A Review of 5 Free Social Media Dashboards

Looking for a way to simplify your social media marketing process? Social media dashboards are a great way to more efficiently manage multiple social networks in one place. I’ve touched on social media dashboards in the past; however, until now, I’ve never really gone into much detail about what’s out there, how they work, and the unique features they have to offer. Here is a list of some of the veteran applications that have been around almost as long as Twitter itself, as well as a few fresh dashboards on the scene.

TweetDeck

TweetDeck is an application strictly meant for monitoring your Twitter accounts. It was recently purchased by Twitter, so you know this one’s not going anywhere anytime soon. TweetDeck has a very user-friendly interface and allows users to set up multiple feeds. For example, you can set up separate columns for your home feed, @mentions, retweets, and direct message all for one Twitter account. Plus, if you manage multiple Twitter accounts, you can recreate this setup for each account. You can also schedule your Tweets if you’re going to be out of the social scene for a while and need to automate your Tweets. My favorite TweetDeck feature: The audible “chirp” when someone mentions you in a Tweet.

HootSuite

HootSuite incorporates Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter into one dashboard. Most people would agree it’s nice to be able to view all of your social activity from one application. You have the ability to monitor all of your feeds, send Tweets, and update your Facebook status, right from the dashboard. Like TweetDeck, HootSuite also has scheduling abilities if you ever want to automate your social media posts.

One minor limitation of the free version of HootSuite that I have come across is that only one person can use HootSuite per Twitter account. So for example, if your company has several people using the same Twitter handle, only one of those people can use HootSuite for that Twitter account. If you’re willing to pay for the professional version of HootSuite, this problem is easily solved.

Seesmic

Seesmic is an alternative to HootSuite for compiling all of your social media feeds into one dashboard. Seesmic allows you to monitor Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Foursquare. Similarly to HootSuite, Seesmic allows you to update your Facebook page directly from the dashboard. However, I have read articles claiming that Facebook posts made from a third-party application such as HootSuite or Seesmic are subject to a lower EdgeRank than if you were to update your status directly from Facebook. Since nobody knows the algorithm Facebook uses to determine a post’s EdgeRank, it’s hard to tell if that is in fact true.

CoTweet

The free, or standard version of CoTweet is a Twitter dashboard with a focus on a more team-oriented approach to Twitter. For example, many companies want everyone within the organization to be able to participate in social media, but giving employees individual Twitter handles could be counterproductive in building one large following. CoTweet’s collaboration tools allow multiple users to Tweet under the same Twitter handle in an organized way. CoTweet also has scheduling capabilities and e-mail alerts for @mentions. You can add Facebook accounts to the dashboard if you’re willing to upgrade to the enterprise version of CoTweet.

MediaFunnel

MediaFunnel is another great social media dashboard with an emphasis on collaboration. If you’re looking to outsource your social media marketing plan, you may be a bit apprehensive about handing your company’s message over to someone who is essentially still a stranger. MediaFunnel has different user capabilities, which are broken up into administrator, publisher, contributor, and guest. So if you want to keep the social media ball in your court, assign the role of Admin to yourself, and set up your dashboard so that your manager can submit Tweets and Facebook posts, but they have to be authorized by you before they go live. MediaFunnel also has a monitoring feature so you can keep track of what’s being said about your company online using specific keywords.

Of course this list could go on for days, but I chose the social media dashboards that are the most reputable and offer the most useful and diverse functionalities. Everyone will have their own dashboard preference based on interface preferences and what they want to accomplish with their social media marketing plan. Feel free to try out a couple of these dashboards before you settle on one. You want to make sure that the dashboard meets all of your needs and that you feel comfortable with the one you choose.