How to Build Your Social Media Analytics Toolkit
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Just like the age-old adage ‘if a tree falls in the forest..,’ if a tweet is sent, but no one reads it, does it have an impact? When it comes to social media, it’s important to watch and measure your effort: when you tweet, does your audience respond, and how do they respond? By keeping an eye on social media analytics, social media managers can listen to their audience and understand what is working, what isn’t working, and how to design meaningful content.
We previously covered some of the free analytic options provided by social media sites. There are many free analytic tools that can also be used to measure and manage your accounts. We’ve highlighted some of our favorites, out of many of the tools out there, so you can build out your own social media analytics toolkit without breaking your wallet:
Google AnalyticsExit Disclaimer - While Google Analytics is a powerful tool for measuring traffic, you can use Google Analytics to track how many visits your website generates from your social media accounts.
BufferExit Disclaimer - Buffer, like other publishing tools, offers both free and paid accounts for users on different budgets. With the free version, you’ll be able to look at engagement statistics for your social media accounts and watch how your content performs.
CyfeExit Disclaimer - Cyfe, like other analytics dashboards, allows you to do track and monitor data from multiple social media accounts. From the dashboard, users can pull overview reports or individual reports to give you a sense of how your accounts and content are performing.
TweetReachExit Disclaimer - Tracking Twitter keywords, hashtags, and usernames is easy with TweetReach. The tool will give you a snapshot of anything you search, including: reach, exposure, activity, and contributors. You can use this to track mentions of your Twitter username or hashtags.
This roundup just scratches the surface of social media analytic tools. The good news is: there are many tools to choose from. The bad news? It can be daunting for first-time users to choose a tool and begin measuring their social media. We recommend that first time users try a variety of different tools to figure out what tools/features give them the useful metrics. Since the tools are free, there’s no consequence for testing them out!
Experience social media analyzers: what are your favorite analytics tools? We’d love to hear. Send us a tweet at @HIVGovExit Disclaimer or connect with us on FacebookExit Disclaimer.