What are free social media analytics tools? Social media has become a preferred channel for marketers to connect with their customers and that is why businesses of all sizes use social media analytics tools to track the performance of their social media accounts.
Social media analytics tools are the latest trend in social media marketing. These days, you can use all kinds of statistics to evaluate your social media performance. But with so many available tools, it’s often hard to sort out the best from the rest.
New social media analytics tools are emerging to help you track the performance of your social media marketing strategies. One of the charges of being a business owner is to know what tools will help your company succeed on social media marketing. This article reviews four best free social media analytics tools 2021 to help you rank your website in search engines and add value to your business. Similar with other top monitoring tools, these four free social media analytics tools 2021 are helpful for measuring the efficiency and consequence of your presence in mainstream social media platform.
Social media analytics is the practice of gathering data from social media websites and analyzing that data using social media analytics tools to make business decisions. The most common use of social media analytics is to mine customer sentiment to support marketing and customer service activities.
Why is social media management so important for businesses?
- Providing customer care services through social media:
Customers appreciate when brands reply to their grievances on social media platforms; it makes them feel more connected to the brand.
- Increasing your credibility:
Brands that have a presence on social media platforms are seen as more trustworthy by customers than those who are not. When customers see other buyers actively participating in discussions involving the review, feedback, or after-sales service of a brand, they become sure of the brands’ authenticity.
- Creating a story around your brand:
Your brand should not only satisfy your customer but should also create the emotional connect by inspiring them. No other avenue provides the ease of spreading a story around your brand as social media does. Sharing Instagram stories Facebook live, sharing videos of other happy customers and other engaging content helps you to communicate the story or the idea behind your brand.
- Disseminating information in a creative way:
The growing popularity of social media can be attributed to its creative potential. Brands that use social media for disseminating information regarding new product releases, company news, promotional news, research, or any other expansion plans are likely to get more traction than any other medium.
- Two-way communication:
When businesses use social media for reaching their customers, it allows them to get the customers feedback, views, or opinion about their action, which is not possible with most of the traditional modes. Social media ensures the willing participation of your customers in the business process. Social media has become a two-way information process.
Sotrender
Sotrender is a social media analytics tool that provides you with social media insights that help you improve your social media activities. The reports from this tool give you real-time updates on how your content is performing on different social media platforms.
Sotrender also gives data on sentiment analysis by monitoring the comments on your brand content! That’s not all, the tool also allows you to keep a watch on your competitors. This data will surely scale up your marketing strategies.
NetBase Quid
NetBase Quid is a marketing intelligence platform that also has social media analytics solutions. The platform stresses much on listening to what the audience is saying about your brand on different social media channels. NetBase helps you discover audience behaviour and preferences.
The platform also has solutions for analysing the audience. Get data on your social media audience and create effective marketing strategies!
Followerwonk
Followerwonk is completely dedicated to Twitter analytics. This social media analytics tool will give you all the social media data for Twitter. Right from comparing Twitter accounts to target new influencers to analysing your audience on Twitter, this tool helps with everything Twitter-related.
Minter.io
Minter.io is perfect for brands that only want to analyse their Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter presence. The platform gives advanced insights which also includes Hashtag analysis.
It also allows you to benchmark your performance in comparison to your competitors.
Tailwind
Tailwind offers both scheduling and analytics solutions. The platform is centric to Pinterest and Instagram. Tailwind’s analysis feature lets you find trends on the two platforms, allows you to track crucial KPIs, and measure follower growth.
These social media insights can help you create fruitful strategies for Instagram and Pinterest.
Union Metrics
Union Metrics is a social media marketing intelligence platform that offers analytics for Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. The social media analytics and intelligence tool has customised features for profile analysis, keyword listening, campaign reporting, and competitive analysis.
Choosing the right set of social media analytics tools can be a tough task. Make sure to keep in mind what you intend to track with these tools! Additionally, don’t forget to check whether the tool has the features you are looking for.
Socialbakers
Marketers around the world can never go wrong with Socialbakers. Regardless of size or industry, Socialbakers takes analytics and social listening to the next level with predictive AI analytics, content performance, and side-by-side competitor summaries – all in one customizable dashboard.
What makes Socialbakers so unique is the one-calendar publisher, team collaborative community management, and a content creation hub. So there’s no need to flip through different systems just to get the results you need.
Special features
- Deep Content Intelligence – It’s the one place for marketers to see a comprehensive overview of their content performance, bringing data and creativity closer together. With automation, marketers have more room for strategy building and content creation.
- Performance Prediction with Content Grading – For organic engagement, Socialbakers’ Performance Prediction algorithm grades posts from A+ to D — allowing marketers to spot patterns in engagement and replicate their best-performing messages, images, and content types.
- Audience Insights – Understanding your audience is important for any marketer. Marketers can access deep insights into their audiences with detailed breakdowns from interactions, activities, and interests across all their social media channels.
Awario
Awario takes online brand reputation management seriously. Marketers can track online mentions from any connected social platform, allowing them to act fast and reply directly from their feed.
Awario can let marketers hone-in on the right conversations online, and they can act fast if one of those conversations turns into a disaster.
Special features
- Mentions & Quick Responses – Marketers can find trending conversations and engage with mentions right from their feed.
- Identifying Influencers – As influencer marketing grows, Awario can help marketers track influencers by age, gender, and demographics.
Talkwalker
Need campaign measurements and advertising effectiveness? Marketers have turned to Talkwalker to get the full scope of social conversations about their brand across multiple social networks.
Special features
- Trending Score – Talkwalker created a unique trending score to show marketers the latest trends right away without searching. That way, marketers can stay up to date with all the social media trends online.
- The Virality Map – Marketers can track posts from a different perspective, allowing them to see posts with details and trends from all over the world in a visual graph.
Sprout Social
Sprout Social helps marketers connect with audiences and scale social media results at a global level. The platform focuses on social media management, data, and employee advocacy.
It’s a versatile tool that can cover all aspects of social media marketing in one place. Sprout Social can simplify social media analytics that’s easy for any marketer to share across all teams.
Special features
- Smart Inbox – Sprout Social created a special inbox that allows marketers to collect messages sent by people to their social accounts, allowing marketers to view all messages in one spot.
- Twitter Automation – Marketers can measure Twitter performance with suggested replies to incoming tweets and Twitter feedback. They can also streamline conversations and see quantitative scores of audience interactions.
Iconosquare
When it comes to publishing metrics, Iconosquare can get marketers the analytics they need to improve their social media campaigns.
Scheduling posts is smooth and user-friendly, and the platform provides additional insights and recommendations that Instagram and Facebook don’t offer.
Special features
- Best Times to Post – Instagram’s algorithm is not chronological order, so the timing of posts is more crucial than ever. Iconosquare provides suggestions for the best times to post on social media based on engagement rates.
- Hashtag Tracking – Hashtags are important for any trending conversations on social media. Marketers can use Iconosquare to discover the right hashtags for their next posts.
Hootsuite Analytics
Key benefits: Performance data from every social network in one place with easy-to-understand reports
Paid or free? Paid tool
Skill level: Beginner to intermediate
Best for: Business owners who run their own social media, social media managers at small-to-medium sized businesses, marketing teams
Most social media management platforms have built-in analytics tools. We hope you’ll forgive us for saying Hootsuite’s reporting capabilities are our favorite. But it’s the tool we know and love best.
Imagine Twitter analytics, Instagram analytics, Facebook analytics, Pinterest analytics, LinkedIn analytics all in one place. Hootsuite Analytics offers a complete picture of all your social media efforts, so you don’t have to check each platform individually.
It saves time by making it easy to compare results across networks.
Social posts metrics:
- Clicks
- Comments
- Reach
- Engagement rate
- Impressions
- Shares
- Saves
- Video views
- Video reach
- And more
Profile metrics:
- Follower growth over time
- Negative feedback rate
- Profile visits
- Reactions
- Overall engagement rate
- And more
Best time to post recommendations:
Ever spend a bunch of time writing and designing a social post only to have it fall completely flat? There could be a lot of reasons for that. But one of the most common reasons this happens is posting at the wrong time. A.k.a. Posting when your target audiences are not online or not interested in engaging with you.
This is why our Best Time to Publish tool is one of the most popular features of Hootsuite Analytics. It looks at your unique historical social media data and recommends the most optimal times to post based on three different goals:
- Engagement
- Impressions
- Link clicks
Most social media analytics tools will only recommend posting times based on engagement. Or they’ll use data from universal benchmarks, instead of your unique performance history.
Other cool things you can do with Hootsuite Analytics:
- Customize report templates for only the metrics you care about
- Get reports on your competitors
- Track the productivity of your social team (response times, and resolution time for assigned posts, mentions, and comments)
- Monitor mentions, comments, and tags related to your business to avoid PR disasters before they happen
Hootsuite Analytics is included in the Hootsuite professional plan, with you can try for free for 30 days.
Google Analytics
Key benefit: See how much traffic and leads flow to your website from your social media channels
Paid or free: Free tool
Skill level: all skill levels
Best for: all social media professionals should be familiar with Google Analytics, but especially those who work for a web-based business
You’ve probably heard of Google Analytics already. That’s because it’s one of the best free tools to use to learn about your website visitors. And if you’re a social marketer who likes to drive traffic to your website, then it’s an invaluable resource to have in your back pocket.
While it’s not a social media reporting tool per se, you can use it to set up reports that will help you:
- See which social media platforms give you the most traffic
- See what content drives the most leads and traffic on which social networks
- Get to know your audience with demographic data
- Calculate the ROI of your social media campaigns
With these data points, you’ll be able to get the most out of your social media campaigns and effectively strategize for the future. No social media strategy is complete without Google analytics.
Key Considerations
Other factors to take into consideration when picking the best social media analytics tool for your business include:
- Integration with other systems. Although the analysis and reports generated by analytics tools can be useful in and of themselves, you may want to integrate those reports with other marketing software (e.g., marketing automation software or campaign management software). These integrations can easily facilitate responses to events on social media.
- Stand-alone software vs. a software suite. Although you can purchase stand-alone social media analytics tools, they are also frequently offered as one part of a larger suite of social media management software. If the features of this software appeal to you—including tools that will help you increase and improve your social media presence—then you may want to look into a bigger system that includes that extra functionality in addition to analytics.
- Cloud-based software vs. on-premise software. In the past, most software was hosted on-premise, meaning that a business would have to house and maintain the hardware on which the software would run. In recent years software distribution has become much simpler, through cloud-based systems that don’t require any hardware or IT maintenance. Chances are extremely high that this is how your social media analytics tools will be distributed to you, but you’ll want to clarify that with your vendor in order to be sure.
Conclusion
Social media analytics is all about tracking and measuring the various metrics so that you have a good idea of how well your strategies are working. With any kind of social network or campaign there is no need to do guesswork, to know whether it was a good strategy or not. All you need to do is track the user generated traffic and leads, as well as measure the performance of each social media network you are using.
Social media has become an effective channel to connect with customers and grow your brand. However, the number of social channels available today makes it difficult to track everything all at once and keep it all organized.