Management consultant and author Peter Drucker famously said, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.”
There’s nowhere where that is more true than in social media. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and their like can be massive time sucks. You can easily go down the rabbit hole and spend a huge portion of your day or week chasing likes, follows and engagement.
So it’s important to be targeted, with meaningful goals when planning your social media strategy. Tracking your social media will help do that by showing what types of posts are most popular, which drive the most traffic to your website and when is the best time to post for your audience, among other goals.
Integrated tools
First of all, don’t overlook the analytic tools that are available for free within the social media outlets themselves. Every social media outlet offers at least some rudimentary statistics, with Facebook/Instagram probably the most robust. Under the Facebook Page Insights tab, for instance, you can find information about reach, what posts performed best, where those likes/fans are located and similar pages for benchmarking.
To really take a deep dive into the analytics, though, you need to look at some of the other tools available. There are a number of tools available for tracking social media success. Here are some of the best.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite works across most major social media platforms. The service offers a 360-degree view of all social networks on an intuitive dashboard. Results can be customized to focus on the stats that are important to you. Custom streams allow you to monitor your brand or other keywords across multiple networks. Reports can be easily downloaded to Excel, PDF, PowerPoint, etc. Plans start at $29/month with a free 30-day trial, but there is also a limited, single-user free plan.
Hubspot
Hubspot’s social media tools are tied into HubSpot’s Marketing Hub, which offers a wide variety of inbound marketing tools, including CRM, social media, live chat and more. It works best if you’re investing in the wide line of offerings to get a full view of what’s working and what’s not in your marketing. One of the highlights is YouTube Reports, which offers detailed data on how your audience interacts with your videos. Plans start at $45/month. There are various bundles, discounts and free plans available.
Keyhole
One of Keyhole’s greatest strengths is its hashtag and keyword tracking tools. It also stands out for its simple reports that are easy to understand and share with even those employees and managers that aren’t tech-savvy. Plans start at $49 and free trials are available.
Sprout Social
Sprout is powerful (why it’s the choice of a lot of large brands) but you pay for those features. Sprout has dozens of reporting options that can be integrated with paid and free social posts. Sprout’s Advanced Listening Tool offers detailed insights on audience demographics, industry influencers, campaign performance, share of voice, and consumer sentiment. Paid posts can be managed from within the tool or some networks. Plans start at $99/month with a free trial.
Google Analytics
While not a social media tracking tool per se, Google Analytics can help you see what social media is driving traffic to your website, as well as the demographics of that audience. If you’re not using Google Analytics to track your website traffic, definitely spend the time to take a look at it. It takes a little tech knowledge to get it going, but once you do it’s free, powerful and easy to use. (This is where a professional team like RT Marketing can come in handy!)
Making the most of your social media efforts takes time and commitment. If you’re ready to invest more in your marketing and social media, RT Marketing is here to help. Contact us today to get started!