Online Software to Track Social Media Campaigns for Social Media Analytics

How do you track the results of your social media marketing? We’ve talked in earlier posts about how to use basic Google Analytics to understand traffic to your website from a marketing perspective.  We’ve also covered several of Google Analytics’ advanced applications, like segmentation and event tracking, that allow you to dig deeper into the data.  But these metrics don’t capture much from social networks like Facebook or Linkedin, recommendation sites like Digg or Stumbleupon, or microblogging services like Twitter.

Ben Parr’s got a great post on Mashable’s blog entitled How To: Track Social Media Analytics. Hope you don’t mind, Ben, but I’m going to summarize your concepts to explain this to my small business audience and talk about the new tools you point out.

Ben outlines 5 sensible steps to track social media campaigns:  1) understand what you want to track, 2) optimize existing analytics software 3.) add new Analytics tools, 4) aggregate your analytics and 5) analyze and engage. But I’m most interested in the new tools he points out.

I  didn’t know there was a social media plugin for Google Analytics called Social Media Metrics. See the graphic at the beginning of this post for a sample report.  You will recognize the Google Analytics graph and stats, and note the new metrics below.   I plan to install it this weekend.

I’ve written about Xinureturns as a way to better understand your competition.  Here is a sample of just some of metrics they provide for a website:

I ran XinuReturns reports on my website and two blogs.  From it, I learned the Google page rank of each (this blog’s a 4), the number of pages indexed by Google, Yahoo and MS Live, and the number of backlinks from each (clickable into detail.)  However, I use Delicious all the time, and it did not show those links for my sites.   (Ah, a comment from Mark tells me they use no-follow links — then why is Xinu including them?)  Also I do have Technorati authority ranks on my sites, and these did not show up either.  So don’t trust all the stats here.

Those who put links in status update fields of social networks like Facebook or Twitter take advantage of free sites to shorten links and save space.  Bit.ly is a URL shortener with analytics info.  Think TinyUrl and Hansel and Gretel cookie crumbs.  They offer real-time link-tracking, link history and an ability to save preferences.

PostRank’s tag line is “find and read what matters.”  According to home page copy, this site helps you “Discover the best blogs, find and follow topic experts and influencers, and customize your subscriptions with PostRank engagement filtering!”   I just joined and am testing it, looking for detailed info on Stumbles and Diggs from content-rich sites.

Social Too “can help you be a social networking power user. Keep your follower lists in sync across networks, and get daily updates. Send surveys to your followers and more!”   In essence, it’s for social surveys and social media tracking stats, geared to Twitter and Facebook.  Sign up free and then use it to “autofollow” anyone on Twitter who follows you, and “auto unfollow” those who do not follow you back, for example.

Those who commented on Ben’s post also recommended Google Alerts, Twitter Search (and other Twitter tools), Trucast, Radian6, Techrigy, and Trax.cx.

So how do you track results of your social media campaigns? Before, I was reading referrer stats religiously on my blogs and websites, and running Google Alerts, but now I see there are more tools.  I especially like the plugin for Google Analytics.  How about you?

Earlier Posts in this Series:

Add Easy-As-Pie Engagement Goals to Your Google Analytics

What Basic Google Analytics Can Tell A Marketer, and Questions to Ask Next