There’s a lot of social media tracking tools out there. Some of them are free and some of them cost money. Which one should you use? Let us help you with that decision. There’s also a few surprises we’ve discovered along the way…
Are you looking for the best social media tracking tools? Have you ever heard of free social media tracking tools? Social media is huge nowadays, and it’s not just for personal use. Organizations are using it to do marketing, develop branding, share news about their company, and so much more. If your company is on social media, you have to have effective tracking tools.
Google Analytics 
One, seemingly unrelated social media analytics tool is Google Analytics.
Even though Google Analytics has been mainly designed to analyze the web performance of your website, it also offers plenty of insights about social media channels, for example:
- Sources of social media traffic to your website: Discover what social media platforms bring the traffic
- Goals completions for your social media posts: Assign goals and analyze their completion
- Conversions from social media posts: Assign revenue to conversions in social media
- Assisted social media conversions: See if any of your social media platform contributed to a conversion
Google Analytics is free.
BuzzSumo
Another, this time paid, social media analytics tool I personally really, really, really like is BuzzSumo.
What is BuzzSummo? It’s a content analytics tool – among many features such as brand monitoring, social listening or competitor research, it also provides social media analytics:
- Content discovery: Find most shared content in social media networks. It’s a powerful feature for content writers!
- Content analysis: Find social media data about particular topic of interest: content type, top shared domains, top social media platforms, etc.
- Influencer marketing: Find top influencers in a niche or industry based on social media reach or engagement.
BuzzSumo offers free trial.
Brand24
Correct, that’s us – one of the best social media monitoring tools. Says who? Says Buffer!
Brand24 is a social media analytics tool starting at $49 a month and offers a free, 2-week trial (no card required).
The tool does web and social media monitoring and analytics across multiple channels. You can monitor keywords related to your company, for example company name, website address, company hashtag, marketing campaign name or hashtag and discover how they perform in social media channels in terms of social media reach, engagement, volume of mentions, influential sources mentioning them, etc.
- Social media analytics: Analyze the performance of your keywords on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube, including volume of mentions, social media reach, sentiment analysis of your keywords.
- Metrics of engagement: Track the engagement the social media posts, marketing campaigns and content generate
- Metrics of influence: They’re great for influencer marketing as you can discover the influence of social media authors talking about your company or any topic
- Trending hashtags: Find trending hashtags on Instagram for any keyword
- Hashtag analytics: See how many times a hashtag was used on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook
Agorapulse
AgoraPulse is one of the greatest social media analytics tools that helps you identify your best content and see what users need. And we all know that social media sucks time like a plague… But AgoraPulse is good medicine for it.
This tool is a huge timesaver for social media marketers. It helps you execute virtually all your social media tasks in one place.
Pro: You’ll be impressed by Agorapulse’s Twitter reporting functionality. The tool generates specific reports for your Tweets, mentions, retweets, and favorites as well as other engagement stats. This makes social listening pretty easy for you.
You can also post or schedule content across all your profiles at once. Plus, the tool’s chrome plugin helps you do all this at once — saving you time.
Con: Agorapulse’s listening is only available for Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. So, if you’re interested in tracking LinkedIn and Pinterest you’ll have to use another tool.
Pricing ranges from $99 – $199 per month.
Oktopost
Oktopost is focused on helping B2B brands manage, monitor, and measure all of their social media activities from a single platform.
Do you have global social media teams? Manage social media teams in more than one country all from one platform.
Social media management, social employee advocacy, and social media promotions are some of Oktopost’s best features.
You can measure your social media marketing performance and optimize your efforts accordingly.
Pro: One huge Oktopost plus is that you can integrate other applications such as Google Analytics to access even more detailed social media marketing insights.
Also, did you know Oktopost has recently partnered up with Keyhole? Powered by Keyhole, Oktopost now offers advanced social listening capabilities as well as in-depth research and analytics required to remain competitive.
Con: Unfortunately, the platform does not have the ability to cross-post between networks.
Price: Contact Oktopost for pricing.
Hootsuite
Effectively track topics that matter—then respond quickly
Description: Hootsuite’s monitoring tool is part of its entire package of social media management tools. If you were to subscribe to one of their plans, you can also enjoy other features such as scheduling and analytics.
With Hootsuite, you can set up unlimited streams of social media content based on your mentions, selected keywords, hashtags, or locations. Furthermore, Hootsuite integrates with more than a hundred apps to help you do more from its dashboard.
Platforms supported: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google+, blogs, forums, and more
Prices: Free, $19 per month, $99 per month, $499 per month, and enterprise pricing
Sprout Social
Intelligent, real-time social media monitoring with Sprout
Description: Similar to Hootsuite, Sprout Social’s monitoring and engagement tools are part of its social media management software. Sprout Social has two separate features for social monitoring and engagement.
In the Smart Inbox, you’ll get all your social media mentions and messages. With the discovery feature, you can search for particular keywords on Twitter or Instagram (for example when someone mentions your brand without tagging your social media profile).
Platforms supported: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Google+
Prices (per user): $99 per month, $149 per month, and $249 per month
Keyhole
Keyhole helps you monitor your Twitter and Instagram accounts – you can look at keywords, hashtags, URLs, and usernames. You can both see data in real-time and historical information, while you can also view heat maps that show you activity levels in certain parts of the world.
Twitter Counter
Twitter Counter is a tool used to track your Twitter stats. You can track millions of Twitter users and stats, and there are also buttons and widgets that can be added to websites, blogs, and social media profiles to show the number of followers and the most recent Twitter visitors. You can also see retweets, mentions, and historical data, you can add multiple accounts so you can keep track of them all in one place and you can create custom reports and graphs, and download .pdf reports.
Conclusion:
Social media strategists find it almost impossible to measure the performance of their social media strategies without good tools to help them with this. While some tools are paid, there are also some free social media monitoring tools that you can use to measure your progress.