SEOMoz recently purchased the Twitter analysis tool Followerwonk. But instead of selling Followerwonk separately, they decided to bundle it together with their existing web apps. Like two kung fu masters, they have banded together to win the war on low profits.
Master Followerwonk’s Twitter Technique
Followerwonk is a unique tool for analyzing Twitter activity. It has five main functions:
- Searching and analyzing Twitter bios. Followerwonk filters out most spammy accounts, leaving you just looking at the accounts that matter. Followerwonk also offers in-depth tools for comparing and analyzing bios en masse.
- Compare users. This tool is pretty simple, but it can be useful. It generates a Venn diagram that shows any overlap between the followers of two or three Twitter accounts.
- Analyze followers. This is where a FollowerWonk account really pays off. It can analyze the followers of any Twitter account to give you a breakdown by age, followers, activity, language, gender, or geographic location.
- Track followers tab. This lets you track who is following and unfollowing you over time.
- Sort followers tab. This sorts your followers into an exportable spreadsheet.
SEOMoz and Followerwonk’s Combined Technique
These tools are complementary to the SEOMoz Pro toolset. SEOMoz Pro’s weak spot has always been its lack of social media capabilities, but Followerwonk helps to make up for it.
Prior to the merger, I actually hadn’t used Followerwonk. Most of my work is content writing, so I preferred social media tools that freed up my time, like Hootsuite and, of course, SEOMoz. However, I was pleasantly surprised when my SEOMoz account gave me free use of Followerwonk. It has been more useful and time-saving than I would have predicted. Even better, it does not seem to have increased the price of an SEOMoz account, so right now is a better time than ever to get one.
Where is It Going From Here?
SEOMoz’s original web app was a notification system. It sent notifications to you whenever anything unusual occurred in your hits, search ranking, or backlink profiles. However, it did not and still does not perform automatic actions to address any problems that come up.
I feel that this is the next logical step for SEOMoz and Followerwonk. Neither can currently be configured to take automatic action. In addition, neither is compatible with tools that can do automatic actions, like IFTTT. It seems a waste that there are so many ways to monitor your social media profile, but no way to automate any of the tasks.
Already Good Value
Still, even without automatic action functionality, SEOMoz/Followerwonk is already well worth the account fees. SEOMoz has an interesting business model where they try to keep longterm users by regularly introducing new features without increasing the price. This means that SEOMoz is the best value that it has ever been. Sign up now before they realize that they can charge more!
Steve is a Social Media Manager and Google AdWords Certified Individual at TechWyse, an internet marketing firm based in Toronto, Canada. TechWyse specializes in SEO, PPC and Social Media Marketing. You can read more of Steve’s writing at TechWyse.com/blog.