I’m always looking to generate meaningful analytics from my social media activities. These analytics help me to understand what’s working, what’s not working, and notice trends I otherwise may have missed. In my arsenal, I have Google analytics and Clicky on the blog metrics side, Facebook Insights for Facebook and use Lithium for Twitter. But having aggregated views with a consistent look and feel of reporting would be a welcomed benefit!
Last week I started playing around with HootSuite’s new Custom Social Media Reporting module; and I was pleasantly surprised by it’s flexibility. The report builder includes over 30 individual report modules; allowing you pick the metrics you’re interested in tracking. Then once I had a finished product, sharing the report is a snap.
So what’s this going to cost me?
The HootSuite Pro Plan runs $5.99 a month and includes the ability to generate 1 custom report of your choice. (Note: the Ow.ly Click Summary Report is free). When you sign up, you’ll get the first 30-days free, and you can easily downgrade your account anytime during that period and you’ll never be changed. It’s worth noting that you’re credit for a report will not be used until you actually click “Create Report”. Also you can edit and modify your report at anytime, and that will not result in an additional cost. With the Pro account you’ll end up with 50 points redeemable in the reporting module.
Building your first HootSuite Social Media Report
From your HootSuite dashboard, click the “Analytics” link on the left-hand side of the screen. Now select “Custom Analytics” and you’ll see the options available to you. Notice the tab is divided into reports owned by you, reports shared with you, and reports still in draft mode.
By clicking the button titled “Create New Report” you’ll now have the option to choose from one of their prebuilt templates as a starting place. (Note: you can easily customize the report in a later step.) The HootSuite templates include: (1) Proposal Report, (2) Ow.ly Click Summery, (3) Google analytics, or even (4) Facebook Insights. For this example, I’ll use the start from scratch option.
As you begin to build your report, you’ll start by adding company logo and contact information. Next you’ll type a header description; something that describes the metrics to follow. Now you’ll start to add the modules you want to include. Each report module (except for Ow.ly) will use 5 points. Your Pro account will give you 50 points by default. If you need more points they can be purchased, but additional points are not as cheap as the first set.
Here are a few of the metrics we have available to us:
Email and Scheduling
Once the social media analytics report is set up, you can schedule daily, weekly, bi-weekly or monthly email updates. Having this information push out to you is extremely helpful, and will keep real estate partners up-to-date on all ongoing marketing efforts.
Don’t like your report, change it!
You can make tweaks to your report at anytime by removing modules; the points you spent will be immediately returned to be used on different modules. This could be helpful when you’re tracking the results of a unique marketing campaign or event.
MyTechOpinion
I really like the flexibility they’re introducing into their reporting module. Although I would like my initial 50 points (from the Pro Plan) to stretch a little further.. I didn’t like that the next jump up was to spend $50 dollars / month. I felt like the Google Analytics report was a waste of my credits, especially given the official Google Analytics reporting module will let me make an unlimited number of reports for free. That being said, I do like the ability to create my own custom report from scratch, and gather metrics from multiple social media platforms in one report.
If your actively using social media to market your real estate business, you should be measuring your results. HootSuite Pro is certainly worth checking out. Besides, HootSuite has tons of other features and applications you should be aware of.
Make sure you let me know what you think of the new HootSuite Custom Reporting Module! Here are a few related resources:
I love hootsuite and it is a great tool, but their customer service is about as bad as it gets. Have had a few issues with them over the last six months and they do nothing to help. That being said I still like using it better than deck or anything else at this point so will keep using them until a better alternative comes around.
I've heard that Twitter plans on charging companies a lot of money to access to their data and analytics – how do you think that would change the things for inexpensive offerings like Hootsuite and the rest of the free online social software offerings?
[...] the executive reports? Typically, it includes a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, campaign reporting system, web analytics system and potentially an accounting system if that isn’t part of your CRM [...]
HootSuite is a great social media tool. It is a tool in which you can collaborate social networking sites such as Facebook, Linkedin, Foursquare and of course, Twitter in one interface. This saves the hassle for adding new tabs and logging different accounts of the leading social networking sites.
The addition of social media analytics in this tool is a proof that ROI in social media investments can be assessed and determined.
All I can say is, finally! A tool that allows you to lay out the big picture for how Social Media can effect ROI.
The question that I cannot seem to find an answer to is in reference to the 50 point report.
Is this a one-time use (as in use it in August & screwed for September)?
If I can reuse the 50-point report and change it at any time doesn't that make for multiple reports in effect?
Can I use it for multiple different accounts?
Thanks