tools Archives - Spring Media Strategies

11 Free Analytic Tools for Twitter

September 21, 2015/0 Comments/in Tools /by Rebecca Reynandez

You don’t need a budget to get started analyzing your tweets and followers. To help you navigate the world of Twitter tools, I’ve scoured the web to find the ones that are the most useful. This is by no means an exhaustive list of analytic tools for Twitter, but these are some of the best ones I’ve found so far.

All the tools in this list have at least some features available for free. When you’re just starting out, that’s usually all you’ll need.

When you become a more advanced user, upgrade to the paid versions if you want to dig deeper.

It’s unlikely that one tool will meet all your needs, so try out a few and see what works for your style and goals.

1. BlueNod

This is a powerful visual tool that helps you map your networks and explore networks for other users or hashtags. To have more than three active maps and to analyze more than 1,000 tweets/month, upgrade to paid plans starting at €49/month.

2. FollowerWonk

Use this tool to see very detailed information about your followers such as social authority, location, most active hours online, follower and following counts, account ages, recency of tweet, percent tweets with urls, retweets, bio word cloud, and more. A few features are available for free; try the pro version free for 30 days then it’s $99/month.

3. Klear

Use Klear to get demographics of your followers (gender, influence, locations, interests), find influencers in any field, and analyze activity of related accounts. Some free features can get you started; paid plans start at $99/month.

Hint: The monthly subscription is out of the budget for many small businesses and nonprofits, and at first glance it doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of information that you can get for free. On the bottom left of the homepage you can search a name or screen name. This is where you can find a lot of useful insights for your own page as well as others for free.

4. MyTopTweet

This is a simple free tool to find the top 10 tweets for any Twitter account. A great tool for quick and easy audience research.

5. SimplyMeasured

Use this tool for free reports on Twitter your followers including top keywords, Klout scores, Klout topics, time zone of your influencers, and more. They also have several other free reports for other social media channels. Monthly subscriptions for premium reports start at $500. Their newsletter has a lot of useful tips and guides and is worth subscribing to even if you don’t use their services.

6. Social Bearing

Analyze your own tweets, find users interested in any topic, and filter your searches by a wide range of options to zero in on your target audience. Social Bearing analyzes the sentiment of tweets, so that’s one unique feature to test the tone of your content.

7. SocialBro

This is a powerful tool to find influencers to target. Find the best time to tweet, see community insights, and manage the accounts you follow. Unlock additional features such as analytics of your tweets, import email addresses, and automate Twitter tasks starting at $13.95/month.

8. SocialRank

Filter and sort your followers using this tool to find influencers. Upgrade to analyze other accounts, and paid plans start at $49/month.

9. Tweriod

Use this tool to get insights on your followers. The best feature is that it lets you know at what times most of your followers are online and it syncs with your Buffer account to send out tweets when your followers are online. You can also graph times of the day you received @replies, research hashtags, analyze individual Twitter users and users from your lists, generate word clouds people following you are talking about, and more. A few features are free and monthly subscriptions are based on the number of followers and are very affordable, starting at $3.99/month. Tweriod can be a little buggy sometimes, but I think the synchronization with Buffer is worth the subscription.

10. Twitonomy

Use this tool to analyze your Twitter activity and interactions, identify your power users, see insights on your lists, customize your analytics dashboard, and more. Upgrade for premium features like insights on hashtags, analyzing other users, and to download analytics reports. Premium plans start at $19/month.

11. Twitter Analytics

Twitter has some very useful analytics that come with the platform, 100% free, that will hep you monitor impressions and engagements for your tweets. You’ll also be able to dig into some very sophisticated information about your audience including mobile device type, household income, occupation type, education, marital status, consumer buying styles, political party affiliation, and more. Compare audiences for your followers, your organic audience, your campaign audiences, and all Twitter users. Also, browse upcoming events on Twitter to help you plan how you can engage in popular conversations.

8 free tools to test if your site is ready for mobile

May 17, 2015/0 Comments/in Tools /by Rebecca Reynandez

Mobile is here to stay. If your site isn’t optimized for mobile you’re not only losing out on visitors, but also potential subscribers, volunteers, and donors.

There are many mobile-testing sites out there and these are my favorites. These free tools can help you identify and prioritize ways to optimize your site for mobile.

While these tools can give you an idea of how your website might look on different devices, there’s no substitute for actually trying out your site on real phones and tablets. I’ve found that some elements look the same on these test sites as they do on my phone, and some are quite different. Use these tools as a resource while you’re building a site, but be sure to test the final product on a few mobile devices.

Three of these eight tools are by Google. If you’re trying to improve your SEO, you care the most about how your site ranks in Google so it makes sense to use their tools.

1. Google Developers Mobile-Friendly Test

This is a quick and easy test to verify if your website is mobile-friendly. Just plug in your web address and wait a few seconds for the results!

Google Developers Mobile-Friendly Test

2. Google Chrome

You don’t need to go to a separate website to check how your website will look on mobile devices. When you’re using the Google Chrome browser, press Ctrl + Shift + C (or Cmd + Shift + C on a Mac). Click on the mobile device icon and select the device you want to test from the drop-down list.

This is a quick and easy test that’s useful when you’re building a site or when you want to show someone how your mobile site looks on a moment’s notice. The only downside is that you can’t see how the site looks when you rotate a mobile device.

Google Chrome mobile test

3. Mobiletest.me

This is a simple, user-friendly tool to see how your site looks on various devices. Use the “My favourites” feature to bookmark the top mobile devices people use to access your site.

Mobiltest.me site for testing mobile websites

Mobiletest.me mobile test options

4. Screenfly

Test how your site looks on desktop, tablet, mobile, and TV. You can generate a link to easily share the results. They also have tools to help you build sitemaps and wireframes.

Screenfly mobile test

5. mobiReady

Use mobiReady to test multiple sizes of mobile devices at once. Compare your site to the top 1000 Alexa sites to see how “mobile ready” it is. MobiReady also gives very specific recommendations so you can see what needs improvement.

mobiReady’s recommendations for improvement

6. Dyanatrace

Use this tool to compare your response time to other countries and industries. See what percentage images, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, and text take up on your mobile and desktop sites. Also see the breakdown of the response time for how your page loads so you know exactly what is slowing your site down. You do have to exchange your contact information to get their report and they offer a free consultation to help you identify ways to improve.

Dynatrace moblie test

7. W3C mobileOK Checker

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international community that works with organizations and the public to develop web standards. They have a handy mobile checker that will give you specific recommendations on how to make your site more mobile-friendly and let you know which changes are a top priority.

W3C mobileOK Checker

8. Google Developers PageSpeed Insights

Use Google’s tools to test the speed of your website for both mobile and desktop. Also get specific recommendations to help you increase your speed.

Google Developers PageSpeed Insights

5 tools to make infographics without hiring a designer

April 17, 2015/0 Comments/in Tools /by Rebecca Reynandez

Everyone loves to share infographics. They’re a great tool to get your message across quickly in a way that’s easy to understand.

While hiring a pro is ideal, sometimes you have a tight budget or a short time frame and working with a graphic designer isn’t always possible.

That’s where these tools come in handy. All you need is some compelling information and an eye for design in order to create beautiful infographics on your own.

1. Piktochart

Use this tool to create beautiful infographics, reports, banners, or presentations. Start from a blank template, use one of their free templates, or upgrade to pro themes. Use their graphics or import your own in their drag-and-drop tool. Get access to the best features for $29/month.

Piktochart

2. Easel.ly

This easy-to-use web tool helps you visualize many different kinds of concepts and ideas. While it does have some chart tools, I think this tool is better suited for other kinds of visualizations. The free account includes 60 images and 10 fonts. Upgrade to pro for only $3/month.

Easel.ly

3. Tableau Public

This desktop app is great for visualizing data sets. Infographics using their free version can be shared via email, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and/or embedded on your site. Upgrade to save it on your own computer and to integrate with more data programs.

Tableau Public

4. Infogr.am

This tool has a lot of chart options and is great to work on projects with a team. Integrate with Google Analytics and Google Sheets to create infographics, charts, and maps. Upgrades from the free account start at $15/month.

Infogr.am

5. Vengage

This web tool has a lot of sophisticated templates for the user that’s looking for more advanced features to really customize your content. There are free templates and icons available, and premium plans start at $19/month.

Vengage

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