Hootsuite always promotes among its features is the ability to track and measure your performance.
They say these services help you calibrate your online reputation and performance so you can offer the best service to your audience.
What can Hootsuite measure and monitor?
Hootsuite measures the performance of your social media posts, including engagement with your audience. It also monitors what people say about your brand and gauges the reception, whether positive or negative.
Hootsuite claims that their measuring and monitoring tools are what make them stand out and the choice of over 800 Fortune 1000 companies, so they know what they’re talking about.
What Data Can Hootsuite Report On?
Hootsuite offers Analytics services, a measurement of your social media reach per profile.
The Analytics function offers a blow by blow account of how many people saw your post, how many clicked, how many shared, and even viewed videos.
Aside from your social media content, you also get an update on your following.
Integrate Hootsuite with Google Analytics:
Combining the two services lets you track in a single dashboard your web traffic.
You can check how many people go to your site and how they were linked to your website.
With Hootsuite Analytics, you can also measure your engagement with your audience.
The audience engagement measures your rate of response and how quickly your team responds to any message or comment posted on your profiles.
Hootsuite Insights:
Hootsuite also offers Insights, a tracking system for your brand.
Insights search the web for different mentions of your brand and curate them in a single interface.
You get to choose what web platforms Hootsuite will search, the location and even filter by keywords for an accurate perspective.
The results will show you how many times the terms you list are mentioned, where they are from, the gender profile of these people, and whether you have more positive or negative mentions.
What is the Difference Between Analytics and Insights in Hootsuite?
In a nutshell, Analytics measures how far you reach. Insights measure the reception of people when they see your brand.
Analytics focuses on the depth of your reach on social media, including clicks, comments, shares, and followings on your social media accounts.
Insights let you scour the web for mentions on your brands and weigh the acceptability of your product or services.
It gives you also you the demographics of the people who talk about your brand, including gender and location.
You also get a tally on how many times your brand has been talked about on the web.
How Good is the Analytics Feature in Hootsuite?
The data that Hootsuite presents comes from the information it culls out from your social media profiles when you add it to the dashboard.
That means, even if bot accounts click on your content, it will still be registered and updated when the bots are purged.
How Good is the Insights Feature of Hootsuite?
The Insights function of Hootsuite is decent, at the very least.
While it does an in-depth search all over the web, you are only limited to access mentions that are listed.
So, if you are looking for feedback from private forums, like closed Facebook groups, Insights won’t be able to detect that.
Insight also cannot identify mentions that are fake, given the proliferation of fake news on social media.
You still need to check mentions one by one before identifying legitimate concerns from fabricated ones so you can respond to the soonest.
How Reliable is the Data Inside Hootsuite?
The data is reliable as a whole as it gets information from your social media profiles and web searches.
However, it would help if Hootsuite improves its algorithms in filtering bots and fake accounts.
What Are the Most Popular Reports in Hootsuite?
The most popular reports on Hootsuite are the Analytics reports, or your social media performance, and Insights, which gauges your online reputation.
What Are the Limitations?
Hootsuite has some limitations when it comes to monitoring and measuring.
First, the Free plan on Hootsuite does not let you access analytics and insights.
Analytics needs a Professional subscription at least to access.
The downloading of data is also limited when using the Professional and Team plan.
You cannot download these reports into a format of your choice. You can only download it when using a Business or Enterprise plan.
The Insights feature is only available for Business and Enterprise plans.
It is also not included by default and is an add-on service available by request.
Hootsuite also does not offer all platforms for Analytics.
Analytics is only available for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
Do I Need Another Software to Measure and Monitor my Data?
You can try other software, but for the most part, Hootsuite already has you covered.
Hootsuite already contains the essential data you need for your reports, which makes it a one-stop-shop for your reporting needs.
If you think the price of Insights is too steep, considering you need to be on a Business plan, you can always set up a search stream and use it in tandem with Google Alerts.
What Other Services Provide Social Media Reporting?
There are other available social media reporting services available.
Keep in mind that the ones worth checking are not free.
Some of the social media services that offer to report include Buffer and Sprout Social.
Buffer:
Buffer costs around $15, or half of the monthly fee of the Professional plan of Hootsuite.
The social listening or Insights function comes at an added price of $35 at the least per month.
Sprout Social:
Sprout Social also offers monitoring services, which covers analytics.
Prices start at $99 a month, and the listening function comes as an added cost, depending on your needs.
Sources:
Hootsuite Analytics and Measurement Tools: An Overview