How-Tu Tuesday: Managing and Monitoring (On A Low Budget)
As the end of the year approaches, it can be a good time to look back on your social media efforts, recap on your results and look ahead to the following year to plan how you can do even better.
Analysing your social media activity is key to progressing and improving both your following and engagement levels. There are numerous tools available, many of which come with expensive monthly subscription fees. However, for those businesses with a little (or a lot) less to spend, there are many options, which can be just as effective.
Below is a list of the top 5 platforms for both managing and analysing your social media channels.
Hootsuite is one of the most popular platforms for both scheduling posts across the various social channels and for analysing a number of metrics. Hootsuite Pro is available for businesses who are managing more than three accounts, however the free version would work well for any company with up to three social profiles and does not require multiple team members to have their own log in. Hootsuite Free also provides users with basic analytics, which could be paired with another platform offering a more detailed measurement of success.
Many of the social media channels provide their own analytics, but these are often not extensive enough for businesses trying to develop social strategies and compare their posts from the past year to understand what works and what doesn’t.
However, Twitter has some of the best analysing capabilities and provides its users with monthly in depth metrics on the account’s number of tweets, profile visits, mentions, tweet impressions and the number of new followers gained in the past month. Furthermore, it highlights the brand’s top tweet, top mention, top follower and top media tweet. From these metrics, a business can gain a valuable understanding on whether they are increasing in popularity (through new followers and profile visits) and if the rate at which their potential reach is growing (through the tweet impressions metric and their top followers).
It is important for companies to understand their followers when analysing their social efforts. Using a platform like Follwerwonk will allow you to explore who your followers are, where they are located and when they tweet. It not only shows how you compare with your followers, but it also illustrates your potential reach and the influencers you should target; if those with a high following either tweet about you or retweet your messages, then this will hugely increase your exposure and reach.
Both for managing and monitoring your social media, Buffer is an effective tool that will help you with both. Users can write multiple posts at one time and choose which social profiles to send them to, and then Buffer will decide when to publish them, allowing businesses to simultaneously have a strong social presence whilst making the most of their time. The platform also shortens links and tracks engagement, highlighting how many people clicked on them.
Klout is a tool used to measure a company or individual’s overall social media score. It measures your influence power based on your ability to drive interaction across the social channels. The platform generates a score on a scale of 1-100 that represents your ability to post engaging content and expand your reach. Klout allows users to gain insights into how they influence others and how well they use social media to connect with their audience.
