Top free social media tools Report 2013

Written and compiled by Mike Wronski, Fuseware and Cherylann Smith, Global Mouse
TOP FREE Social Media Tools
Report 2013

Introduction
The Top Free Social Media Tools Report explores the most used social media management, monitoring
and analytics tools by top agencies, brands, strategists and social media influencers, in the social media
and online industry in South Africa. Some of the tools will help you with planning, posting, listening,
or all three.
As online usage grows and communities become more important to brands, knowing that Social media
management and monitoring plays a vital role in strategy and managing brand reputation, Social
conversations have become more important and being able to filter through the noise can be a challenge.
For brands, understanding the impact of social media and managing conversations in real time is getting
harder.
Monitoring and listening to the online conversations and buzz is key not just for creating content, but also
for managing the community. Having the right tools allows the community manager to monitor and engage
in relevant conversations and join existing conversations.
We have unpacked a number of free tools available in the market, by having conversations with leaders in
the industry. The following tools are just some of those available for free and are highly essential to getting
day-to-day community management right. - Cherylann Smith
TOP FREE Social Media Tools Report 201301
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Contributors
Mike Stopforth
CEO of Cerebra
@mikestopforth
David Alves
Social media account manager at Social@Ogilvy
@Green_Guerrilla
Aki Anastasiou
Columnist, talk show host & radio presenter at 702
@AkiAnastasiou
Fred Roed
CEO at World Wide Creative
@Fred_Roed
Jodene Shaer
Social media publicist & owner of Lifeology
@jodenecoza
Mike Sharman
CEO at Retroviral
@mikesharman
Michal Wronski
Managing director at Fuseware
@mikewronski
Gemma Wilke
Community manager at Native
@Native
Zahira Kharsany
Head of content & community at Cerebra
@zk
Sheena Gates
Group social media manager at Tsogo Sun
@SheBeeGee
Cherylann Smith
Head of digital at Global Mouse
@mylifescape
Angus Robinson
Mobile, content & community Director at Native
@angusrobinson
Garth Rhoda
Sales Director at Habari Media
@garthrhoda
Melissa Griesel
Content strategist and community management
@DJMelitia

tool]
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Social media tools
click icons
to navigate

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Bit.ly allows you to track your most successful content. It shows the number of people
who have clicked on one of your likes. I like that you can customise these shortened likes
to make them specific to your brand. It also documents which platform the click is coming
from as well as which country your content is well received in.
“I use bitly to shorten and track links.” - Fred Roed
Garth Rhoda,
uses Brandometer to index on influencers
“A tool I use to monitor who is within my personal network or that of a client. It helps
me analyse the following and sort both Twitter and Facebook communities into
dozens of orders, including least active, most followed, etc.” -Jodene Shaer
“SA Influencers can be easily tracked down based on their industry
and network, its a great reference tool for quickly targeting high profile
online South Africans” Mike Wronski
Bit.ly’s free and automated click-through tracking really helps for decoding broader click
trends across social media” Mike Wronski

Page
Obviously no social media manager
would be able to do their job without the
free analytics tool Facebook supplies
for Pages. I use insights to calculate
engagement and consumption of brand
conversation, which all goes into
an overall AVE I’ve put together
internally at Tsogo Sun.
Sheena Gates
“On mobile I use the Facebook Pages app -
it allows for more flexibility.” Aki Anastasiou
Facebook insights allow you to track
your page’s process from one month
to the next. It is the most thorough way
to report on your Facebook pages and
gives you all the stats you need as well
as graphs.
Gemma Wilke
“This is the simplest tool for me to use and it gives
me all of the details I need to compile an effective
report for a client” Jodene Shaer
Facebook insights is also used by Fred Roed, Mike Sharman and Mike Wronski
as part of their tool set for community management.
You cannot improve what you cannot
measure and keeping track of your
campaigns performance and monitoring
results, creating reports and analysis is
important. Facebook Insights is key but
you will require a good understanding
of which metrics you should be focusing
your efforts on based on your overall
objectives.
Cherylann Smith

Page
Since the loss of Google Reader, I
have been experimenting with Feedly.
Great RSS reader, if you’re still into
using RSS feeds. I for one still do. Also
it pulls in your current Reader lists, so
moving over was easy.
Zahira Kharsany also used by Fred Roed
“Helps me analyse
a client’s account so
I know when to clean
out the following.”
Jodene Shaer
Mike Sharman
Information aggregation displayed
in a beautiful magazine layout allows
me to consume breaking news, tech,
social and sport stories while waiting for
meetings. Flipboard makes news sexy.
I’m addicted to knowing stuff before
anyone else and this aids me in this
conquest

Page
Feedspot is a new RSS reader application that curates content based on current and
Google Reader selections.
“Very cool if you’re looking to remain relevant.” - David Alves
“I use Klout to check for people whom I am meeting, on key leverage points for them”
Garth Rhoda
“Not the be all and end all of measuring influence, but Klout scores do give a good
idea of how globally influential one is on social media” Mike Wronski
When planning your content calendar, it’s important that it’s
easy to share with the team and even with your clients. Google
docs facilitates easy and efficient sharing of documents and
spreadsheets making it a personal favourite when it comes to
storing links, creating content and ideation. - Cherylann Smith
Sherrin Davie and Fred Roed also use Google docs for effective planning.
“Google analytics helps to track the user journey, thus giving
insights to a more focused brand and social media strategy.”
- Melissa Griesel

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“Technically not a “free” tool, but a freemium tool (I use the free version), Hootsuite is
my go to solution for browser based social graph content and community management.
Unfortunately I found their iOS apps less sexy, so landed up paying for my choices there.”
Mike Stopforth
HootSuite is a social media management
system for businesses and organizations
to collaboratively execute campaigns
across multiple social networks from one
secure, web-based dashboard. Launch
marketing campaigns, identify and
grow audiences, and distribute targeted
messages using HootSuite’s unique
social media dashboard.
Zahira Kharsany
“Highly valuable. Cerebra currently used the paid for version, but on a personal level, the
freemium rocks. I can schedule updates, have a plugin to share from various websites, track
lists and conversations. A really great tool as well that incorporates various social platforms. “
Aki Anastasiou
“My social tools are TweetDeck and Hootsuite. The issue that I have is that there
is so many different social media portals that at times I struggle to update all
simultaneously.So for example not many incorporate with Google+ and I using
Google+ quite a bit more now than say I did a year ago.”
“This is my go-to solution for managing multiple social media accounts with ease and
simplicity. It also seems to pick up mentions of my name that Twitter’s connect tab
doesn’t show” Mike Wronksi
Also used by Sherin Davie
“Personally each brand is different so their Facebook and Twitter needs vary too.
While its great to get insights from Facebook and schedule content with Hootsuite,
there are more programs available now that can help you drill down into the insights
relevant to your brand and target market.” Melissa Griesel

Page
I use this on the day of events to track
the 24 hours of a hashtag at an event. It
is the only tool that gives me reach.
Jodene Shaer
“A tool I use
consistently in order to
ensure all accounts
I deal with are free of
inactive or fake users”
Jodene Shaer
Dave Alves
A live-tweet wall tool for events and
conferences.

Page
“I also use Netvibes to keep tabs of all my feeds and get analytics on my social networks.
I love Netvibes because it gives me everything on one page and I can customise it.”
Aki Anastasiou
An infographic and presentation tool for non-designers. Nice for the basic stuff, but if
you want to the full capability to custom make designs, you’ll have to pay for it. The
basic presentation stuff is pretty cool if you’re wanting simply that, basic.
Dave Alves
NodeXL is a powerful and easy-to-use interactive network visualisation and analysis
tool that leverages the widely available MS Excel application as the platform for
representing generic graph data, performing advanced network analysis and visual
exploration of networks
“I’ve found NodeXL extremely useful for quickly visualizing small networks of social media
influencers and seeing how they are connected - Mike Wronski

Page
Cool little app that allows you to
read later. Currently use this a lot, as
sometimes, you need to just make time
to read some of the great resources out
there. Its a bookmark facility that can
be attached to various social accounts,
allowing how to read later. Also can email
links to yourself.
Zahira Kharsany
RapidMiner is unquestionably the world-
leading open-source system for data mining.
It is available as a stand-alone application for
data analysis and as a data mining engine for
the integration into own products. Thousands
of applications of RapidMiner in more than 40
countries give their users a competitive edge.
Allows you to track the number of
retweets your tweet has received. This
is a great way to learn which of your
content the community is enjoying and
sharing the most. Clients also love to
hear about the sharability of their brand
and content.
I have used RapidMiner to analyze
large volumes of data very quickly in a
highly visual and streamlined manner
Mike Wronski
Gemma Wilke

“Great analytics tool for Twitter. Freemium version is restricted to 2 accounts and some
tools are unavailable but the basics are still great. Time to tweet, who my followers are
and who I should be targeting.”
Zahira Kharsany
Page
“Although not endorsed by Facebook, Socialbakers is a great tool in
terms of best practice info, stats on country or brand industry usage
across the social networks. They incorporate stats and trends for
Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, G+” Sheena Gates
“Check on categories that are growing before I present info”
Garth Rhoda
Social mention is a search engine for real time search on news, blogs, images and
video. Sherrin Davie has found this tool useful.

“Tagboard tracks hashtags across all
major platforms (Twitter, Instagram,
Vine, G+) so you can see where the
tags are being used. You can create
your own tagboard, giving you an
aggregated look at all activity, which
you can then share along the line.
Sadly, the tool doesn’t allow you
actually extract material in terms of
.xls or .xml docs, but from a display
perspective, it’s a very cool tool.”
Page
Jodene Shaer
Is a great tool to use for live event
coverage reporting. It tracks your tweets
that have been retweeted and where
links have been shared.
Angus Robinson
explains that community
management in isolation is
like flying a plane without a
flight plan. “Reporting and
analysis helps you establish
and maintain highly
engaged communities that
can start influencing the
brand’s message.”

Page
“For multiple account management no tool comes close to Tweetdeck in my opinion.
I use the Chrome plug-in for this so it’s open in my browser all day.” Sheena Gates
“I find that Tweetdeck is the key thing for me is scheduling content. I find the Tweetdeck
does a good job in this regard.” Aki Anastasiou
“Can’t live without it based on how much we engage with the Twitter platform. It allows
us to manage multiple accounts, run searches on relevant phrases for clients, delve
deeper into individual profiles in this space, and keep a watchful eye on what competitor
brands are involved with” Mike Sharman
“Tweetreach shows you a snapshot of your handle’s
performance during the day. I like that it highlights
the biggest contributors to the conversations around
your brand. It also offers great visuals in the way
of graphs and ratios.”Gemma Wilke
“ The beauty about Tweetdeck is being able to tweet from my phone, directly engaging
with the communities while on the go and seamlessly, basic insights like the frequency
of daily tweets, favorites and retweets make it a nice overview at a glance for the brand
management.” Melissa Griesel

Page
“This is a great tool to give me a quick
glance at Twitter accounts in numbers.
What the growth of an account is like
day by day or monthly; how many
retweets or mentions over a period
and the best feature is that it allows
for competitor analysis as well. I’ve
since opted for a premium account to
handle multiple Twitter profiles, but the
free version is pretty good too.”
Sheena Gates
“Now has a paid for option to get more
in-depth graphs and stats. It does,
however, track and graph the number
of new followers and the number
of tweets you push live on any day.
This is great for reporting on a crisis and
pointing out an increase in conversations
around certain content on specific days.
You are also able to adjust the
date range.”
Gemma Wilke
“Great free tool to track growth on Twitter
accounts. Also track competitor accounts against
your own.”
Zahira Kharsany

Page
YouTube insights – with the new
layout, we have access to great insights
and graphs. It tracks performance,
engagement, demographics. This
allows us to get a better feel of who our
community is and what they like to watch.
It allows and gives us insights into more
creative options rather than the “talking
head” videos.
Gemma Wilke
Video content has become more
relevant, and more brands are setting
up YouTube channels. Monitoring
your views and engagements are just
as important, than for any other social
network. Knowing which videos are
mostly viewed and shared will guide new
content creation. Remember to monitor
the comments and join the conversation
your community is having. Check which
devices your video’s are being viewed on,
and optimise for mobile as it continues
to dominate how we consume content.
YouTube is a great place to build a brand,
and to be social and YouTube insights
should be top of mind.
Cherylann Smith

Page
“Basically a way of
creating what I like to call;
“quick memes”. Another
image-generation tool
that enables you to create
shareable, poster-style
pieces of content.”
Dave Alves
Mike Stopforth
There are many options here
(Flipbard and Pulse) but this is
my favourite.
Zite is a free personalized reader for the
iPad, iPhone and Android Phone that
automatically learns user preferences
and gets smarter with time.
WOOBOX is a Facebook brand page
app service that provides a host of free
and paid apps, ranging from Instagram
tabs to competition solutions. If you
manage Facebook pages and want
to add apps of all kinds, this is a great
resource. Dave Alves
Great free resource. Allows me to
breakdown models and plot a route. Mind
mapping never got this easy.
Zahira

Conclusion
Although social media adoption is prevalent and most social media conversations happen on a handful of
platforms, the disparity of tools and technologies used in social campaigns is rather large. This is perhaps
unsurprising, since it points to the fact that no single tool satisfies all social media use cases, and different
people have different preferences based on their unique expertise and experience with specific tool sets.
This report illustrates the most popular tools used by these social media influencers and strategists, but the
disparity of usage between the tools unveils an important notion: the logical expertise and the creative mind of
the person using the tool is far more important than the tool itself. Another insight is that each person surveyed
uses a unique combination of tools that synergize well with the specific work that they do.
Social media monitoring for the purposes of reputation management and customer service are the two most
common uses of community management tools. It is also imperative to use social media monitoring tools to
catch potential negative comments and reviews that may need to be escalated. This is absolutely necessary
for any online community.
Social communities are made up of people and observing their engagement,and evaluating social communities
allows us to examine influence, engagement and build brand equity. The value of monitoring reaches further
than just listening. By analyzing social buzz and conversations on social networks, blogs, websites and within
communities, observing the content that people are sharing, you will be able to answer a number of practical
question, for example: What improvements can I make to my next campaign? What topics should I cover in my
content marketing? Knowing the answers to these and other questions will help drive your content strategy,
drive engagement and lead integrated brand experiences.- Mike Wronski & Cherylann Smith
Page

Cherylann Smith head of digital at Global Mouse
Is a digital strategist and social media enthusiast. She holds
an Honours Degree in Psychology with particular focus on
human development and behaviour. Today her marketing
interests are centered on the behavioural adaptation of
consumers to digital technology and how this is changing
the dynamics of brand and consumer interaction. She
understands the importance of measurement as an integral
part of business strategy and drives all aspects of online
relationship management for her clients.
Follow me on Twitter @mylifescape
Email me at cherylann@globalmouse.co.za
Mike Wronski managing director at Fuseware
Is a technologist, digital consultant and MD of Fuseware - a
company specializing in social media monitoring and analysis.
Holding an honours degree in engineering, Mike’s experience
involves working with corporate brands on various digital
projects and online measurement. Mike is highly passionate
about the use of technology for driving business innovation
and productivity, and sees social media as a fundamental shift
in the way people and brands communicate.
Follow me on Twitter @mikewronski
Email me at mike@fusware.net
written and compiled by:
Page

Thank you
If you would like to talk to us further
about strategy, community management,
online reputation or just to share ideas to
make better business decisions, please
feel free to contact us:
Mike Wronski
mike@fuseware.net
www.fuseware.net
@mikewronski
za.linkedin.com/in/mpwronski
Cherylann Smith
cherylann@globalmouse.co.za
www.globalmouse.co.za
@mylifescape
za.linkedin.com/in/cherylannsmith
About Fuseware
Fuseware offers social media monitoring
and analytics services that provide real-
time consumer insight and feedback
that can be utilized in marketing, public
relations, product development, market
research and business strategy.
Fuseware also provides comprehensive
social media reports, detailing audience
demographics, conversations and the
influencers behind social media content
for South Africa’s best brands.
About Global Mouse
Global Mouse is an integrated full
service communications agency and
delivers full brand strategy and creative
solutions to our clients, creating
exceptional experiences between brands
and consumers. Global Mouse tells
stories that create memorable brand
experiences. Getting the basics right is
the foundation for true integration and
creativity. We love what we do and we
can do it for you.
Open Research
This independent Social Media Tools
report was 100% funded by Fuseware
and Global Mouse. As a collaboration
we publish data, analysis and insights
into digital marketing, media and
monitoring. This report is published
under the principle of Open Research
and is intended to advance the industry
at no cost. This report is intended for
you to read, utilize, and share with
others; if you do so, please provide
attribution to Fuseware and
Global Mouse.
Disclaimer
Although the information and data used in this report have been produced and processed from sources believed to be reliable, no warranty expressed or implied is made regarding the completeness, accuracy, adequacy or use of the
information. The authors and contributors of the information shall have no liability for errors or omissions contained herein or for interpretations thereof. Reference herein to any specific product or vendor by trade name, trademark or
otherwise does not constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation or favoring by the authors or contributors and shall not be used for advertising or product endorsement purposes. The opinions expressed herein are subject to
change without notice.

Top free social media tools Report 2013

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Top free social media tools Report 2013