In the words of the great Thomas A. Edison, “There is no substitute for hard work”. Well, I lack the stature to show even the faintest degree of dissent to the idea, but the recent means and methods used for tracking the social buzz about brands, force me to think otherwise. In my career of over 10 years in Digital Marketing, I have made “mistakes” and seen fellows “err”. Yes, today I regret:
- Devoting 25 hours a day in managing several Social Media Accounts
- Manually sharing content day in day out on Facebook, Twitter, Google + and the likes
- Toiling hard to find mentions on social sites
- Wearing out the calculator keys for all the metrics and analytics
Why? Because when I was busy, battling for hours, stuck in planning, scheduling, creating, copying and pasting posts across social sites, some smart chaps were employing smart ways to track the Social Buzz for their brands or their clients’ brands. You can choose sides – to follow the trail I left behind or be an intelligent Social Media Marketer with the tools that follow.
1. Hootsuite
It comes with a free 30-day trial.
Hootsuite hands you one dashboard to manage all your social networks, get in-depth analytics for the performance of your social media content, listen to your audience and track the social buzz building up around your brand.
How to get going with Hootsuite?
1. Log on to https://hootsuite.com/
2. Create Your Hootsuite Account
3. Add Your Social Networks
4. Start with adding Streams. Here’s how it looks.
Just click on “Mentions” and add it as a stream to track your brand mentions across your social network.
2. Buffer
It’s free!
Entrepreneurs, start-ups, small-mid businesses have been successfully using this tool to create and schedule “Buffer” posts and also to keep track on who is listening and answering the calls.
It takes 5 quick steps to get going with Buffer.
1. Log on to https://buffer.com/
2. Sign in with any of your social media accounts – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn
3. Connect your first social account, followed by second, third and so on.
4. Create your schedule to share posts.
5. Your Buffer Account is ready.
Here’s how the Buffer dashboard looks for a twitter account.
You can view the number of “Mentions” for your brand.
3. Social Mention
It’s free!
If you wish to know:
- What is the probability of your brand being discussed on Social Media?
- Whether users’ sentiments are positive or negative for your brand?
- Are there any passionate social media users repeatedly advocating your brand on social media?
- How deep is the influence of your brand?
- What’s the average time per mention?
- What are the top keywords linked with your brand?
Just log on to http://www.socialmention.com/
Social Mention has ready answers for you.
Social Mention is a social media search engine that skims through the user-generated content across the social landscape and shows the real-time discussions about a company. You can track the mentions for any time or filter by duration.
Here’s how you get to view the mentions once you enter a name in the search box.
4. Topsy
It’s free!
Topsy is a Social Search Tool packed with features that allow you search @usernames, keywords and domain names. You can filter the social platforms for Links, Tweets, Photos, Videos, etc. and gain an insight into who is sharing what about your brand.
Topsy Alerts — The Highlight!
Topsy Alerts is a free service by means of which you can find the mentions of your brand, event, name, site, or favorite topic on Twitter. By adding keywords in the Topsy Alerts Settings, you can track topics and trends.
Here’s how it works!
1. Log on to http://topsy.com/
2. Sign In with your Twitter or Facebook Account.
3. Go to Topsy Alert Settings and enter your email address and keywords
5. BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is fueling the Digital Marketing Campaigns for brands like Yahoo, National Geographic, The Telegraph and the likes.
Simply log on to http://buzzsumo.com/
Enter the brand name for which you need to check the social buzz and the results will appear somewhat like this.
Here, you can view the number of Shares on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Google+ for Articles, Infographics, Guest Posts, Videos, Interviews, and other types of content. You can filter results by date and also View Sharers for particular content.
No surprises if, as a Social Media Marketer, you are already working with one or the other tool named above. Maybe, now you have more ways to make it to the list of the Brands that Created the Social Buzz in 2015. There are still 3 months to go in this year.