tools. However, if you're looking to include more complex data points, it may be appropriate to utilize other services. These are three of the best social media analytics tools for social media managers.
There is a lack of a native analytics tool within Twitter and FaceBook insights are inadequate. Due to this, a tool like Crowdbooster is essential to the community manager toolkit. The free account allows you to add one Twitter account and one Facebook page. Crowdbooster allows you to analyze impressions, follower growth, and your top followers. Additionally, the impressions tool lets you identify your most effective posts.
This is useful in identifying what types of posts and what time of day your posts generate the most engagement. Follower Growth graphs gains and losses to your follower count. You can even customize the date range. As a result, social media managers can use the data that Crowdbooster offers as a basis for their demand generation reports. Or a simple at-a-glance "how are we doing" vanity metrics briefing.
Crowdbooster can give you high-level data on your Twitter accounts. However, Followerwonk dives deep into who your followers are. With the ability to track, analyze and sort your followers, Followerwonk can give you in-depth data of how it has grown over time. Followerwonk was recently acquired by SEOmoz. As a result, Pro users can now access it for free.
Finally, if Pinterest is an active network for your community, you'll want to get your hands on an invite to Pinerly. That's right, Pinterest analytics! Pinerly gives you social media managers a high-level overview of activity across your boards.
Additionally, you can create and analyze your campaigns within Pinterest. Let's say you create a piece of rich media, like an infographic that you know you want to share on Pinterest. You pin it to your account through Pinerly and then track how many people click, like, and repin. Then, you can track a URL or upload a file directly to pin. In the example below, I've chosen a URL. From the URL, you can choose what image you would like to pin. Then, add a quick description of the campaign and click "Pinerly It."
Once the campaign has been created and pinned to your account, a social media manager can begin to collect data on its performance. What are some of your favorite social media analytics tools? Let us know in the comments section below.
