Social Media Analytics
Week 9
Social Analytics and Social Tools: Taking Your Social Media to the Next Level
I often think of how I ended up studying social media. To some people it seems ridiculous that I would invest in a career that everyone partakes in. But social media is much more than updating your status or sharing pictures with friends and family. There is a science to it. There are numbers involved.
Social media analytics are very important for conversion. No, your average person probably isn’t interested in measuring their social media presence. However, companies that have invested a lot of money on their brand image definitely care to see if they are winning or losing in the social media game.
Check out the infographic. Isn’t it surprising that 53% of businesses are unsure of their return on investment through twitter? It seems like many businesses use Twitter, but they use it blindly. Kind of dangerous, when you stop to think that maybe your audience doesn’t like your social media presence and might end up not liking you at all. Unless a business has a one of a kind product that everyone wants to get their hands on, then they should really look at their KPIs (key performance indicators). If they see that they are performing poorly they should definitely change, by publishing different types of content.
But what happens when a marketer gets assigned to do social media for an industry they’ve never been in? Hausman Marketing Letter says that a marketer should learn the lingo. For example, I was assigned at my internship to write a blog about go karting, something that I am not very familiar with. I had to think of who is buying go karting products, the latest trends, what consumers are talking about and triggers that consumers would be looked for. HML suggests using Social Ears, a social media analytics tool that blends traditional social listening technology, with content analysis technology. Social Ears is free but with a paid subscription you can get content optimization, which is tool that any marketer would need. Keyword/Topic Identifiers, URL Recommendation Tools, and Keyword/Topic Recommenders are really something essential when measuring social media performance. I know if I had a tool like this, I would have had an easier time coming up with a go karting topic to write about.
There are some cheaper and more popular alternatives out there. Hoot Suite is free or just $10/month for pro. This is great for any social media user who wants to manage many networks but for a robust social platform that requires analytics.
Just looking at the Moz recommendations for social media tools you can see that there is a little something for everyone. Spreadfast, was made Mashable’s top five social media management tools. This tool is great if you are managing social media for many companies with ROI demands. The only downside is that that plan goes for a whopping $12,000 a year to $1 million a year.
Link tracking allows you to track any links shared out on social media. Tweeterspy finds users that share you link. All this is takes is putting two lines of code into your website to see how many times the link has been click.
Last but not least, Google Analytics is probably the most used tool out there.
I find the Internet so fascinating and with all this knowledge of analytics, I can now answer that the Internet and social media is so much more than what it shows. In the back end of things people are always measuring views, clicks, and likes.
Questions:
Do you use any social media analytics tools? If so, which do you use? If you don’t, which would you use?
Why should companies use social media analytics.
