Find out more about 6 Social Monitoring Tools

6 Free Social Media Monitoring Tools

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6 Free Social Media Monitoring Tools. The internet is awash with social media monitoring tools but most of them are quite costly. The paid tools do give a much more in-depth view of your social media standing than the free versions, but the free tools have some good insights to offer too. When measuring your social media success, engagement is your key KPI. This includes likes, follows, shares, mentions, video views and clicks, to name but a few. Depending on your goals, you may have other non-social KPIs such as traffic referrals, conversions and page views which will be available through analytics tools, such as Google Analytics. Here is a list of our favourite free social media monitoring tools that can be used alongside your website analytics to give you a rounded view of how well your social media is performing.

1. Facebook Analytics

Facebook Insight gives you useful information about your fans, engagement and reach.

Facebook Analytics

Facebook insights have come on leaps and bounds over the years and is now full of useful information about your fans, engagement and reach. You can only view data from the last 28 days on Facebook but there is a handy export button where you can view the raw data for the last six months.

What we like: Export function, post engagement information, fan demographics

What is missing: More detailed information on your fans and what they like, most engaged users

2. Twitter Analytics

Twitter doesn’t seem to shout about its analytics offering but it does contain some useful information. Along with the standard engagement and reach metrics, it also shows you who your most influential followers are. This is really helpful when building your outreach programme.

What we like: Top tweets, conversion tracking, Influential followers, export function

What is missing: data beyond the last 28 days, more information on followers

3. Hootsuite

Manage social media much more efficient with Hootsuite

Add all your social media accounts to one dashboard and manage them from one place.

Hootsuite has been around for a long time and there is a good reason for that. The primary benefit of using Hootsuite is that you can add all your social media accounts to one dashboard and manage them from one place. This makes managing social media much more efficient as not only can you monitor the accounts but you can engage with them from one place too.

What we like: One destination for all your social media accounts, monitors social media mentions, generate reports from social analytics and export them as PDFs

What is missing: A lot of the options are only available if you upgrade to a paid account so you can only get basic monitoring for free.

4. Tweetdeck

Tweetdeck - free tool for Twitter management

Manage your Twitter account for free with Tweetdeck.

As the name suggests, this free tool is for Twitter management only. It is very similar to Hootsuite in its layout, with a dashboard to pull in your streams where you can view your notifications, messages and activity all in one place. You can also use this for scheduling tweets.

What we like: Simple to use, easy to view all activity in one place, create streams for trending topics

What is missing: No insights

5. Mention

Mention - great for when you’re running a big PR campaign

Show you social mentions, web, forum and news mentions – great when running a big PR campaign

Similar to Google Alerts, you set up your account using your brand name and it will pull in all the information relating to your brand. Not only will this show you social mentions but will also show you web, forum and news mentions – great for when you’re running a big PR campaign. The caveat is that it’s only free for 14 days.

What we like: Influencers ranked by authority score, mentions from across the web not just social

What is missing: only free for 14 days

Image from Mention

6. Simply Measured

Simply Measured - your tool for Facebook, Twitter and Google+

The reports cover a range of platforms including Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

Technically this isn’t a free tool, however they do have free downloadable reports. The reports cover a range of platforms including Facebook, Twitter and Google+. If you are interested in the other services that Simply Measured has to offer, you can request a free demo.

What we like: Free in-depth reports

What is missing: Nothing missing but it is a bit of a long-winded, data capture fuelled process to download your free report.

Image from Simply Measured 

 

If you would recommend additional tools for our 6 free social media monitoring tools, then we would love to hear from you and your comments!

Top 10 areas tahat every Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) report should cover

10 areas every Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) report should cover

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10 areas every Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) report should cover.

There are 10 areas every Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) report should cover. If you’re engaging with an agency or consultancy like Relton Associates the list below will act as a guide as to what you should expect. Everyone will have a different way of presenting information, but the list below can be used as a quick reference to ensure no crucial areas have been missed.

1. Executive Summary

For senior directors, business owners or chief digital/technical officers, or similar. They will not want to read through 20-50 pages of an SEO report, nor probably have the time. Hence the Executive Summary offering up a snapshot of what needs to be done and the main priorities.

2. Understanding

Confirming back to the client you have understood the brief is critical and stops you missing important areas, which are of particular interest to the client. The consultancy/agency should be sensor checking this from the very outset ensuring they’re on track. The client may have a particular interest in foreign search engines or Social Media.

3. A Plan/Methodology

An explanation of how the SEO report has been conducted and the methodology used. This adds credence to the report as it shows you have gone about the research in an appropriate manner and used the correct tools to draw the correct data required to make sound recommendations.

4. Content

On-page Content addresses the text and the structure of articles and will always make reference to keywords and keyphrases. Additionally, the report should highlight any areas of the website containing duplicate content and recommendations for how to eradicate this. Page titles and image size should be covered amongst many other areas.

Off-page Content addresses the structure of the on-page content and how it is supported behind the scenes. Particular reference will be paid to H tags and META data, it’s structure and how it holistically amplifies your on-page SEO.

5. Technical

Looks at how well your Google Accounts are set up and whether you are adhering to the relevant Search Engines ‘check lists’. It’s important to remember it’s not just about Google (although largely it is in the UK) but also Bing (USA), Yandex (Russia) and other search engines in other territories. Site speed, page load times and responsive design are among many other areas, which should be looked at.

6. Linking

A full SEO report will always assess how easy a website is for users and search engines to navigate. Therefore, it should include a review of the number of internal links within your site and highlight if there are any broken links. It will also look for the number and quality of backlinks coming to your site, which has always been an extremely strong external indicator to search engines of how relevant your content is to the outside World.

7. Recommendations

Each and every section should be followed with a recommendation. A way to address the issues you have and in simple terms that are easy to understand. If you are under performing in an area of SEO then the recommendation should clearly layout what you need to do to go and fix it.

8. KPI’s

If your going to work on SEO you need to measure the success you’re having. How else will you know how successful you are and whether the changes you are making are having a positive and desired effect. A set of KPI’s will support you in doing this

9. Additional Resources

This is one of the most important elements of a report as it provides the ‘tools’ to be able to assist in implementing the SEO recommendations you’ve been given. You can expect a list of priorities so you know which recommendations to tackle first. You can also expect checklists and examples where relevant

10. Appendices

And finally, often formed of reports that have been run across your site and a plethora of xlxs spreadsheets. It can also contain screenshots and reports run that were not relevant enough for the report itself.

If you would like to find out more about SEO reporting then why not Contact Us here. If you have found the above article useful or if you feel something could be added then please feel free to comment below too

Lecturing at University College London about the power of Social Media

Lecturing at University College London & power of Social Media

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Lecturing at University College London (UCL) and the power of Social Media

I recently had the pleasure of lecturing at University College London (UCL) and the power of social media was again at the forefront of discussion.  When I asked these simple questions:

  1. 1) ‘who here trusts what they see & read on social media’, no one raised their hand.

I then followed this up with:

  1. 2) ‘how many of you get your news from social media’, almost all of them raised their hand.

With the recent Trump campaign for the US Presidency and the equally feisty BREXIT campaign, we should be under no illusion how influential social media channels have become. Facebook has even stated it will try and weed out fake news which, in my view, is a near impossible task. However, I am pleased to see them acknowledging and addressing it.

BREXIT produced a sensational amount of false news and scaremongering from both sides. Some of the apparent ‘explainer’ videos I saw were literally shocking and President Obama was absolutely right to hold students accountable for finding out the truth and ‘digging deeper’ in one of his many speeches. We are accountable and responsible for finding out the truth, as best we can.

I appreciate one lecture room of 20 students is not the biggest nor most conclusive survey by any stretch. Perhaps more research is needed. However, you cannot dispute that it is a definitive indicator and, from what most of us have seen, probably true of most similar age groups.

We do, after all, tend to believe what we want to believe. If this statement is true, it suggests that if we’re fed news we want to believe, we are more likely to trust it, share it and unwittingly peddle it (sometimes even before we read and fully understood it).

To state what I deem is the obvious: we can create stories online which people want to believe are true and are inline with our brands mission and vision. We can then positively or negatively influence opinion.

Lastly, a brand is not exclusive to just businesses; it is also Nations, Religions and Political Parties.

What do you think?