10 Most Popular Social Media Analytics & Engagement Tools

Social media has revolutionized the ways in which the game of marketing, advertising and promotion was played. Almost every brand that exists is now roaring out loud on social media.

However, there is a lot of skepticism over what makes an impact and what goes unheard. Thereby, to clear the air, and let the marketers gauge the impact of their efforts, and the direction in which the focus ought to be, social media tools were introduced, that made managing and analyzing the chunk of data easier that emanated from overflowing conversations.

Now, with lot of such tools cluttering the space, it’s an ordeal to decide what might just work for you. Hence, here is a list, which includes few of the most popular and effective social media management and analytics tools, which might just ease it up for you:

Bitly

It is a URL shortening and social media bookmarking tool most popular amongst users of Twitter. Apart from shortening URLs, it also comes handy in viewing statistics related to users that click on generated links. Additionally, it can also generate QR codes and provides an expanded access to its data archive.

CrazyEgg

This tool helps website owners in tracing what viewers are doing once they click on their websites. It offers four sub-tools to carry out the same, however the more useful ones are:

HEATMAP – This is one of the most popular ones, which gives a clear picture of where people clicked on your site. Hence, helps in analyzing what’s hot, so that one can tweak the content and its placement to proliferate conversions.

SCROLLMAP – The output from this tool reveals shows how far down the page people hitting the site are scrolling and at point are they stopping the process. This helps in determining placement of content, and deciding what all needs to be above the fold.

Google Analytics

This service by Google is the most widely used website statistics service. GA tracks visitors from all platforms that refer your site, including search engines, display advertising, pay-per-click networks, e-mail marketing and digital collaterals. The data is available both in in-depth and dashboard-type casual format. It is implemented with "page tags", called the Google Analytics Tracking Code, which run in the client browser when the page is being browsed and collects visitor data, which includes information such as whether the visitor has been to the site before, the timestamp of the current visit, and the referrer site that directed the visitor to the page.

However, the service is of no use in situations where users delete their cookies or have turned off java script. Google Analytics for Mobile Package allows GA to be applied to mobile websites. Also, the Google Analytics API allows third parties to build custom applications like reporting tools.

HootSuite

 

It is a tool with its UI (user interface), in the form of a dashboard that supports integration of all major social networks. It allows scheduling of updates, collaboration and RSS integration. Customized analytics and scheduled reports are few of its strongest points. Further, it is available in the form of mobile apps as well.

A couple of reasons that make it little less popular is the fact that is quite expensive and the posts made using the tool, have been known to have low edge rank, thus lower visibility. Also, engagement happening through hootsuite, doesn’t get recorded as Facebook insights, which is a disadvantage.

Pagelever

 It is one of the most popular analytics tool for measuring a brand’s presence on facebook. Since, it requires access to the facebook page; it carries the ability to lure out information about that data that went unnoticed earlier on, as minute as being able to point out the actions that might lead to fans un-liking your page. It brings together first-party and third-party data with publishing tools, optimizing the entire social marketing lifecycle. It enables one to see the data in almost real time and lets you plan for the moment. For example, if a post is getting popular and garnering likes, and you intend to maximize its reach, a quick insight as this will let you plan for promoted posts.

Piwik

Piwik is an open source web analytics software and a free substitute for Google Analytics. It is gradually gaining popularity as it offers more privacy and better control and ownership on all visitor interaction data.

Radian 6

It is a monitoring tool for all the brand mentions happening all across the social media landscape. The two attributes that make the tool really efficient are its coverage and the ability to integrate. It gathers data for analysis from umpteen number of blogs, facebook API, Twitter, etc.

Also, it can be easily integrated with applications like Salesforce.com and Analytics like Webtrends, Omniture and Google Analytics. It is a kind of complete package for brands involved in corporate marketing. Many services of Radian 6 include insights, Engagement Console, Summary Dashboard, Social Hub, Marketing Cloud etc. All of the data captured herein is real-time.

SocialMention

This tool aggregates user generated content from across the networks into a compact repository of information that’s useful. It lets brands to easily keep a track of what people are saying about the brand or its new product, in real-time, including data from more than a 100 platforms.

It employs Yahoo’s BOSS search platform to carry out the same, distinguishing the results on the basis of their source. Another valuable feature is “Hot Conversations”, which lists everything deemed of the moment is listed, but doesn’t categorize it. However, time taken to bring about the whole thing is a little too long. The advent of this tool has turned the concept of keywords and tags really valuable.

Sysomos

 This is not a tool but a company that not just helps in creating a real-time valuation of brand mentions but goes a step ahead to identify the reasons that led to the mentions. It also manages to bring forth the key influencers. Another product by them, Sysomos Heartbeat offers monitoring and engagement might to communication professionals. It makes use of contextual text analytics and data mining technology.

Wildfire

– It is a complete social media marketing suite and is a global leader. The suite includes best-of-breed social promotion software, a robust mobile and desktop page management, messaging and sophisticated real-time analytics in one complete platform. It lets its clients manage ads, pages and messages, and helps monitor and analyze promotions. The distinguishing factor that makes this tool most powerful is the fact that it is in liaisons with Facebook already. Facebook itself, in fact, is an investor in Wildfire through its fbFund.