Free Social Media Tools
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Google Analytics
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Hootsuite
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Klear
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Buffer
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Followerwonk
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Social Media Platforms
One of the biggest challenges marketers face is continually redistributing their attention across the most effective social networks. A successful social media strategy is one which is constantly shifting its focus to chase the most lucrative platforms and strategic aspects. The best way to do this, is through social media analytics.
But with an incredibly fast-paced market, saturated with different options, changes have to be data-driven to stand any chance of working.
That’s where the importance of analytics comes in. Social media analytics is undoubtedly a must for social media management, especially if you are serious about achieving their business goals. Without access to suitable data, we stand little chance of analysing how social media fits into your overall business model.
There have been a fair few unsubstantiated claims in the past about it being impossible to track ROI through social media marketing. This simply isn’t true. What is true, however, is that measuring it can be more of a challenge than it is in more traditional marketing avenues. The clout of key performance indicators like referrals, click-through rates and engagement (such as replies, comments and shares) need to be considered, as these will become your primary basis for measurement and good analytical tools are integral access points to this information.
For social media marketers whose budget doesn’t allow for the advanced capabilities of premium services, here are some of the most useful social media analytics tools that offer free plans.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics should be at the forefront of any digital marketing strategy. Including it here might seem a little obvious, but the truth is that far too many businesses aren’t accurately measuring referrals to their website from social media. If you don’t take the time to ensure that your social media is correctly linked to your Analytics account, you really are shooting yourself in the foot. Google Analytics can give you essential insights into how visitors from social networks behave and, most importantly, if they are converting. You can even see where most of your traffic from social is coming from.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a vastly popular social media management dashboard. Favoured primarily for its post scheduling and content aggregation capabilities, Hootsuite users also have access to a number of social media and performance metrics, ranging from engagement and reach rates, through to the average resolution time for customer service cases.
Klear
Klear offers free tools alongside their paid premium offerings. These include social media analytics tools for Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, alongside a number of Influencer discovery tools, offering great insights through a number of determiners including location and skill type. These influencer identification tools are held in very high regard, and their analytical tools are presented in a clear, concise and easily understandable format.
Buffer
Buffer is a cross-network post scheduling and analysis platform. The free plan only gives you access to the major engagement statistics for your posts, however, these can be a good indicator of which types of content perform best when analysed alongside other posts.
FollowerWonk
FollowerWonk is a Moz app which provides an in-depth look into your Twitter analytics, allowing you to explore and grow your following in the most influential areas. It offers user data such as location and key activity timings, and is often heralded as the perfect platform to identify, track and connect with developing influencers.
Social Media Pages
Social media platforms themselves all have handy tools so you can get an insight into how your posts have been performing. For example, Facebook has its Insights feature, which can show you when your audience are most active and online and how many people your posts have reached. It also has some pretty nifty graphs so you can see whether your engagement and reach has improved over the last couple of months. Twitter also has an Analytics tool, where you can see your top tweets, your impressions and the amount of people who have looked at your profile.
Need help analysing your social media? Get in contact with Giraffe today!
