Check out the Free Tools for Social Media Analytics list to view resources available for social media analytics, learn about how to use them, and discover features on which to focus.
This guide contains a list of the most popular tools for social media analytics. The collection is created by close-knit group of social media analysts, who know exactly what people want.
Followerwonk
Followerwonk helps you explore and grow your social graph. You can dig into your Twitter analytics to learn who your followers are, where they’re located, and when they tweet. The app creates actionable visualizations that enable you to compare your social graph to others, as well as find and connect with influencers.
Buffer
Buffer is a great tool that will help you in two main ways. You can write a few of posts at a time and choose which social profiles to send them to, and then Buffer will spread them throughout the day or week so that you don’t have to be at a computer all the time in order to have a social media presence. It also shortens your links and tracks engagement so you can see how many people clicked on them.
SumAll
SumAll helps guide your decision making by connecting all your key online marketing and e-commerce data in one interactive chart. Features include real-time data monitoring, goal tracking, viewing new vs. returning customers, and trendlines that project future performance.
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.
UTM parameters
Key benefit: See how much web traffic and conversions your social media channels and campaigns generate (to be used with a web analytics platform like Google Analytics).
Paid or free: Free tool
Skill level: intermediate
Best for: all social media managers
UTM parameters are not a standalone social media analytics tool, but they are essential in helping you set up Google Analytics (or another web analytics platform) to best measure social performance.
Put simply, UTM parameters are short pieces of code appended to the links you share on social media. They very precisely tell you how many people interact with your content and end up on your website.
In the screenshot above, the UTM parameter is everything that comes after the question mark.
UTM parameters aren’t essential if you’re only concerned about reporting on social media performance in terms of engagement, followers, etc. But if you want to take it to the next level, UTM parameters + Google Analytics will give you more precise data on which social media content and channels drive traffic and conversions.
Pro tip: You don’t need to know how to write code to include them on your social media posts. If you use a social media management platform like Hootsuite, you can automatically generate UTM parameters in seconds.
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
Keyhole
Keyhole offers various trackers that help you monitor your events, campaigns, influencer activity, brand mentions, and industry-specific social conversations. It lets you track hashtags, keywords, and accounts, for which it provides a wealth of information such as reach, top posts, share of voice, and more for your brand or competitors’.
3 cool features:
- Predict your campaign’s performance with machine learning and make changes accordingly.
- Analyze people’s sentiments when they engage with your posts.
- Manage influencers’ accounts and permissions, and track their performance from one place.
Social media channels:
What analytics you get for free:
- All features for seven days
- Audience insights
- Sentiment analysis
- Compare brands
- Trends identification
Paid options: $49, $99, $199 per month, and custom pricing
Rival IQ
Rival IQ lets you track a number of different companies and compare their performance across not only social media platforms but also SEO. It also analyzes Facebook and Instagram ads, and features historical data up to 24 months. This way, you can pinpoint the overall digital strategies that are working for your competitors and learn from their tactics.
3 cool features:
- Compare your profiles to others in your industry in terms of social metrics, hashtags, and content quality.
- Integrate Google Analytics to get a complete understanding of your customers’ journey.
- Improve your Facebook and Instagram ad performance with automated insights.
Social networks analyzed:
- YouTube
What analytics you get for free:
- All features for 14 days
- Facebook ads reports and alerting
- Facebook and Instagram insights reporting
- Facebook boosted post analytics
- LinkedIn and Google analytics
Paid options: $199, $349, and $499 per month
Conclusion
We offer free social media analytics tools for small businesses, activists, and community organizers developing projects with colleagues and volunteers, who need to collect data that can help with decision-making.