Free Yet Amazing Tools: FollowerWonk
SEOmoz1 recently acquired FollowerWonk2 and made it available for free to its Pro members ($99/month) alongside its current array of SEO tools. It is important to mention that quite a few of its functions are free to external users. To current members, it represents a completely free service, while for potential ones it further adds value for money to its package. Nevertheless, the 30-day free trial offers many opportunities for small and medium website owners as it sheds light onto the social aspect of your business.
FollowerWonk is tailored to Twitter in order to carry out an effective marketing campaign. Its main functions are searching bios, comparing users, analyzing them, tracking followers, and sorting them into characteristic-based groups. The first tab enables you to search for influential people in industry niches, for example, journalists3. This is extremely valuable as it quickly identifies people with a loyal following and strong outreach. The tool can work with geographic location, name, URL and even minimum activity. This enables you to connect to specific company employees and tap into previously unknown markets. Furthermore, it is perfect for organizing local events, such as a guest speaker and book signing, by facilitating marketing and even logistics.
Comparing users4 is extremely useful when evaluating your business performance against that of your competitors. Usually industry experts follow a number of the main businesses in the industry and you must ensure that your company falls in this group. The option enables analysis of group intersection so that you can distinguish loyal audiences and those that might be looking to change their supplier. FollowerWonk supports exporting the list in Excel so that you can further fiddle around with the data. The main aim will be to identify the crucial Twitter users.
Probably the most important feature is the ability to analyze one’s followers by geographic location, age, sex, occupation, and other criteria. These summarize key information such as peak times when most followers are online, and can help track the percentage of followers online at any given point. These two are crucial to successful Twitter marketing because sharing when everyone sees the content vs. simply sharing at any old time makes the difference between viral and “meh-okay-whatever.” The information will further help when determining the optimal amount of tweets so that you continuously engage your audience and still leave enough time for your core activities. You could automate the process with “auto-tweet” software if peak times fall outside normal business hours.
Naturally, it is reasonable to track the progress of your marketing campaign. To this end, the Track Followers tab gives invaluable information concerning how popular your profile is, and also gives a running total of followers. It will show dynamic graphics that highlight the net changes among your followers on a daily basis so that you identify the positive and negative tweets. Usually, big positive changes are brought about by guest appearances and accessing new audiences, while big negative ones are associated with doing something extremely unacceptable (bored people leave in tens, not hundreds). Therefore, you can note what most disappointed your readers.
Finally, it is best to fully develop your relationship with your audience (and with those you follow as well). The Sort Follower function is ideal for this as it neatly orders your followers according to influence, tweets, their followers, etc. This way, you can identify your major listeners and groups and focus on them. Furthermore, you can spot potential clients or even partners and decide to produce content specifically for them. Additionally, you can check whether those you follow also follow you back. This will enable more advantageous relationships with the industry and further increase your reach.
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