By Katrina Olson
As of July 2015, there were approximately 1.6 million apps for Android users and 1.5 million for Apple users. But apps aren’t just for playing games on your phone or checking gas prices.
The following apps (which you can use from your phone, laptop or desktop) can make you a better marketer by helping you monitor, test and measure the effectiveness of your social and digital media efforts.
Mention (mention.com)
Want to know who’s talking about you online and what they’re saying? With Mention, you can monitor your company, name and competition—or a product, person, topic or any other keyword you choose. Mention will:
- track alerts in real time when keywords are mentioned;
- reply to mentions in the app;
- share alerts with friends or coworkers; and
- generate reports.
Mention is an alternative to Google alerts that also connects to your social accounts. Mention also looks at web pages, blogs, tweets, Facebook—not just what’s on Google. Launched in April 2012, mention has more than 350,000 users worldwide and has been called “Google Alerts on steroids.”
After a free 14-day trial period, packages start at $29 per month for 3 alerts, 3 users, and and 3,000 mentions. Plans cap out at $799 per month based on the number of alerts, mentions (a mention is a result with your keyword), users and additional services like statistics reporting, sentiment analysis, phone support and data export.
Watch a review of Mention here, or watch below.
Oktopost social dashboard
Oktopost (oktopost.com)
How do you know if your social media is working? Designed specifically to help business-to-business companies manage their social media content across multiple platforms and company pages, Oktopost tracks leads and shows you which networks, profiles and posts are most effective.
You can create and edit posts in calendar format, create and track content marketing campaigns, create and view your Twitter streams by keyword or hashtag (for example), and curate and post relevant articles and posts to and from various platforms in your content dashboard.
You get unlimited posts, which not all social media management apps (like Buffer) offer. And unlike some platforms that focus on brand awareness and engagement, Oktopost helps determine the true value of your social media efforts. Oktopost offers a 30-day free trial and monthly plans range from $55 for a single user and 15 social profiles to $476 for 5 users and 50 social profiles.
To learn more, see this review or watch this Oktopost demo. (Or just watch below.)
VWO (Visual Website Optimizer) (vwo.com) and Optimizely (optimizely.com)
Want to settle those arguments about how to word a headline or which picture works best? Ever wondered which parts of your website work and which don’t? These apps let you to tweak, test, optimize and personalize elements of your website and measure the results. You can identify, create and test changes to the headline, images or copy and get real-time reports to show you how different elements are performing.
VWO Plans start at $49 per month for “Startups” which includes 10,000 visitor tests. Optimizely offers a free basic plan and an option to pay as you go based at $49 per 1,000 monthly unique visitors.
For a 3-minute review of VWO by an Aussie named Dave, watch below or click here.
To see a demo of VWO, watch below or go here.
For a demo on running an A/B test (experiment) by a very enthusiastic Optimizely sales staffer named Adam, watch below or click here.
Care to Share?
Technology continues to give us more tools for tracking, analyzing and justifying our spending and efforts, and for delivering metrics for measuring ROI. What tools are you using? What are your favorite marketing or PR related apps?
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Olson is a marketing and public relations consultant, and principal of Katrina Olson Strategic Communications. She has written for tED magazine’s print edition since 2005, judged tED magazine’s Best of the Best Competition since 2006, and emceed the Best of the Best Awards ceremony for a total of seven years. She can be reached at katrina@katrinaolson.comor via her website at katrinaolson.com.
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