We live in a world where there are literally thousands of third party monitoring tools that you can use for your social strategy. Each of them adds something to the mix, whether it’s link tracking, or helping your fans comment more often. Today, we explore the top 7, and how you should use them to enhance your social media marketing campaigns.
Courtesy of optify.net
#1: The Disqus Comment Plugin
The first time we ever saw the disqus comment plugin in action, we were blown away. It’s a really handy little comment plugin, that allows all of your commenters to have a portable profile, that they can use on any disqus plugin. Your readers can also choose to sign in with their Facebook, Twitter or email accounts – for added social exposure. This is a must have on your blog!
#2: Socialmention
Socialmention is one of those monitoring tools that never gets old. If you’ve been looking for a way to keep track of who, what and where your brand is being talked about – then this is the tool to use. Just punch in your brand name and socialmention searches the net for mentions. You’ll also get stats based on public sentiment, like whether feedback is more positive or negative, and what your top keywords are.
#3: Google Alerts
Google Alerts is the fastest, easiest way to be notified about certain keywords in your niche. Set up notifications for your brand name or business, and you’ll be able to see what is being said about your brand. To set up a notification, simply enter the keywords in the news search bar, scroll down and click ‘create an email alert’.
#4: Radian6
Radian6 is still a badass social monitoring tool, and one of our favorite picks in this list. It continues to evolve and grow, and helps you listen in on conversations that are being had about your brand online. Then, it shows you how you can improve your social reach. Radian6 is a paid service, and costs about $600.00 per month, but the insights are worth it, if you know what to do with them.
#5: StepRep
StepRep is a wonderful analytics program that tracks what is being said about your brand online. It stores details and compiles analytics for you to view, so that you can make changes to your social strategy. You can either sign in to the StepRep site, or get email reports on your progress. Once logged in, StepRep analyses your brand mentions, based on their analytics algorithm. There is a usage fee.
#6: Hootsuite
We can’t have a social monitoring list without Hootsuite. The universally popular social media dashboard is also an excellent monitoring tool. It provides you with integrated stats based on brand alerts, and suggests how to improve your visibility. It works best when you buy the VIP package.
#7: HowSociable
If you need a quick and easy rundown of your brand mentions, use HowSociable. It provides you with a list of metrics that you can then use to tweak your campaigns. Once you get the overall score, you can see who has been saying what – and the platforms that need more interaction.
Want to read more about great social media tools? Click here!
Which social monitoring tool is your favorite? Tell us below!
December 8, 2011 at 2:53 am
Proud user of disqus and adore this commenting system because through this I can simply convey messages to my fellow marketer and use the reliability of this corner to lure potential clients.
December 8, 2011 at 8:08 am
@Pensacola – variety is the way you can guarantee fans comment, disqus is great for that!
December 15, 2011 at 6:50 am
With so many monitoring tools in the market, I feel the focus should be more on how to make the captured data actionable which a lot of tools fall short of. I would like to add the social media monitoring tool webfluenz, which along with providing a system to listen, monitor and engage with the social web, goes one step ahead and provides great analytics as well. For more information, please check out http://webfluenz.com/.
Also, I invite you to experience our product first hand. For a free demo, you can reach out to me @aditi_narayanan
December 16, 2011 at 1:39 am
@Aditi – we’ll check it out, and thanks for reading!