When it comes to choosing a social media analytics and optimization platform, the options are, quite literally, endless. Right off the top of our head, we can think of at least five: HootSuite, TweetDeck, Unilyzer, EdgeRank, TwentyFeet, the list goes on. They all have their cons and pros, and we encourage you to spend a few days with each application to determine which one best fits your needs and budget.

Over the coming weeks, our goal is to review each of the dashboards that we mentioned above in more detail, but we want to start off by highlighting a free app that we think is particularly effective and feature-rich: Crowdbooster.

Crowdbooster advertises itself as the “world’s first intelligent social media dashboard designed to help businesses effectively grow and manage their presence online.” That’s quite a mouthful, so let’s break it down a little. First, we’ll talk a bit about how Crowdbooster works and what it can be used for. Second, we’ll highlight some unique features that we think small business owners will find particularly helpful.

What is Crowdbooster, and how does it work?

Crowdbooster, founded in 2010 by three Stanford graduates, is a virtual dashboard that aggregates and visualizes data from your Twitter and Facebook brand page accounts. For Twitter, you can use Crowdbooster to see how many followers you have, how many tweets you’ve published, how many direct mentions you’ve received, and how many people have re-tweeted you. For Facebook, it will display how many fans you have, as well as the number of comments, mentions, and likes there are on your page. For both Twitter and Facebook (though you are not required to have both), Crowdbooster also has post/tweet-level data, i.e. you can use it to see how many likes, comments, and shares each individual Facebook post received. For Twitter, the tweet-level data includes the number of retweets and the total number of people reached.

You can use this information to determine which types of posts are most effective at garnering the highest number of impressions and facilitating user engagement. Finally, Crowdbooster lets you see Facebook fan/Twitter follower growth over time.

OK, but I can get most of this data directly from within Facebook and Twitter. What makes Crowdbooster so special?

Besides making actionable Facebook and Twitter data accessible from within a single page (especially valuable from a time-saving perspective if you’re responsible for maintaining multiple Facebook and Twitter accounts), there are a few other features that make Crowdbooster stand out among its competitors:

  • Advanced post/tweet scheduling — you can set up Crowdbooster to publish Facebook updates and tweet on your behalf at a pre-determined future time. (Note: you still have to enter the text of the post/tweet). Can be used if you need to push out an update sometime in the future but, for whatever reason, you know that you won’t have immediate access to a computer.
  • Posting time recommendations — Crowdbooster analyzes how your previous posts and tweets have performed in the past and makes recommendations on when you should post/tweet in the future to maximize reach and engagement. The only additional feature we’d like to see (and which an application like EdgeRank does have, is recommendations on what types (i.e. image vs. video vs. link vs) of posts are most effective, not just the best time to publish).
  • Top fan/follower list — You can use Crowdbooster to view a list of your top Facebook fans and Twitter followers over a given week/month or a custom time segment. For top Facebook fans, Crowdbooster looks at the fan’s number of comments, mentions, and likes. For Twitter, you can view your Top Retweeters as well as “influential followers”, i.e. people who follow you who have a relatively high Klout score. Example uses of this data include running a top Facebook fan contest, and reaching out to your influential followers directly if you have an especially important update that you’d like people to see.
  • Actionable reminders and notifications — one of the most handy features of Crowdbooster is its reminder and notification mechanism. Crowdbooster notifies you every time you acquire an “influential follower” (defined as a Twitter use with a high Klout score), and whenever a fan or a Twitter user tries to engage with you, i.e. he/she leaves a comment on your Facebook fan page wall. These reminders minimize the chance of you forgetting to follow up with a possible prospect or a dissatisfied customer.
To be clear, Crowdbooster is not the be-all and end-all solution to consolidated social media management, and many of its features are not entirely unique. EdgeRank, for example, provides significantly more detailed breakdowns of your posts and tweets, but doesn’t have the Top Fans feature. HootSuite lets you create professional reports and schedule tweets and posts in advance, but doesn’t have a recommendation mechanism. Moreover, while the founders of Crowdbooster claim that the data is gathered in real-time, we haven’t seen that be the case. Facebook post-level data, for example, is currently delayed by at least a few days. That may be explained, however, by Facebook’s own Insights experiencing problems.

To that end, while it’s not the best solution for any one single task, Crowdbooster is a particularly effective application because it takes the best features (scheduled posting, recommendations, analytics) from numerous other dashboards and consolidates them into one easily-navigable interface. If you’re a small business owner looking to streamline your social media strategy, we recommend that you give this program a try. Pricing-wise, it’s completely free, but you can only connect it with one Facebook and Twitter account, and there is no live chat or phone support (though you can still request assistance via email). From there, it’s 10 accounts with premium support features for $39/month, and 30 accounts for $99/month.

Small business owners: Do you currently use a social media dashboard? If so, which one? Share your experiences in the comments.