When it comes to online performance, a single, or even several pairs of eyes sometimes aren’t enough to keep track of engagement, competitors, traffic, reach, and more. That’s where our favourite marketing tools come in extremely handy- and so we at The Practice were keen to round up our favourites.

Analytics is at the core of any digital campaign, and first on our list is one that makes website monitoring all that easier. Quill Engage is the tool every marketer needs, if just simply for convenience. The platform generates weekly Google Analytics reports directly to your inbox, meaning you’ll never have to manually export data again. It keeps you up to date on site traffic, growth, and traffic sources, in an easy-to-read format. And when it comes to an all-rounder social media analytics tool, we struggle to find anything better than Simply measured. Simply measured is the definitive social media analytics tool we recommend for monitoring, measuring and social listening across all major platforms. The programme offers comparative and individual reports on each channel, including generated and scheduled reports. It also integrates with Google Analytics, meaning you can not only track your progress on social media, but your website too. We believe Simply Measured to be a more thorough and in-depth way to analyse your social performance, track engagement, and with the added benefit of comparison, which in-built tools such as Facebook Insights and Twitter Analytics don’t offer.

When it comes to Twitter, analysis can sometimes be more difficult to undertake due to the overwhelming amount of frequent content. For navigating a large volume of tweets, SocialBro has to be our favourite tool for analysis and engagement. The platform is made for understanding users’ audience and influencers- what we love about this tool is its ability to help you determine your target audience, with thorough information about those around you. And it also gives advice on the best times to tweet to specific audiences- something no amount of independent analysis can fully decipher. As an added bonus, the platform’s benchmarking tool also allows you to compare your performance and strategy with competitors. For added help with follower analysis on Twitter, we love SocialRank, which groups your most engaged and active followers, meaning you can track their activity, offer specified targeting, and offer special treatment if desired.

One of the most crucial elements of any marketing campaign apart from tracking your performance, audience and competitors, is tracking your individual hash tags. One of our favourite tools for this job is Tagboard, which compiles all video, text and image content from social media sites featuring the specific hash tag you want to track. The platforms it pulls from include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google Plus, and Vine, ensuring your have a pretty complete overview of the conversations happening around your unique hash tags or generic ones. If it’s data you’re specifically after though, we recommend Talkwalker for its insights into age, gender, location, and other demographics, centred around your own, as well as your competitors’ hash tags. But if you simply want an overview of the hash tags you use, and your best performing ones, you can’t beat RiteTag, which gives you a complete multi-channel analysis. With this information in mind, it’s never been easier for users to refine their hash tags in order to improve their performance and extend their reach.

Which social media or marketing tools have helped your online campaigns? And which takes your number one spot? We’d love to hear your choices, so please tweet to us @PracticeDigital and share your comments on our Facebook page.