Frequently Asked Questions

Being a strong advocate for Simply Measured who can’t stop talking about this tool, I do get quite a few questions, some of which are recurring. Hence, I thought I’d list them below.

How Far Back Does Simply Measured Go?

This depends on the various social channels:

• Facebook: historical data goes back to several months, although for pages that have been running for quite some time (+2/3 years), Simply Measured can give you historical data from the beginning of the page;
• Twitter: historical data up to the last 1,500th tweet you posted. This is not an awkward number that Simply Measured pulled out of a hat, but it’s the maximum allowed number of tweets that any tool can retrieve from Twitter’s API.
  • This is not to say that Simply Measured can’t give you historical data beyond your 1,500th tweet. Simply Measured is that have access to Twitter’s firehose, which is Twitter’s continuous stream of tweets from the very beginning. Access to the Firehose is hard to come by, unless you have a Certified Product that can provide that to you, at an extra cost due to the intricacy involved.
• Google+: same as Facebook;
• Instagram: tracked moving forward;
• YouTube: tracked moving forward;
• Monitored Keywords (social listening): Simply Measured separates live tracking from historical tracking. What that means is that when you create a monitored keyword report, it starts tracking for mentions from that moment. However, if you do want historical mentions, you’ll have to request that at an extra cost.

I highly suggest that you connect all the data sources you need as soon as you get your trial (these data sources will carry forward when you transition from trial to full product), just so you don’t miss any of that useful data.

My Trial Has Expired and I Need More Time – Will My Data Still Be There?

Sure – take your time, your data isn’t going anywhere. Your data is still saved (including any reports and alert settings), and your collections will continue to catch your data, so when you finally sign up for a subscription it’ll be like you never left.

Does Simply Measured Measure Sentiment?

I’m very, very particular (read: pedantic) when it comes to sentiment, as you may have noticed by my lengthy article around social sentiment and sentiment analysis. That’s why I often get asked about Simply Measured’s sentiment analysis.

Simply Measured does track sentiment using a sentiment score. Its official definition is,

“Each piece of content has a score between -100% and 100%. Based on its score, we then categorise the content as: Negative, Neutral, or Positive.”

In technical terms, they use a graded keyword-based sentiment score to your content.

Sentiment analysis is available at an additional charge, and it can add an extra layer on top of your engagement reports. Not only can you see a breakdown of your brand tweets and mentions, but also their respective sentiment scores, to see which posts drew in more positive comments as opposed to negative ones.

Additionally, you can also segment your audience, to see who within your audience contributes to positive or negative conversations about you. You can also play with a few more segments, using both Klout influence and sentiment, to see the following proportions:

• high influence and positive sentiment
• high influence and negative sentiment
• low influence and positive sentiment
• low influence and negative sentiment

 What does Simply Measured offer me?

Simply put: you can’t manage the data you don’t measure, and Simply Measured wants to help you measure that data for you.

Your social goals should be in line with your business goals, and if you can measure your business goals accurately, why not do the same with your social efforts? That’s why you need a tool that is especially designed to bring the best out of your social efforts, while showing you how you’re performing.

Does Simply Measured have anything for me as a taster?

They sure do:

• You can use some of the reports Simply Measured makes available for free;
• You can see the full list of reports that Simply Measured makes available for full subscribers here;
• You can apply for a 14-day free trial of Simply Measured here.

Besides that, Simply Measured offers a few free tools, including a Twitter Analysis and Spam Checker tool, to see if your account has been flagged as spam by anyone (see here).

I Don’t Have the Budget!

Sadly, I hear this a lot. Compared to other “premium” tools that offer social analytics, Simply Measured’s pricing gives you value for less than you’d expect. However, not everyone has the budget, and that’s totally understandable. Unfortunately, in some cases this is due to senior managers not believing in social media enough to put money behind it.

Here you have 3 options:

• Start with less: your best option will be to connect your main accounts, and leave your secondary accounts and any competitors off your pricing plan to begin with. By doing so, you’ll be placed on a cheaper price plan. Over time, once you’ve proven to your team, department, and ultimately yourself that Simply Measured is the tool for you, you’ll have a stronger case to get more budget to expand your pricing plan and add in any other accounts.
• Build a business case: you need to justify the need for a social analytics and its cost, especially since there are several free social analytics tools out there. Build a business case to support your case – this is something your Simply Measured account manager can help you with.
• Comparison: surprise your team and managers with a report from Simply Measured for a week or two, and then switch back to your usual reporting. Make a note of how long those reports take you, differences in quality, quantity etc. While the differences are noticeable, you need to give managers and your whole team a taste of what you’ve all been missing and a taste of what you will be missing without Simply Measured. Especially if the alternative means using free tools at the expense of time, quality and reliability, you have a strong case to go for Simply Measured.

Where Can I Read More of Simply Measured?

Their blog (simplymeasured.com/blog) is the best place to read more about them. I always appreciate companies that not only provide software for marketers, but also a regularly updated blog to inform their customers of any updates but most importantly to educate, share opinions and any findings that marketers may find interesting. Simply Measured does a good job at that, and I’ll even say that the blog alone does a pretty good job at selling the software (although it doesn’t replace the friendly account managers).

Why is Simply Measured your #1 Choice?

There are a million reasons why I recommend Simply Measured, online and offline. Ultimately, it comes down to 10 reasons:

1. Simply Measured believes in context, unifying social and web analytics. Simply Measured clearly understands that the perfect social strategy is one where social objectives are in line with the business/brand objectives. To aid that, Simply Measured provides not only account-specific and platform-specific reports, but also complete snapshots to include multiple data points, social and web.
2. Simply Measured is very thorough – you don’t often see a social analytics tool that has an eye for detail, and that is representative of Simply Measured as a company.
3. Simply Measured believes in valuable, exciting statistics: numbers don’t have to be boring, and the word “Excel” shouldn’t scare anyone. I’m a lover of beautiful pixels, and that’s something I mention often, especially on my blog – it’s not just about all the data you can hold, but also about how you present it. Simply Measured does it properly with a gorgeous interface that keeps you coming back.
4. Simply Measured can help you be more proactive with social listening alerts – one of the many reasons why this tool can be a PR professional’s best friend.
5. Simply Measured is not just a Social Media Analytics tool, it’s a Digital Analytics Powerhouse, merging social analytics, web analytics and social listening into one.
6. Simply Measured are always on the ball. Here’s one perfect example: Vine debuted on the App Store back in January 2013. 24th January to be precise. 20 days later,Simply Measured announced support for Vine analytics, AND, , they also announced that Vine reports are going to be free for all. I repeat – free Vine reports for everyone, whether you have Simply Measured as a trial, as a purchased software, or you don’t have it all – “YOU get a Vine report, YOU get a Vine report, and yes – YOU TOO can get a Vine report”. It took Simply Measured only 20 days to look at Vine, see what meaningful metrics can be taken out of it, determine which of those metrics are actual Key Performance Indicators, tap into the available APIs, correlate those metrics with Twitter performance, test and make sure it’s ok for public consumption, and write a blog post about it.
7. Simply Measured is very customisable and it adapts to your needs. For instance, if you want to score your social posts, Simply Measured can help you with that. If you want to present all your exports in your own theme, you can do so too.
8. Simply Measured has an eye for detail – while the free Twitter analytics give you a graph with a daily breakdown of follower and unfollowers for the last 30 days, Simply Measured treats you with an even more granular view in its Excel export, going down to hourly and minute breakdowns. Other Simply Measured reports offer a similar level of granularity that rivals other social analytics tools in the market today.
9. Simply Measured can be your competitor’s worst enemy! Ok, maybe that’s a bit too dramatic, but this tool can help you understand your competitors’ strategy and help you compare yours to theirs and see where you stack up. It’s also intelligent enough to provide you with useful data-driven recommendations. Which takes me to point #10…
10. Simply Measured is completely data-driven: you feed it data, it examines that data (thoroughly), and the output includes useful recommendations based on your social efforts, and beautiful reports based on your performance. Simply Measured is way above “fluffy data”, while it provides you with the answers to the important questions: “So what does that really mean?” and “So what shall we do now?“.