In today's "Wojdylo Wednesday" article, +Jesse Wojdylo discusses the third-party tools available to track your progress on Google+ while we wait for native analytical tools from Google+.
From my early days of Google+, I wanted to track my progress in terms of reach and engagement. This can be nearly impossible without the proper tools. At this point, Google does not offer analytical tools for a personal Google+ profile. There are some analytical tools for a page but they have to be installed as part of HTML code. Most novice webmasters have yet to take advantage of these tools because they take time to understand and install. I am a numbers person so seeing my reach and engagement increase is important to me. Fortunately, there are a few third party tools that are available.
CircleCount
CircleCount was one of the first websites I found that allowed me to track the progress of my personal profile, pages and communities. CircleCount has been on top of most of the updates as they were the first to track the growth of communities back in December of 2012. To make CircleCount even more attractive, the folks that run it are very active on Google+. Even when I had less than 8000 followers on Google+ they were willing to answer any questions I had. If you are looking to check out the growth or your profile or any profile over the course of the last two years make sure to use CircleCount.
GPlusData
I was introduced to
GPlusData almost a year into my Google+ career. At the time I had close to 15,000 followers and I wanted to see how I ranked in terms of reach. Something that GPlusData offers is a ranking factor in terms of geography. I can find out who the top 10 influencers are in my state based on number of posts, number of +1s or number of shares. This has helped me to reach out to some of those that are quite active on Google+. I don't worry so much about where I rank as much as I like to find others that are using the product consistently and effectively. If an individual is in the top 20 in number of posts in the state of North Carolina they are probably using Google+ more than the average Joe.
AllMyPlus
AllMyPlus is another tool that was introduced to me later in my Google+ career. In fact, I was not aware of AllMyPlus until I had well over 100,000 followers. This tool allows users to see how many total posts, +1s and shares they have received over the course of their Google+ career. Anyone that has followed me on Google+ for more than a few weeks knows I am a very active user. It is nice to see my total level of engagement grow over the course of time. Once hitting 50,000 total +1s I stopped checking the data. I think it is safe to say what I do works.
Conclusion
These are three great tools to track progress on Google+. There are many users that are not worried about the numbers or where they stand in comparison to other Google+ users. I would be lying if I said I did not care. I like to see that what I am doing matters. The level of engagement from my following helps me to see what works and what does not work. I do not make every Google+ decision based on stats but it did allow me to see what was most well received by my following. Give some of these tools a try. For much more on my progress to over 700,000 followers on Google Plus please check out my
Wojdylo Social Media news page.
