Looking for tools to use for social media research? There are some great tools out there that can help you streamline your social media research process. Social media has become a critical aspect of many people’s lives and therefore businesses. One of the best ways to connect with consumers is through social media.
Social media can be used in many different ways as a tool for marketing, but it can also help you with your research efforts as well. It is important to explain the role of social media in research so that you can understand the importance of these tools when conducting research and teaching others how to conduct research!
Surveybot
Surveybot is the ultimate social media research tool, especially for hardcore Facebook users. Surveybot is essentially a survey software that helps you conduct your social media research in both Facebook and Facebook Workplace.
Usually, the survey that you post on Facebook may not help procure a good response rate. This is mainly because of the fact that the moment the user clicks on the survey he/she is redirected to another page, forcing them to leave the comfort of the platform. Most of the respondents opt out of the survey when this happens.
With Surveybot you don’t have to worry about such an occurrence. The chat-like surveys can be filled in the Messenger App itself without the need of redirecting the respondent to another page. This will naturally increase the number of responses to your research survey. You don’t need to stop there.
You can even post the survey on Facebook and boost it, so that it reaches more users, thereby bringing a significant increase in the response rates.
Surveybot also lets you build your own audience panel with the users who took your surveys earlier. This social media research tool can be the best companion, particularly for researchers and professors who conduct their research based on popular opinions.
Pros
- Intuitive UI
- Robust Analytics
Cons
- Comparatively young as a platform
- Constant updating with demanded features
Pricing:
First 50 responses are free. Paid plan starts at $6 for 100 responses per month.
Sprout Social
Sprout Social is a highly intuitive social media research tool that helps you gain the most reliable analytical data across various social networks.
From Facebook page impressions to Instagram follower count to Linkedin Engagement, Sprout Social has got you covered. You can get detailed information about your performance on a single social media platform or even compare the results of a platform with various other social media platforms.
You are also eligible to collect and share data about your social media metrics through easy-to-use, presentation-ready reports of Sprout Social. What’s more?! You can even analyze your competitor’s activity through the tool!
Pros
- User friendly
- Intuitive Reports
Cons
- Steep pricing
- Limited analytics
Pricing:
Plans start at $99 per user per month
Hootsuite
This intuitive social media research tool is nearly a one-stop-shop for all your social media activities. Hootsuite not only lets you research and analyze your activities but also enables you to schedule posts on multiple social networks.
When it comes to social media research, you have the Search streams in the dashboard that allows you to track interactions relevant to your product, business, and niche. You can learn what are the trending topics and what is discussed based on the keyword, hashtags, locations, and specific users if necessary.
You can effectively collaborate your work with your social media team as well. The detailed analysis received from the tool can be shared with specific team members
Pros
- Reliable ‘Free’ Plan
- Ease of Use
- Multi-channel dashboard
Cons
- Slow reporting
- Limitations in integrating with Instagram
Pricing:
Plans start at $29
Twitter Analytics is incredibly helpful for research on the impact your own or brand’s Twitter channels, where you can see the best and worst posts from any month, and download data on likes, replies, retweets and so on, as well as understanding the reach and impact of your ads on Twitter. Twitter also allows you to search on a detailed level for keywords over specific time periods and in specific locations which allows you to get a feel for the sentiment around a topic.
Facebook Analytics also offers detailed downloadable statistics on your owned Pages on its analytics tab. You can see details of reach and engagements on posts and videos on Facebook Pages, as well as demographics about the people who like your page. You can also research how people engage with public Facebook Pages, but it is difficult to aggregate this because of Facebook’s privacy restrictions.
Currently, you can gain access to some tools provided by Facebook for Instagram analytics through Instagram Business Tools. The analytics offer a variety of insights on both posts on your Instagram timeline, and Instagram Stories, from viewership, reach and engagement to the days of the week your audience is most engaged and breakdown of locations by city, and age groups. It is possible to research the usage of hashtags which can be important but it is difficult to get more granular data on the images themselves without the use of a specialist tool like Pulsar, which offers vertical AI image analysis.
YouTube
YouTube has a variety of metrics to study in the analytics area for creators including watch times for your videos, traffic sources to see where the viewers are finding your videos from, and Demographics reports. Other social media research available on YouTube includes looking at the YouTube Trending page and studying the view counts and comments on videos, but again this is hard to aggregate without a specialist tool. You can learn more on YouTube analytics by checking out YouTube Creators Academy.
Forums
Finding out what people say on forums is a great way to understand social trends around specific topics. People will either discuss a specific topic in detail, or ask for advice, so if you can understand publicly posted forum topics, you will get an insight into the concerns around various topics and themes, which could support social media research. This involves manual desk research into your topic of choice, or the use of a tool like Pulsar, but can be very beneficial.
Reviews
Understanding reviews data can be incredibly helpful for new product development. Finding out how well people rate a similar product will give you indications of what people are looking for. Similarly, because reviews often involve star ratings, you can correlate this data to get numerical averages over time. Using this data alongside comments from social media research and web data means you can get a full picture of the view of a product or service.
Blogs and news
It’s also important to keep track of what is being discussed in the news and blogs, as this may impact social media research – for instance if a dramatic headline in the news changes the track of a conversation on social media, or if a blog post is generating more shares of a specific link or part of your website. This research generally has to be compiled by the user but it is possible to look at news and blogs through tools like Google News, or Pulsar.
Google trends
Google’s free trends service allows you to track volumes of searches for various trends going back to 2002 and compare several trends at once as a volume over time graph. You can also see that day’s trending topics, and find associated search queries that are often searched alongside your term. This is very helpful to compare with social media research around trends, as search and social data complement each other by giving an indication of the action taken – for instance did a social spike correlate to an increase in searches for a brand, or did a new product release get discussed on social as well as increasing traffic to your website?
Conclusion:
Social media is a relatively new marketing environment. Every day, new tools are being developed to help us understand what’s happening in the social realm, as well as engage in it. It’s like being dropped off in the middle of the ocean with an island floating somewhere in the distance, and learning how to swim.