Sotrender is a social media reporting and analytics platform that is both powerful and reasonably priced.

I was first attracted to Sotrender as a social media management and reporting tool because it appeared to offer in-depth reporting and, the element that is so often missing in this kind of platform, proper competitor analysis.

My delight at discovering this aspect of Sotrender however has to be tempered by the unfortunate lack of coverage for LinkedIn, an omission that means the platform is next to useless for B2B businesses, although still very good for B2C operators. Pinterest is also noticeable by its absence and yet that platform is probably the fastest growing of all of them when it comes to commercial usage for marketing purposes.

If, on the other hand, your targeted audience is likely to inhabit or frequent Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube, (although the latter is not really social media platform), then this could well be the platform for you. No it is not up there with the likes of Simply Measured when it comes to in-depth reporting and analytics but it is also a lot cheaper and may well give you everything you need.

My initial test of the Sotrender platform was encouraging and there is plenty there to interest the social media marketing manager, or the person who has been given that to do alongside a lot of other duties and needs a shortcut to producing the necessary reports.

Here is a demo graph showing levels of interaction by social media audience for 4 major car manufacturers:

We can easily see, at a glance, that in the above example, BMW had a big advantage over the others until more recently when Toyota stole the lead from them. Imagine these were your statistics and those of your competitors – easy to see where you need to concentrate your efforts.

Sotrender is full of this kind of good stuff. The best part however is still to come – the cost!

After you have had your completely free trial, (14 days, no credit card required), the monthly fee for a single user account is just £10 – affordable by even the smallest of businesses and a very worthwhile investment now that Social Media Marketing is an integral part of most business’s digital marketing strategy.

As I’ve said, there are some disappointments, but the reasonable cost coupled with the high quality reporting and that lovely competitor analysis make Sotrender a definite candidate for your social media analytics shortlist.