Back in July 2013, I wrote What Exactly Is Social Proof And How Do Bloggers Use it. In that post, I included a couple of free online tools to check the social share stats of any post or page. Today I’m going to expand on that and list four extremely simple free online tools that will show you the number of social media shares and social reactions of any blog post or webpage; whether it’s yours or not. There are paid social stat tools with much deeper insights and functions but this post will focus on zero-cost tools that anyone can use.
Why Should You Care About Social signals?
Social Influence – Social proof plays a huge psychological role in the influence of both your content and its author. Social shares are just a small part of that social proof equation but it is helpful to understand what content is being shared the most and where it’s being shared. This can help you track important sharing trends so you can see what’s working and what needs more attention. It can also be handy to see how well your content compares to your competition in regard to social media influence.
Search Engine Placement – Most experts now believe social shares play a role in Google rankings and search placement. This is a debate that will continue but I’m convinced that social signals do play a role is search results and it definitely does with Google’s personalized search. I believe social shares outside of Google Plus will, if not already does, factor into Google search algorithm.
Don’t get left behind with Google Plus – I also believe Google, as biased as it seems, considers G+ shares and signals more important than other social networks. If you’re not spending time on Google Plus, building an Empire there, you’re going to be in the same boat as this poor soul that’s just starting to use Twitter – one of the top referring social sites of most blogs. Don’t let personal bias keep you in the dark ages when it comes to social media.
Free Online Tools To Check Social Share Counts
#1 – ShareTally
Update: I’m glad I added the Plus sign (4+) to the title because in the Hangout Video (embedded below), Sheryl Loch introduced another social stat tool that instantly climbed to my favorite. ShareTally gives more stats than the other free online tools listed below and it comes with a bookmarklet. Just look at the social stats that ShareTally displays:
- Facebook – Number of Likes, Shares, and Comments
- Twitter – Number of Tweets
- Google – Number of +1s
- Pinterest – Number of Pins
- LinkedIn – Number of Shares
- StumbleUpon – Number of Stumbles, Likes and Lists
- Reddit – Score, Ups and Downs
- Buffer – Buffers (Schedules)
- Delicious – Number of saves
- Inbound.org – Number of votes
- Pocket – Number of saves
- The Web Blend – Number of Votes
- ScoopIt – Number of Scoops
- Blog Engage – Number of votes
- BizSugar – Number of votes
- Blokube – Number of votes
- Xing – Number of shares
- DesignFloat – Number of Floats
- DZone – Number of Ups and Downs
- Vkontakle – Number of shares
#2- SharedCount
SharedCount is second on the list because it’s one of my favorites, among the four FIVE free tools listed here. SharedCount will give you the following social stats:
- Facebook – Number of Likes, Shares, and Comments
- Twitter – Number of Tweets
- Google – Number of +1s
- Pinterest – Number of Pins
- LinkedIn – Number of Shares
- Delicious – Number of Bookmarks
- StumbleUpon – Number of Stumbles
Multi-URL Dashboard – Another cool function of SharedCount is their Multi-URL Dashboard. Here you can add multiple URLs and compare the social shares at a glance. You can see an example where I added three URLs, our VIP List, our latest post and our Social Proof post. By the way, SharedCount’s Multi-URL Dashboard also includes Reddit.
#3 – How many shares?
It doesn’t get any simpler than How Many Shares; there are literally only two images, one form and two words on their front page. I love the clean results layout, which is just a popup overlay. How Many Shares gives the same social share stats as SharedCount; Facebook likes, shares, and comments, Twitter tweets, Google +1s, Pinterest pins, LinkedIn shares, Delicious bookmarks and StumbleUpon stumbles.
#4 – Social Counter Pro
Social Counter Pro, only gives you basic social stats for Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and a combined total. Social Counter Pro also allows you to download the results as a CSV file.
#5 – LinkTally
LinkTally.com is another free online social share count tool that shows Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, as well as a combined total of all social shares. At the time of my testing, there seems to be a Google+ disconnect on LinkTally.com, showing zero shares on any post or page tested. Hopefully that’s just a temporary glitch because I love the clean results layout.
#6? – BONUS – An Android App – Social Share Count Tracker
Yes, there’s an app for that! I’ve installed an Android App that will check social share counts on my mobile phone. It’s called Social Share Count Tracker and works the same way as the above tools except it’s on your Android mobile device.
Social Share Count Tracker Tip: You don’t have to open the app directly to check a page or post’s social share counts, once installed, you can simply click Social Share Count Tracker via the share feature when on that URL in your mobile browser.
How Do I Check Social Share Counts? (Video)
Action Step
So now you have four free online social share count tool options and an Android app. First, I want to caution you not to get too wrapped up in these numbers. I still insist numbers do count but it’s not something to obsess over. Chose one tool URL ( I recommend SharedCount) and toss it into your bookmarks so it’s handy when you need it (Alternatively, you can bookmark this post for future reference). If you’re an Android user and you think the app will be something you’ll use, install Social Share Count Tracker as well.
Speaking Of Social Shares…
Yes, numbers do count and I’d love to see you show some social signals with this post. You’ll find social share buttons above the post and, if you’d like, feel free to comment below. Hey, you can even comment via Google Plus! Just click the Google Plus tab below and share your comment. 🙂
Related Social Media Post:
- How To Find Social Accounts When Your Brand Is Already Taken
- Repurposing An Old Twitter Account For A Nice Start On Your New Brand
- How Can I Consolidate All Of My Social Media Posts?
- What Exactly Is Social Proof And How Do Bloggers Use it
- The Future Of Social Media And Why Speed Is of The Essence
- Kristi Hines on Blogging, Social Media Promotion, and More (Video Interview)
- Psychological Influence of Social Media Marketing
- Guerrilla Marketing Or Social Media? Pepsi Or Coke?
- Social Media Cross Promotion At Its Best
- Is Social Media Marketing A Waste of Time? I Think Not
- How To Use Social Media Monitoring To Grow Your Blog
- Social Networking Is Like Politics
About Brian D. Hawkins
Hi Brian,
Super tools here. Numbers do count quite a bit as long as we do not chase them. Social proof rocks. Always remember we are dealing with people, and making personal connections, as you note.
Thanks for sharing the count checkers here. Good stuff!
I couldn’t have said it better myself Ryan, I agree with every word. 😉
Brian, these tools are really cool – but I wish one could check all your pages instead of just the homepage. I do see you can add them in yourself but with over 300 posts it would take some time and for retail sites with 1200 products or more that would be time consuming too. I wonder if there are paid versions for those?
Thanks for sharing these, I had not been to them before and love checking out new tools like these. Have a great rest of the weekend.
That would be awesome Lisa, we could see every post at a glance like that. I think that’s a great opportunity idea for someone that wants to run with it.
Hey Brian, I’m actually building a tool that does this. It helps you discover what people are engaging with for any topic by showing hard data such as FB likes, twitter shares, etc. Would love your feedback, and you’re welcome to add it to this post if you feel it’d be useful. It’s at BuzzSumo.com.
Thank you, Brian. They all seem very useful! In the era of social media it’s necessary to track the social stats of our posts.
Thanks Dianna 🙂
Wow, these are handy websites. It always take my site a while to refresh the count it seems like. This will even help me to track maybe my homepage shares and who is typing my link into their social network Manually. – Scott Craighead
Homepage shares are something many of us ignore Scott. We don’t have the share buttons, for the most part, on the homepage so it’s tough to know how well we’re doing. When I check my homepage with those tools above I can see we need to work more on sharing the main page.
Thanks Brian. These tools sound promising and surprisingly I never knew about them! I use flares plugin and it gives me the counts on page so I really didn’t bother. But yes now I am curious to know about these tools.
Social sharing has become one of the most crucial aspects when we consider traffic generation (the sticky kind of traffic) as well as to boost search engine rankings!
You’re right Jane, It’s amazing at how important social sharing and networking has become for us. I’m just glad we have the social sites and tools available.
Hi Brian,
I never realized how much social shares mattered. But what I’m starting to learn is that they do matter, especially if you want to get good rankings from the search engines.
These are some great tools that will help us keep track of our social shares.
Have a great day.
My most referred sites are the social networks Susan, so it’s a huge part of our traffic strategy. You look like you’re doing well though, I was just looking at your income earnings post for September . 😉
Hi Brian !
When i read the title of this post i though that this post would have info on woorank .You mentioned the tools that i have never heard of .I’ll try out sharetally right now . ShareTally seems to be one of the finest online tools available . Thanks for sharing these tools with us mate .
-Pramod
That’s very nice to hear Pramod, we’re glad to help. 🙂
The sleeping giant is Google+. I made an off-the-cuff remark about wanting someone to go with me to #igniteburlington and when I typed in the search engines later that day for the event, my little post was ranked 2nd in the Google Search under “ignite burlington vt.” w/ my Google+ page. Thanks for paring it down to 1 Social Media counter (“Shared Count.”) You can blow a whole day just entangled in Social Media. It’s important, however, remaining mindful of the best practices for your business is tantamount to creating effective social media campaigns. Great info – many thanks!
Hi Sarah, Giant? Yes, Sleeping? Not so much. lol Google is huge and it’s important to encourage sharing there. You bring up an important point with using hashtags, they can really make a huge difference.
You are trying to get me back to getting addicted to check my stats umpteen times a day… I swear… lol. No, this is definitely a great little list. ;D
No need to worry about stats on a great resource like Blondish.net Nile, your posts will always be shared. 🙂
Nice list. With this, I should work on my twitter and my other social networking sites.
I like your list on social networking sites tracker.
I am grateful to bump into this post. Thanks, Brian for sharing this info. 🙂
I hope it helped Amelia, thanks.
Hello brain,
Trust me you save my lot of time. I am using sumall.com for my All starts in Smo. Now i can easily use this tools for my domains. Thanks For the help.
SumAll is a very cool analytics tool Oliver.
Thanks for sharing, Brian! It’s definitely a wise idea to keep track of your social presence online, especially since your online image is the modern-day first impression of you or your business. Those tools are exceptionally handy, especially for a small business that can’t afford the extra money for social tracking software.
For those in need of a good online reputation boost, I highly suggest Brand.com’s Command Center. It’s affordable for small businesses to keep track of their online image. You can learn more about it here: http://www.brand.com/blog/brand-com-command-center-glance/
Hope it helps!
I’ll check it out James. Normally, I would have removed that but since our buddy Zac wrote it, I’ll let it fly. 😉
I have been using opensiteexplorer premium version. It does give you a number of shares on Facebook and twitter. You might also want to check out buttonspace.com for the same. I often use to share links with other poeple/
Thanks Krunal, Open Site Explorer is one of those tools I was referring to with much more detail but buttonspace.com is just like those I listed and seems to add a cool StumbleUpon site exporer to it. Pretty cool.
Hi Brian,
Thank you for a wonderful informative article!! This is such a great list! I will be sharing with my blog community. 🙂
I’m glad you liked it Nancy, and thanks for sharing it. 🙂
Just tried the Share Tally tool and that is pretty good!
It matches the figures I have on my Firefox SEOquake toolbar so seems pretty legit.
Will give the others a go too.
I noticed the consistent numbers among all of them too Mark, that’s pretty reassuring.
Hi Brian,
I found your blog in Triberr and love collecting social media tools. I use ShareTally but never heard of the rest of these. I’ll be adding them to my collection for sure. Thanks for the post, I shared it.
Good deal Mary, I just added you to my Triberr list on Twitter. We’re already following each other. 🙂 I appreciate you stopping by and taking the time to comment.
Wow I’m gonna have to find a way to fit in checking these out, great list Brian.
I’ll have to see if they have any APIs to play with 🙂
Hi Andy, This is a surprise and a pleasure to see you here. I know the programmers that built those tools don’t want you doing anything with those APIs, you’ll put them out of business. lol That’s like Mike Tyson going against a high school boxer, they wouldn’t stand a chance. 😉
That was a good collection. Thanks for sharing these tools. I also found some new social bookmarking site from your list above to make post get published their. Thanks again.
After read many of the content on your blog these couple of days, so i genuinely like your personal style of writing a blog. I saved it to my personal favorites web page listing and will be checking back again shortly.
Hi Brian,
Awesome list, thank you.
the search engines algorithms definitely take into considerations the amount of social shares of your website, post etc ..
this is now a certain, social media have won itself a huge role in affecting search results.
the logic is very simple, the experts said while an automated predictable search engine can be tricked with unnatural linking methods, the social media on the other hand is driven by people, and people only share content that relevant and important to them,
so the search engines, performing there priority tasks which is to highlight what is important to people, now take more into considerations the amount of social shares.
Many thanks and Best wishes!
Hi Brian, Great list of tools to check social shares. You’re right, it’s very important to find out which posts are shared most on social media.
I use Social Metrics Pro, a paid plugin on WordPress. I can see how many social shares each article gets and I can also sort by social network. For example, I can see which article was shared most on Twitter, which one got the most traffic from Pinterest, etc. What’s really interesting is that no two social networks have the same article as the most popular. It seems that what is popular on one social network may not be popular on another.
These tools really help show you why it’s important to spread the word widely!
Thanks Sheryl for bringing up ShareTally! The Hangout and this blog post are exactly why I created ShareTally – to try to improve upon the other tools that were already out there. I’m glad you all find it useful!
Hi
Thanks for the wounderful tool its helped me lot to increase my blog traffic and interact with visitors.
We also build a small Social Signals Checker: http://www.social-signals.info
Greetz from Germany