Working with all different sizes of clients has taught me a few valuable lessons, there is one lesson though holds true through the largest organization to the smallest of businesses. People want to be efficient. Well that is the nice way of saying it. One way to look at it is that people are inherently lazy and won’t do anything unless they have to. (See efficient sounds so much better, don’t you think?)
Larger companies that can afford having a social media dashboard created for them tend to examine engagement, stats, mentions, and conceivably this examination leads to them interacting more. I think the reason that people embrace this setup is related to the statements listed above. Basically users that don’t have to log into multiple different sites potentially will be more on top of their social media campaigns.
When working with clients that don’t have the ability to pay for a dashboard beyond the tools they are already using I like to leverage a pretty powerful tool they already have. WordPress through the use of plugins, can allow users to monitor and manage a portion of their social media presence all from one dashboard. While it isn’t as robust as a custom solution it is more than enough to help the average small business owner, active blogger, and marketing person in charge of social media along with other responsibilities.
Check Stats- Google Analytics Plugin
I have had a few clients that are completely interested in the general statistics of their website but feel overwhelmed by Google Analytics. Even with some training they still would prefer to have their stats broken down in a much more digestible fashion. This plugin allows for a good overview of their analytics information including displaying goals that are set up within analytics. While it doesn’t offer everything that Google Analytics brings to the table it is more than enough for clients to see the overall health of their website and monitor where their traffic is coming from, what posts are popular, and how people are finding their website. Besides the dashboard stats overview this plugin gives a breakdown of traffic to each post which is a nice added bonus.
Engagement- Post Rank Plugin
I’ve only been using this plugin for a short time but have enjoyed the experience so far. The Post Rank Plugin allows you to add a handful of features to your WordPress website the most interesting being a dashboard that monitors engagement around your site. Like the analytics plugin this plugin gives you a breakdown per individual posts. This plugin really is a tease for their full analytics package but still gives a client interested in monitoring the pulse of their brand enough information.
Mentions- Configure Dashboard RSS Feeds
This requires a little bit of elbow grease and mapping out what you want to monitor but for clients that are completely adverse to checking a RSS reader and aren’t paying for monitoring software this is a great way to put the monitoring right in front of them. You can configure the news feeds coming into the WordPress dashboard around different monitoring feeds you have set up for clients. Personally I try and tend to keep the most important feeds front and center here instead of pushing everything through the dashboard.
Status updates- Twitter Tools
I am pretty picky when it comes to tools to use for Twitter. None of the WordPress plugins available really give the user the power of a stand-alone client or Hootsuite. However in the interest of giving a client the ability to do as many things in one place as possible you could install Twitter Tools which allows the user to Tweet directly from the dashboard, automatically posts new posts to Twitter, and a few other solid features. Through API configuration it is conceivable that you can use this to update Pingfm.
Facebook Updates- Facebook Dashboard Widget
Really all this is grabbing your Facebook feed information via RSS like I listed above.
The dashboard of your WordPress install is often overlooked when people talk about the power and customization potential WordPress brings to the table. Through plugins and customizing what is already available to you the dashboard can act as a pretty solid social media command center.