All too often social media marketing departments rely on interactions and likes rather than utilizing tools that measure more than just engagement (such as statistics, demographic metrics, and conversion goals along with other online and offline media mentions). These types of tools can give you the big picture of where your traffic is coming from, who they are, and what they are doing. Media intelligence and monitoring tools can help you make sure that your social media efforts are achieving the goals you set forth.
The media intelligence tools you choose should be specific for your needs, whether that means specific to the social channel you want to focus on, the industry you are a part of, or the region you cater to. Today we will explore different tools that help monitor traffic and the effectiveness of your social media campaigns. You can then decide which tools are right for you, and whether you want to use your budget to purchase intelligence tools, or utilize the free options in media monitoring available. Some tools are specific to a channel, some tools cover all channels but are region specific, and some tools are global. You should choose the tools that help you become the most effective with your social media marketing and press relations.
Channel Specific Monitoring and Traffic Tools
Some tools specialize in monitoring and reporting on traffic from a specific channel like Twitter, Facebook, etc. Some of the tools come directly from the channel, and others are third party software.
Facebook Insights: This tool comes direct from Facebook and you have access to it for free if you have a Facebook page. As with any free tool, there are pros and cons to Facebook Insights. The bonus is that fact that it is a free tool is that there is no integration needed and it is easy to access. Insights gives you statistics on your campaigns within Facebook, however the negative part is that it isn’t integrated into your website statistics, so Facebook Insights won’t be able to show you where your traffic goes once they reach your website and if or what they purchase. If you only use Facebook for your primary social channel, combining Facebook Insights with Google Analytics is a great free way to see how this social channel is working for your company.
TweetReach: TweetReach is specifically designed to report analytics for Twitter. It is easy to use, and is a comprehensive analytics tool for this social channel. Like Facebook Insights, it only reports on traffic and data for your Twitter account. The tool not only reports on the reach of your Twitter activity, but it can also be used to find influencers and other users that you might want to target or engage with.
Paid Social Media Monitoring Tools
Sprout Social: This tool supports Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube. The price ranges from $39 to $99 a month. It is an effective tool for monitoring your company’s profiles and social activity online. It also allows you to schedule and post updates from within the tool. This helps you keep your brand voice consistent on all four channels. Sprout Social also offers mobile versions so that you can keep track of your monitoring while on the go.
SimplyMeasured: This is a tool that includes reporting features and analytics tools that works with all the major social networks beyond just Twitter and Facebook. There are both free and paid features. In addition to providing analytics on your social media and online traffic, it also offers up industry specific reporting and trends. This can help give you insight into not only what has happened with your social traffic, but what directions you can benefit from taking new conversation and engagements.
Regional Social Monitoring and Media Intelligence Tools
At Isentia, we focus on Asian and Pacific media and our tools include intelligence for A-PAC companies in both offline and online channels. If your company focuses their business in Asia Pacific countries, these tools help hone in on those audiences, languages, and cultural aspects.
MediaPortal: With our tool MediaPortal, it is even possible to monitor and compile media mentions offline with our tool available at MediaPortal.com. Many current tools monitor online and social mentions, but Isentia has been in this business for long before the social media revolution and we have refined the process of monitoring all types of media mentions. The tool then compiles reports that help your company stay ahead of your competition.
Isentia Insights: Isentia Insights is an enterprise level media intelligence, PR measurement, and analysis services. This solution provides you with the Insights team; they give your company the highest level of media intelligence and analysis when it comes to your all of your business’ communications strategies. It allows your company to demonstrate the effectiveness of communications, establish benchmarks, understand the media landscape, and manage breaking issues. This service hones your media intelligence strategy by helping you measure the effectiveness of all your media campaigns.
Venn Diagram Image Courtesy: Isentia
Brandtology: Brandtology is a tool that helps you make better decisions when it comes to your social media strategy. It is a platform that allows you to manage your social media conversations, while at the same time it analyses and interprets the information in a way that helps you plan future social media marketing campaigns. Brandtology can help you:
- Listen and engage with social media conversations
- Interpret and analyse social media activity
- Extract valuable insight
- Customized reporting to suit your business needs
Summary and Takeaways
As you can see, there are a variety of different options when it comes to monitoring your social media and PR mentions. Some tools are free, and some must be paid for. Companies will often use a mix of both free and paid options for media intelligence and monitoring in order to achieve a comprehensive look at the big picture. It is very important to know what your customers and audience is saying about your on social media and in the media, so we hope this article has helped you choose a media monitoring tool for insight in this area.
