What is Social Media Analytics Software? Social analytics software reports and analyzes data to help you engage with your customers on a social level, improve your brand messaging and marketing efforts, and determine which marketing channels are the most effective.
Social media analytics software is a tool that generates reports or displays data showing the effect of one’s social media activity across various channels, including email, search and social networks. Also known as social media monitoring software, social analytics software requires users to have access to their website’s code in order to input tracking codes, or pixels that are embedded into a website.
Social media analytics is often a necessary step in increasing your social media marketing ROI. It allows you to discover what content your target market likes, and improves your marketing campaigns. It also enables you to identify trust issues and formulate effective countermeasures. But how can you fully utilize the data obtained from social media analytics? Answering that question is the focus of this article.
Social Media Analytics Software Definition Looking for social media analytics software definition? Find out the best social media analytics tools 2021. Wondering about types of social media marketing analytics, as well as difference between wikipedia social media analytics and latest social media analytics tools? Read this article now!
What is Social Media Analytics?
Social media analytics is the ability to gather and find meaning in data gathered from social channels to support business decisions — and measure the performance of actions based on those decisions through social media.
Social media analytics is broader than metrics such as likes, follows, retweets, previews, clicks, and impressions gathered from individual channels. It also differs from reporting offered by services that support marketing campaigns such as LinkedIn or Google Analytics.
Social media analytics uses specifically designed software platforms that work similarly to web search tools. Data about keywords or topics is retrieved through search queries or web ‘crawlers’ that span channels. Fragments of text are returned, loaded into a database, categorized and analyzed to derive meaningful insights.
Social media analytics includes the concept of social listening. Listening is monitoring social channels for problems and opportunities. Social media analytics tools typically incorporate listening into more comprehensive reporting that involves listening and performance analysis.
Rival IQ
Similar to many other social media analytics tools, Rival IQ helps you track your social media performance.
Rival IQ will send you alerts whenever your competitors post high-performing content, such as boosting social media posts. This gives you the chance to quickly respond before you start losing a chunk of your market share.
Rival IQ also lets you see what content your audience prefers to see, and helps you discover fresh and relevant content ideas.
Pro: Easy to conduct competitor analysis because of the alerts and the tracking you can implement with this platform.
Con: Rival IQ is competitively priced on a tiered structure which can get expensive if you want additional data.
Price: $199 – $499 USD per month.
DashThis
DashThis is an automated reporting tool for marketers, agencies, and social media managers.
With this tool, you can create one dashboard that includes all your social media data and marketing data, automatically updated every single day!
Native integrations include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube, Google Analytics, multiple SEO tools, and much more.
Pro: DashThis provides time-saving features to help you set up your dashboards in seconds like preset report templates, preset KPIs, and much more.
Con: Users reported that once your dashboards are set up, you can’t change data sources manually, and require third-party assistance for any changes to your dashboard.
Price: Professional accounts start at $109 per month
Sprout Social
Brands like Adidas, Nordstrom, and Edelman use Sprout Social for social media reporting and management.
This tool lets you create social media calendars, schedule posts, and listen to relevant social media conversations.
Sprout Social also provides an agency partnership program, where they partner with agencies — providing them with educational materials, reporting templates, social media marketing strategies. But most importantly, it gives agencies exposure to brands who already use Sprout Social.
Pro: Sprout’s publishing workflow supports multiple channels and has an intuitive link preview mode so you know exactly what you’re posting.
Cons: Sprout has an á la carte pricing that makes it expensive if you want extra data such as more analytics. Also, reviewers experienced hiccups when posting on Facebook and Instagram.
Price: $99 – $249 USD per month; agency plans vary.
Socialbakers
Socialbakers lets you measure your social media performance, benchmark your results against industry players and report your entire social media activities.
Additionally, you can use this tool to publish, create personas, manage your communities, and generate analytics to help you create and optimize social content.
This social media analytics tool uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to find your target audience on social, the content they’re most interested in and the influencers they love. All of these make social media marketing and management easier and more effective for your business.
Pros: Socialbakers makes automating your social media management easy by enabling you to know your popular content, the best times to post, discover new content, and even targeting and recruiting influencers.
Cons: Lower-tier plans offer just a few months of history, which can be limiting if you’re more interested in analytics.
Price: Starts at $200 USD per month.
Channelview Insights
Key benefits: Analyze the YouTube performance of multiple channels
Free or paid: Paid tool (free for Hootsuite Enterprise users)
Skill level: all skill levels
Best for: YouTube marketers and creators, social media managers who run a YouTube channel alongside other social channels
The Channelview Insights App adds YouTube analytics to the Hootsuite dashboard.
With this integration, you can analyze your YouTube video and channel performance alongside all your other social media channels. You can also schedule automatic, regular reports.
Easily see the following metrics in one place:
- Views, engagement, subscription activity
- Video traffic sources
- Audience insights for demographics, geography, acquisition and more
Mentionlytics
Key benefit: Track mentions, keywords, and sentiment across multiple languages on social channels and elsewhere on the web.
Free or paid: Paid tool
Skill level: Beginner to intermediate
Best for: PR and communications teams, brand monitoring teams, product marketers, researchers at small to medium-sized businesses.
Want to get a big picture view of what’s being said about your brand on the internet? Mentionlytics is a great entry into the world of social media monitoring — especially if you run a global business in more than one language.
Other things you can do with Mentionlytics:
- Sentiment analysis
- Find top influencers that follow you
- Filter results by keywords
- Reply to mentions directly
Panoramiq Insights
Key benefit: tracks Instagram analytics, including Instagram Story analytics
Free or paid: Paid (or free for Hootsuite Enterprise users)
Skill level: All skill levels
Best for: Instagram marketers
Alert all the Instagram marketers. Panoramiq Insights is perfect for Hootsuite free users or pro users who want to get deeper insights on their Stories in particular. (Just download the app from our App Library).
Among other things, Panoramiq Insights lets you:
- Analyze follower demographics, including age, gender, country, city and language
- Monitor Instagram account activity (for up to two accounts), including views and new followers
- Find your best posts with view and engagement analytics
- Measure Story views and interactions
Buffer Analyze
Buffer Analyze is our social media analytics tool for online brands that want to make better decisions about their social media strategy and measure their results without feeling overwhelmed.
3 cool features:
- Instagram Stories analytics
- Posting strategy recommendations
- Create professional reports in as few as two clicks
Social media channels:
What analytics you get for free:
- All features for 14 days
- Overview and charts for key metrics
- Posts and Stories analytics
- Audience insights
- Answers
- Easy-to-use report builder
Pricing options: $35 and $50 per month
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a great combination of social media management, listening, publishing and analytics tools. It helps you ascertain what kind of content is working for you, increase the reach of your posts, improve the effectiveness of your ads, and get your whole social media team working in tandem. It has in-depth analytics features that give you a clear understanding of your performance across all social platforms.
3 cool features:
- Customize reports by choosing from over 200 metrics and export them in PDF, Excel, or PowerPoint formats.
- Measure your customer care team’s response and resolution time on Facebook and Twitter.
- Track brand mentions better by integrating with specialized tools like Brandwatch and Talkwalker.
Social media channels:
- YouTube
What analytics you get for free:
- All features for 30 days
- Overview of key metrics
- Unlimited real-time reports
- Team performance measurement
Pricing options: $19, $99, $599 per month, and enterprise pricing
Zoho Social
Zoho is a unique and powerful software suite that has CRM, collaboration, and other SaaS options that take care of your entire operational workflow. Zoho Social is the part that enables you to understand your social media audience and how they engage with you. You can listen to multiple channels from a single dashboard and respond in real-time. You can also dig deeper into each post to measure their reach and engagement.
3 cool features:
- Create intuitive reports from a huge list of pre-defined segments based on demographics of your fans, influencers, or people reached.
- Get a breakdown of the content formats that your connections are engaging with and compare it to those that you publish.
- Compare fans vs. other people reached for every post.
Social media channels:
What analytics you get for free:
- All features for 15 days
- Stats for individual posts
- Analytics for content type, best time to post, etc.
Pricing options: $10, $25, $200, and $300 per month (annual pricing)
Sendible
Sendible is a social media management tool with considerable monitoring, listening, and reporting features. It gives you ready-to-use insights into post content and engagement, mentions, and audience profiles across digital channels. Sendible also lets you track what’s being said about your brand on various web and social platforms, and identifies mentions that might need your attention or response.
3 cool features:
- Create presentation-quality reports with a drag-and-drop builder.
- Measure response times and track team performance in responsiveness.
- Get notified of reactions and engage with multiple social profiles across networks from a single dashboard.
Social media channels:
- YouTube
What analytics you get for free:
- All features for 30 days
- Report builder
- Reports for each social media channel
Paid options: $29, $99, $199, and $299 per month
Why is social media analytics important?
IBM points out that with the prevalence of social media: “News of a great product can spread like wildfire. And news about a bad product — or a bad experience with a customer service rep — can spread just as quickly. Consumers are now holding organizations to account for their brand promises and sharing their experiences with friends, co-workers and the public at large.”
Social media analytics helps companies address these experiences and use them to:
- Spot trends related to offerings and brands
- Understand conversations — what is being said and how it is being received
- Derive customer sentiment towards products and services
- Gauge response to social media and other communications
- Identify high-value features for a product or service
- Uncover what competitors are saying and its effectiveness
- Map how third-party partners and channels may affect performance
These insights can be used to not only make tactical adjustments, like addressing an angry tweet, they can help drive strategic decisions. In fact, IBM finds social media analytics is now “being brought into the core discussions about how businesses develop their strategies.”
These strategies affect a range of business activity:
- Product development – Analyzing an aggregate of Facebook posts, tweets and Amazon product reviews can deliver a clearer picture of customer pain points, shifting needs and desired features. Trends can be identified and tracked to shape the management of existing product lines as well as guide new product development.
- Customer experience – An IBM study discovered “organizations are evolving from product-led to experience-led businesses.” Behavioral analysis can be applied across social channels to capitalize on micro-moments to delight customers and increase loyalty and lifetime value.
Branding – Social media may be the world’s largest focus group. Natural language processing and sentiment analysis can continually monitor positive or negative expectations to maintain brand health, refine positioning and develop new brand attributes. - Competitive Analysis – Understanding what competitors are doing and how customers are responding is always critical. For example, a competitor may indicate that they are foregoing a niche market, creating an opportunity. Or a spike in positive mentions for a new product can alert organizations to market disruptors.
- Operational efficiency – Deep analysis of social media can help organizations improve how they gauge demand. Retailers and others can use that information to manage inventory and suppliers, reduce costs and optimize resources.
Conclusion
Social media analytics are the set of techniques to track and analyze social media data from social networks and social media sites using sophisticated technologies, tactics, and methods.
Social media analytics are powerful tools we can use to better understand what’s happening on social media. These tools help us decide the best course of action to take by providing the data we need to inform our decisions. In addition, they provide ways for us to track the reach and impact of our efforts across multiple channels, so we can optimize more effectively. Social media analytics tools 2021 play an important role in your marketing strategy.