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Social media has exploded in popularity recently. It can be a useful e-marketing tool as long as you track the results. Below we list a few of the most popular social media tools along with some of the best tools for measuring results.
The top tools for social media include:
- Blogs, great for interacting with your target market and as an SEO tool, Google loves blogs
- Facebook, works well for companies selling to consumers
- LinkedIn, a good tool for building and communicating with a network of professionals
- Twitter, useful for micro-blogging, taking surveys and promoting blog posts or webinars
Best Tools for Measuring Social Media Results
The best tools for you to use in measuring your social media campaigns depend on what social media channels you use. Look at the following list as a potential guide and do think about measuring before you launch a campaign.
Tool: bit.ly (link: http://bit.ly/)
What it does: Enables you to compress a link to a long URL into a small snippet that is “tweetable". This tool also allows you to track your bit.ly links in real time.
Tool: Google Analytics
What it does: Allows you to get very robust information on traffic to your Web site.
After you launch a social media campaign, you will want to monitor:
- the results in your referrers file on Google (properties sending traffic to your Web site)
- traffic patterns to look for spikes
- keyword phrases to see if the pass-along rate is working
If you need help getting the most out of Google Analytics, we recommend the following books.
If have you are an experienced Google Analytics user, we suggest:
Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics by Brian Clifton
If you are a beginning Google Analytics user, we suggest:
Google Analytics 3rd Edition by Jerri L Ledford
Tool: Blog Comments (part of your standard blog tool)
What it does: Allows you to see how engaged your readers are with your content. Look for the number and quality of responses. If you are not getting a lot of response, look for tools that enable you to turn important blog posts into e-newsletters. For more information on how to do this, visit our site on e-newsletters.
Tool: FeedBurner
What it does: FeedBurner will allow your visitors to subscribe to your blog via RSS Feeds.
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