2013 December 06 Archive - EXEIdeas

Community Managers who are thinking of migrating to better social media engagement and monitoring tools need look no further. Here are the top seven in no particular order.KloutClozeBitlyFacebook InsightsSocial MentionHootSuiteSprout SocialKlout:Klout calls itself “The Standard for Influence” which is not exactly true. Although it offers an insightful window where the user’s “influence” or score is distinctly displayed in a number format it does not offer any inside information on how the score was achieved. Incidentally, Klout score is rated on a scale of 0 to 100.It tracks user engagement on all the major social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Cinch, Instagram and Foursquare which reflects the versatility of this tool. A small graph at the top of the dashboard offers a “90-Day Score History”, a brief insight into your score and its performance over a period of time which comes in real handy while analyzing the impact of your social media engagement.Klout simply looks at the user’s followers, their influence, tweets, re-tweets and the number of time the user has been mentioned. Klout score does boost your profile, especially where “Human Resource” is concerned. So go and get your free account today and check your score and the impression you have made on the social media landscape.Cloze:When Cloze was launched, it typically rated relationship scores based on a single metric; contacts or email connections. However, that is really a thing of the past. Today, it takes into consideration updates from Facebook, Twitter to offer broad based results. In other words content from various social sites is gathered, analysed, and displayed on the user’s dashboard. Through this control panel users can see their email interactions (the original score metric) along with social media content all bundled together nicely in a well designed user interface. It fetches relevant and unique content from the social media scene by filtering the information, depending on your taste or settings. People and valuable content matters to Cloze, so it adjusts the key list according to the activity. It understands who is important to you and puts them on priority. This makes sure you never miss an important update from your important contacts.Cloze basically consolidates everything related to people and content in one place depending upon its importance. As mentioned above there was a time when it only depended on email addresses in a user’s account (for example LinkedIn) and based its score on the information exchanged and its frequency. However, it realized the limitations, the inherent problem associated with such a yardstick. Now it automatically adds other social media parameters to offer a healthy result. Yet another feature which makes it unique is its ability to privately share and discuss the best content. This makes it easier to debate, re-share publicly, learn, and explore. Cloze has come a long way since its “invite only” phase. So join in today and exploit its intuitive features.Bitly:Although Bitly is popular as a URL crunching tool, it actually packs quite a punch with several innovative features, and therefore can be termed as a complete social media management tool for twitter.So what are these features? Mentioned below are some of the important ones.A user can setup multiple Twitter accounts.It shows what your Twitter connections are re-tweeting/sharing and how valuable that content is.It can play the role of a parent tool with Tweetdeck, Social Sprout etc. behaving like its siblings. Group or individual analysis of profiles is possible directly from Bitly. Multiple platform tracking is one of the highlights of this tool.User interface allows instant URL shortening and sharing feature which also includes statistics for such links.Facebook Insights:One of the high impact social media platforms, Facebook, offers profile and pages analysis through “Insights” feature, its built-in tool. Facebook Insights offers interesting information such as which page or posts have attracted maximum people, likes collected, its reach in terms of actual numbers and a host of other useful information. Facebook Insights provides a great way to check the pulse of the audience in terms of what makes them react to certain pages, posts and what content they share.Social Mention:One of the social media monitoring tools which mainly focuses on brand image is Social Mention. This tool, built like a search engine is distinct and approaches the brand image calculation through hitherto ignored metrics such as blogs, forums and comments within them. It means administrators actually engage with genuine people and genuine reactions, irrespective whether those reactions are negative or positive. Yet, another feature which brings smile on the face of community manager is reports. One such report is “Brand Sentiment” which reflects people’s affinity or lack of it and the reasons.It is an interesting real-time social media search and analysis platform where community managers can instantly build a bridge between dissatisfied customers and a brand, and at the same time interact with people who carry weight in terms of influence.HootSuite:Although this tool does not offer an integrated social media monitoring setup, it suitably compensates as a dedicated Twitter management app with an array of features built into it. It is one of the most popular tools used by marketers and community managers alike.HootSuite offers two plans.Free – If you have less than five social profiles then this plan is for you.Paid – $5.99 per month which includes unlimited profiles and analytic reports.Users can customize columns, tabs etc to their liking through the settings option. The top sticky bar offers two distinct features; search and profile icons which are stacked horizontally. Tabs such as feeds, lists (personalized tracking) and views (filterable) allows users to modify the way they want them to behave. For example you can choose home feed (your primary twitter account) or Facebook feed for the Feed’s tab.Sprout Social:Social media teams will love this tool. The reason is because of its integrated design which collects data from Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn.Its real time corroborating and statistics features are compelling which administrators find it extremely useful. Tasks can be scheduled, managed and monitored easily. The dashboard offers live updates which can be a great source for analysis.Sprout Social is expensive ($39, $59 and $99). However, it offers several unique features which makes brand engagement an enjoyable and effective chore.#ath{background:#f8f8f8;margin:0 0 40px 0;padding:10px;border:3px outset #e8e8e8;-moz-border-radius:10px;border-radius:10px;overflow:hidden;font-size:14px;}.pro{background:#FFF;float:left;margin:0 10px 0 0;padding:4px;border:2px inset #e8e8e8;}.social{float:right;}About the Author:Bernard Naylor is an Online Manager for Maxwell Systems – which offers heavy construction software designed to fit your business with fully integrated accounting, project management, equipment management, and construction equipment management.Bernard likes blogging about online strategies that are related to SEO, Content, PPC & Lead generation.Find Me On GooglePlus