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Head of e-Commerce at www.proporta.co.uk
28 April 2011 10:41am
I need a tool to help with both the administration of multiple Twitter / Facebook sites and to monitor and identify relevant conversations / key influencers. I'm reviewing the usual suspects like Hootsuite, Klout and many others but would be v interested to hear from any end-users who can recommend a tool.
Thanks
Nick
Head of Social Media at Econsultancy
03 May 2011 10:39am
Hi Nick,
There's a few solutions that might be worth taking a look at, although I can't fully vouch for the accuracy of Influencer tracking.
Personally I use a combination -Tweetdeck for general daily use, I find it convenient and very easy to add extra accounts, searches etc, and there is some added functionality (follower numbers displayed under tweets etc) which will help you construct an influence map. I also use SocialOoomph when I need to schedule tweets in advance.
It's obviously not a completely holisitc system but for my money it's the most unobtrusive and straightforward.
A lot of social managers I speak to highly recommend Hootsuite, which has scheduling to multiple accounts built in, so this might be a better bet if you can't have someone monitoring Twitter 24/7 (I tend to leave tweetdeck open and dip in and out throughout the day), but obviously try to avoid over-automation.
Klout's algorythm has definitely improved over the past few weeks but again I'd caution against reading too much into those 'influence' figures -relevance and context are the important things here so make sure you do manual checks and segmentation for this whichever system you use.
As far as paid solutions go I've found Brandwatch and InfluenceFinder to be very good, especially as they both offer views of the wder web in addition to Twitter channels, but again they don't offer full interaction.
I've heard some good things about Sysomos at enterprise level as well, especially if you're tracking multiple brands and want to drill-down quickly into follower histories.
Unfortunately it is currently very difficult to find a completely integrated system -hopefully this may change with Twitter's purchase of tweetdeck - but these are all solid options -and of course, twitter's own promoted tweets does offer some expanded analytics. In the meantime you might want to check out Chris' recent post on measuring Twitter followers through Google Analytics as well, which offers som useful advice: http://ecly.co/eugqLa
Hope that's useful,
best,
Matt
SEO Analyst at Epiphany Solutions Ltd
03 May 2011 13:51pm
I'm with Matt on for Tweetdeck. It's a simple easy to use app that can be used for multiple twitter accounts, Facebook and LinkedIn. Hope Matt doesn't mind me correcting him here, it is also possible to schedule tweets within Tweetdeck.
I've used (the free version) of CoTweet in the past too. This is great if you have multiple users on one account whereby you can assign messages to certain staff and easily see if messages have been replied to where necessary. The paid version also gives you Facebook Page management and reporting.
I recently trialled SproutSocial and was pretty impressed. Plenty of reporting and user demographics on top of the usual Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn functionality most platforms offer. You can also monitor brand mentions and industry keywords of your choice across the web. There's currently a 30 day trial available after which there is a monthly payment model which I personally feel is pretty reasonable.
Thanks,
Mike
@alwaysmikegomez
SEO Analyst at Epiphany Solutions Ltd
04 May 2011 14:49pm
I found this today which may be of use to you also Nick. It helps you find 'influencers' by keyword.
http://mpact.mblast.com/
You'll need to connect your Twitter or Facebook account.
Mike
Managing Director at indiumonline
05 May 2011 11:11am
Hi Nick,
There are ENDLESS options out there. To help us keep track of all the twitter tools we created a Twitter Tool Directory that might be of use http://www.mindmeister.com/88482291/twitter-tools-directory
To monitor what's happening out there we are currently using the following options:
Hootsuite - brilliant tool. The stats package is improving at pace. And as well as scheduling tweets you can do a bulk upload by spreadsheet. This is our central one.
TwitterCounter is pretty good for stats analysis.
If you're looking to find key influencers then you'll want a mix of the tools we've grouped under: Competitor Analysis, Follwer Management, and Directories - different ones work better with different subject areas.
Hope that helps a bit.
Chloe
Head of e-Commerce at www.proporta.co.uk
05 May 2011 17:15pm
Thanks for all your replies - really useful. It doesn't look like there is the one single solution to match all my requirements, but it's good to hear feedback on a few we have been looking at, and a few new ones to me too. Will keep you posted on progress!