External Performance and Reputation Management Tools

The analytics tools offered by LinkedIn are very limiting. While they can offer a great deal of information about your LinkedIn network and your reach within that network, that is only a small part of your online brand building and reputation monitoring efforts. Chances are people are talking about you and sharing your LinkedIn content, updates, and conversations beyond LinkedIn.

For many people, LinkedIn is just one piece of their online brand- building and marketing efforts. Whether you’re trying to build your own reputation or your business reputation, there are many more tools, websites, and social destinations that can help you track your performance. If you have bigger goals for your brand, business, and career that extend beyond the LinkedIn network, then it’s even more important that you conduct some tracking outside of LinkedIn.

There are a variety of free and fee-based tools that you can use to monitor your online reputation, your growing influence, and your success that extends beyond your LinkedIn efforts. The remainder of this section introduces you to a number of different tools that offer different types of data at different price levels. There are many more tools than those listed in this chapter, but the following tools represent some of the most popular options to get you started and many are free or offer free trials.

HootSuite: HootSuite is a social media dashboard available at hootsuite.com, which can be used by multiple contributors. It’s free to use and can help you manage multiple social media profiles, including your LinkedIn profile, either from your desktop or through the HootSuite website. The free version of HootSuite gives you access to a variety of reports, so you can track click-through statistics and more. When you upgrade to a paid account, you get even more features and reporting capabilities.

Klout: Klout is a tool created to measure online influence. Anyone can register for a free account at klout.com. Just follow the steps provided after you register to connect your Klout account to your LinkedIn account, Twitter account, Facebook account, and more. You can view metrics related to your online activities and how people share your content to get a better understanding of how influential you are online. If you’re trying to build your brand, business, or career both on LinkedIn and across the internet, then working to raise your Klout score is a good idea!

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Sprout Social: Sprout Social is a tool that makes social media management easier. You can get a free trial at sproutsocial.com. If you like the tool, you can register for a subscription. There are currently two subscription options offered, with more features available for a higher price. However, both plans are very affordable ($9 per month and $49 per month at the time of this book’s writing). Sprout Social was designed for small businesses and individuals who want to manage and monitor their brands. It also offers features to help you measure and track your success.

Trackur: Trackur is a social media monitoring tool. Visit trackur.com to learn about current packages, pricing, and features. All paid packages include tools to help you manage your various online profiles, monitor your online reputation, and measure the influence of your audience as well as the extent of your audience reach. At the time of this book’s writing, a 10-day money-back guarantee was offered with plans starting at $18 per month.

Radian6: Visit radian6.com and you’ll see a lot of big brand names using the company’s tools and services to monitor and track their social media activities and performance metrics. Radian6 is one of the most popular social media monitoring and tracking companies, with tools that enable you to listen, measure, and engage with customers and the online audience. As one of the leading companies in the social media tracking space, Radian6 tools and services come with higher price tags than those listed earlier in this chapter. For example, the Radian6 Dashboard product starts at $600 per month. However, if your business is extremely serious about using the social web to grow, a Radian6 investment might be worthwhile.

No matter what tool you use, remember that no tool is perfect. Look for a tool that offers the features you need at a price you can afford. You can always upgrade to a bigger, better, and more expensive tool later. At first, you’ll find all the data you need within your LinkedIn account, but as your online presence and reputation grow, you’ll need external analytics tools to gather an adequate amount of performance data to make strategic decisions for the future that will position you to reach your goals.

The Least You Need to Know

• LinkedIn offers data to help you track the performance of your profile, network, Company Page, and ads.

• LinkedIn analytics tools are not very detailed and not perfect.

• Look for trends related to your growing audience, reputation, and online reach to assess your success on LinkedIn and across the internet.

• For more detailed metrics, you need to use a free or fee-based external tool.