I work mainly with small businesses in my consulting. The one area I seem to have the most problems is finding information for reporting purposes. I know many of you out there use Radiant6, and other tools, but having a much-limited budget, I have to put together information where I can get it. Which can be very time consuming. The one area that I have had problem finding good analytics from is Twitter. And I got some good news from Hub Spot’s Diana Freedman today!

Facebook has a decent insights page. It shows you pretty much the basics that most of my clients are interested in, like fans, engagement and media consumption. Twitter on the other hand it’s been a pain, for me to find consistent follow information. I would love a graph like in Facebook where you can see your followers over time. I have found many online tools but needed one that is inexpensive or free.

HootSuite has some great analytics in it, and has helped me do link clicks, a great over view, but you can’t export the data into a report. This would make my life so much easier.

It was announced that Twitter is releasing an analytics dashboard. Hub Spot reported this today that it is to be out in the next mouth. Twitter said specifically by the end of 2010. If you want to see some screen shots, go over to the Hub Spot post.

I think analytics are important and showing some results, but social media takes time and its an ongoing event and not a campaign. Once you start you cant’ stop. I hope this new information will help me and other small business providers with some great info. Also, I hope it can be tied into HootSuite and other tools!