Free Social Media Management Tools and Why You Should Use Them

I think most of us by now have jumped on the Hootsuite train. It’s, arguably, the most robust and affordable social media management tool on the market. The following tools can be used in addition to an all-in-one platform like Hootsuite to fill in the gaps.

Have any other free tools to add to the list? Comment below!

Edgerank Checker

Edgerank Checker is a Facebook tool which generates reports about your fans. Find reports about when people interacted with your content sorted by how (through likes or comments). Edgerank Checker also offers information about the best time to post to hit the most people online. Great visuals make this a useful tool to use every so often.

Why you should use this: Fans interacting with your content is like free marketing. Posting when you have the most fans online brings more interaction, such as likes and comments. These interactions show up in their friend’s Facebook feeds, which expands your reach. This is the most direct way you can receive new followers. It’s like the online version of word-of-mouth advertising.

Socialoomph

Use Socialoomph to monitor specific keywords used in your twitter streams and general periodic emailed reports. Track your @replies as well. While you can set up streams to follow specific keywords in Hootsuite, sometimes it’s nicer to have the information come straight to your inbox!

Why you should use this: Follow keywords related to services you offer or campaigns you’re promoting to follow the hype. It’s a great way of knowing more about your constituents without running surveys.

The other services offered in the free version seem to replicate Hootsuite or other platforms. Socialoomph’s professional version, at around $36 a month, has other useful features like replicating the following of other twitter users, automatic follow backs and direct messages to new followers, and schedule Facebook photo uploads.

SocialBro

See what your followers are tweeting about. What hashtags they use or common words in their tweets. See who your influential followers are to help you know who you should engage with or keep your eye on.

You can also use SocialBro to generate other types of reports by filtering your followers by things like their location, age, or number of followers. Set up summary emails to stay informed without having to log in.

Why you should use this: You can find out what your followers really care about. What terms do they use often? How can you relate to them? Appeal to your followers by speaking their language.

The best part about many of these free tools is that you can get daily or weekly emails so that it’s not extra work for you. Set it up, look through the reports once in a while, and be more aware of the language and issues that the public or your followers are talking about. These are easy ways to stay in-the-know.

Visual.ly Google Analytics Infographic

There are many great infographics you can find (or create yourself) on visual.ly, one of which is the google analytics report. Find the google info graphic here: https://create.visual.ly/graphic/google-analytics

Have it sent to your email weekly to make your websites analtyics easier to follow. Pretty cool huh?

Why you should use this: It’s a great general report to keep you on top of your site’s statistics without having to do anything except open the email!

Jera Brown is part of the GovLoop Featured Blogger program, where we feature blog posts by government voices from all across the country (and world!). To see more Featured Blogger posts, click here.