Social media analytics tools are a necessity for small and large businesses. An increasing number of companies are using social media to market their brands, products, and services. Every business needs to track their social media progress, determine what’s working and what’s not, and be able to make quick changes when necessary. If you’re looking for the best social media analytics tools 2021 or are curious about cheap social media analytics tools, keep reading.
I have seen many people post that social media is just for promotion in 2020. I will tell you about the best analytics tools for social media. It’s a must to choose a proper social media analytics tool to run a successful brand on social platforms. A powerful analytics tool helps you make smart decisions at an early stage of your business in the right direction by analyzing your marketing campaigns results and audience behavior.
The best social media analytics tools are slightly different for everyone, but one of the most important things you should do as a business is to track your numbers. You can’t learn from results if you don’t collect the data in the first place! In this article we will discuss some of the best free and cheap social media analytics tools available in 2021
Analytics tools are very important in social media marketing. There are various tools available to help you analyze and report your overall performance on social media. Here we list some of the best free tools you can use in various industry as well: Buffer, Google Analytics, Facebook insights, Brand24, etc
What Is Social Media Management Software?
Social media management software is crucial for businesses that want an effective social media marketing strategy. After all, social media is now used by more businesses than ever as a way to curate and engage with clients while spreading messaging about their products and services.
However, social media management programs also help businesses save time and money. Where you would otherwise have to manage each social media platform separately, social media management platforms let you create and schedule posts across multiple platforms in one place.
You can also access valuable engagement tools like idea generation, analytics, and integration with other software you use. Social media management software can even help you manage and reply to comments, gather user information for sales funnels, and target specific audiences with online ads to boost sales.
Sprout Social
The need for cross-channel social media analytics makes Sprout Social an easy choice for No. 1 on our list.
Whether you want to dive deep into your performance on a single network, or quickly compare results across multiple networks at once, Sprout has you covered.
Track Facebook Page impressions, tally up Twitter link clicks, measure Instagram follower growth, evaluate LinkedIn engagement, asses content performance on Pinterest and much more, all from the same location.
Then quickly organize and share your data with easy-to-understand, presentation-ready reports. Or take it a step further with Premium Analytics and create your own custom report, tailored to your organization’s KPIs.
Sprout comes complete with both templated and customizable reporting options, meaning you have multiple ways to not only gather essential social metrics, but truly understand what they mean and present them to others including only the metrics you care about most and reducing the noise.
From tags to trends and everything in between, Sprout puts powerful analytics at your fingertips. You can even access data related to internal team performance and competitor activity to help you improve customer care or benchmark your brand against others in your industry.
If you’re responsible for your brand’s social media analysis, you have a lot of explaining to do.
Because your business’ ability to build a following and convert customers means answering questions backed up by data.
For example, which social network deserves the bulk of your time and budget? What are your top-performing pieces of content? What’s the overall impact of your brand’s social presence on your business?
On top of answering these questions, according to Sprout’s 2019 Social Index, 63% of marketers are expected to discuss social ROI with their bosses to justify their spending for campaigns. Even still, measuring the ROI of social media is still a thorn in the side of so many marketers.
It doesn’t have to be, though. Whether you’re laser-focused on a single channel or need an all-purpose solution, the right social media tools can give you the analytical answers you need to grow your brand.
HubSpot
With HubSpot’s analytics tools you can tie social media performance to business and revenue growth. Whether publishing directly through HubSpot, or publishing using other tools or while on the go, you’ll be able to report on the success of your social strategy across every channel. You can also compare the performance of multiple social channels to measure campaign performance.
HubSpot’s social analytics tools offer expansive graphs and visuals that break down the numbers by specific platform features, like audience, session lengths, and impressions.
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What’s important to highlight is that HubSpot’s social analytics tools is part of HubSpot’s Marking Hub, their all-in-one inbound marketing software. This means that using the platform you’ll have insight into the entire customer journey, not only social media-specific metrics. You’ll be able to see which marketing tactics are working best for your business, how are they impacting your bottom line, and learn about your social media campaigns ROI.
That makes HubSpot an excellent choice for businesses whose marketing teams want to keep all campaign functions in one place.
TapInfluence
The boom of influencer marketing has created a need for social media tools specifically tailored for influencer campaigns.
Enter TapInfluence, an analytics platform which removes many of the “what-ifs” related to influencer marketing. This includes metrics such as reach, engagement rate and the potential price tag behind any given influencer.
In short, TapInfluence highlights relevant influencer metrics in black and white so brands can better understand whether or not a potential relationship makes sense prior to outreach.
Influencer campaigns shouldn’t be a black hole of ROI. In addition to individual influencer metrics, the platform also measures the performance of overall campaigns against industry benchmarks.
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)
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.
What Is the Most Effective Social Media Platform?
Different types of businesses may be better off focusing on specific social media platforms. A company that offers a budgeting app might do better with Meta since clients can click directly on ads, for example, yet a travel brand or a luxury clothing brand might do better with Instagram since it lets them lure users in with visual appeal.
Some say that Meta has a major advantage over other businesses, mainly due to the extraordinary opportunities you have when it comes to advertising to millions of potential customers in one place. Meta also offers incredibly targeted advertising tools, including the ability to create and manage multiple audiences based on customizable factors. However, the best social media platform can also depend on how businesses rely on and utilize ads.
At the end of the day, a social media management platform like the ones that made our ranking could be used to help you identify which platforms provide you with the best results. This is because these software programs offer analytics and reports on engagement, which can help you determine where your time, energy, and dollars should be spent.
Conclusion
Social media has grown from a niche marketing tool to a vital part of the marketing mix for organizations that want to reach new audiences. It offers unprecedented transparency into customer behavior, and is now providing real-time data on the pulse of consumers across different demographics and industries.
Social media analytics tools are significant for small businesses, corporations and entrepreneurs. It helps them a great deal to drive the site traffic and get potential online leads. It makes things simple for the business owners, who can track their performance based on different metrics.