12 tools to measure social media marketing
Welcome back!
Businesses have been unsure of ways to measure social media campaigns, social media ROI and syncing the stats, if any, to sales data and vice versa. Here are 12 tools that I came across that can be used to track the effectiveness of your social media campaigns.
One important fact one needs to remember here is, Social media optimization is not a number race. Businesses need to focus on growing brand awareness, customer acquisition, engagement, interaction, conviction, retention, sales, profits, and customer satisfaction rates.
So without further delay, here is the list of tools I promised.
Google Analytics: Free tool to track and report on a company’s Web site usage and online marketing activities.
TwitterAnalyzer: Free online tool analyzes a company’s influence on Twitter, including number of daily Tweets, users who are re-Tweeting your messages and their unique reach.
HootSuite: Popular free service manages and analyzes multiple Twitter users and accounts. New iPhone app links HootSuite account to mobile phone.
Radian6: Sophisticated tool that tracks conversations about competitors and share of mentions, among other metrics. Pricing starts at $500 a month per profile and $100 a month per user.
ViralHeat: Delivers real-time data from video sites, microblogging platforms and Web sites. Prices range from $9.99 a month to $139.98 a month.
Bit.ly: Free URL shortener that tracks information such as number of clicks, traffic sources and what time clicks occur.
Scoopler: Free real-time search engine that organizes content being shared on the Internet as it happens through blogs and major social networks.
TweetMeme Analytics: Similar to Google Analytics, the app is useful if you use TweetMeme’s re-Tweet buttons on your site. Prices begin at $50 per domain per month.
PostRank Analytics: Suite of tools to measure social engagement on other platforms and services. Shows messages and comments from other sites that contribute to your statistics. Prices begin at $9 a month.
Twopular: Tracks the most popular trends on Twitter at no charge.
Xinureturns: Provides a free overview of your Web site presence on popular search engines and social networks.
Omniture: Captures, stores and analyzes digital transactions from Web sites and other online channels as well as offline channels such as point-of-sale promotions and call centers. Prices vary per user.
Google Analytics Annotations
Google Analytics introduced a small but very dynamic feature called “Annotations” that is tremendously useful both to analysts as well as executives, who are usually not up to date on granular details about website activity.
This newly launched “annotations” feature enables you to annotate and bookmark major campaigns, ebbs & flows in the graphs regarding events that happened on specific days within your statistics for future reference. This will help to explain a spike or drop in traffic to other members within your organization, without having to dig through the past, thereby saving tons of time.
This is a great feature which will end up saving many people a lot of time. The concept here is that there can be real collaboration between those who put together campaigns and those who see the analytics without that important data. Rather than going through old emails to analyze the traffic surge, or shopping cart conversion increased, users can bookmark this event when it happens for future reference. This will sure make end of month reporting a lot quicker!
An easy annotation that outlines a “cause and effect” for the data consumer can save a lot of time and trouble. Annotations complement existing anomaly detection by capturing the tribal intelligence of your company, which tends to be the most expensive and easily lost resource of all. A simple note from a colleague can save hours of real work (and frustration) for an analyst who is tasked to explain a usually dry set of numbers. This short video will show you how to use Annotations.
Another advantage is that different members within your company can instantly see the results of other teams’ actions. In other words, annotations can be created by anyone involved with the production and promotion of a website for everyone else to see.
- The PPC team can announce major changes to their campaigns.
- The SEO team can annotate changes to the website so that results can be tracked over time.
- The PR team can update dates of events, enabling the tracking of offline activities into Google Analytics more easily.
- The media buying team can provide updates of major banner campaigns.
This should help encourage teamwork, as everyone involved will be able to grasp the whole picture and coordinate activities with other teams’ activities. Google has started rolling out this feature and has indicated it should be live for all users mid January!
Google Analytics Vs Yahoo Analytics
Google Analytics has evolved to become a very important factor in a web. I wonder how we lived without all the data and insights that we are deriving using this tool. Yahoo is getting serious with analytics through the purchase of Indextools. For obvious reasons, Yahoo made Indextools free with a rebrand into Yahoo Web Analytics (YWA). This leaves the users with rich, dynamic statistics derived from the innovative corporate competitiveness – all for free.
Here is a slideshow that compares Google analytics and Yahoo web analytics.
While absolutely anyone can signup for Google analytics, Yahoo has made its analytics available only to Yahoo Advertisers or through Yahoo web analytics authorized consultant. Google’s success mantra is making its products available to the widest audience possible without any constraints.
Share your opinion: Which analytics service are you using? and Why?