Most marketers and business owners who are serious about social media spend a lot of money on tools to monitor their accounts. They want the functionality and valuable data that third-party tracking tools provide them with. The main problem with these social media analytics tools is that they’re really expensive. However, if you look around, you’ll notice there are some cheap social media analytics tools out there that may suit you just fine, especially if you don’t need advanced features. For example, the free Facebook analytics tool will help you monitor your engagement rate, conversion rates, demographics, audience growth etc.
There is an abundance of free tools available for people who want to increase their social media presence. These tools, which allow you to track your campaigns and reach more people online, mean that you will save money by not having to fork out for expensive social media analytics tools. But with so many tools on the market, it can be hard to know which ones are the best. That’s why we’ve compiled this list of the top best free social media analytics tools on the market to help you find what you’re looking for.
With Cheap Social Media Analytics Tools, you get beautiful graphics and easy to understand analytics on your social media content. Learn how to track performance across your social media accounts to see which content is performing best. You can even compare posts against industry averages to get a good grasp of who is beating you and who is lagging behind. By analyzing patterns, you can adjust your strategy to improve engagement rates and online reach over time!
Social media analytics is something we use on a daily basis to optimize our content, careers and online business. This means that we are all looking for the best (not necessarily cheapest) tools on the market. In this article we take a look at the most inexpensive social media monitoring, analytics and listening tools from around the world. Additionally, we examine how you can use them in your own business.
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.
BuzzSumo
Although not strictly a social tool, BuzzSumo is an awesome resource for analyzing the social engagement of any given piece of content.
If you want to see how many shares your latest blog post received on Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest, BuzzSumo can provide you with that data. You can also monitor the performance of content competing for relevant industry keywords, allowing you to see how your content marketing campaigns are stacking up against the competition.
Social media remains one of the top distribution channels for content. By analyzing social shares, you can see which types of posts receive the most engagement and use that data to inform your own content strategy. BuzzSumo can also help you understand variables in top-performing content such as length, publish date and headline type.
Snaplytics
The popularity of ephemeral content on social media speaks for itself.
Snaplytics focuses solely on analytics for Snapchat and Instagram Stories. The platform looks at metrics such as open and completion rate, allowing brands to see where story engagement peaks and likewise at what point viewers drop off.
The need to optimize story-based content is something that modern brands should overlook at their own peril.
Although Snapchat might have fallen out of favor for some brands, bear in mind that the network still boasts hundreds of million active users among millennials and Gen Z.
Meanwhile, Stories represent one of the most-engaged methods of Instagram promotion. Going beyond native analytics is a smart move for brands who want to craft more compelling Stories or eventually run story-based ads.
Curalate
More and more brands are trying their hands at direct social selling.
Platforms such as Curalate serve as a hybrid storefront and analytics tool for companies looking to maximize their sales from Instagram
Chances are you’ve seen a branded or unbranded “Like2Buy” link in the wild. Major brands like Bose take advantage of Curalate for social sales – take a peek at their Instagram bio.
Upon clicking through, we’re led to a social storefront where users can shop directly.
Curalate’s platform empowers businesses to understand which products score the most clicks and sales. This can directly inform your future campaigns and product strategy as you learn which sort of posts click with customers.
Additionally, Curalate tracks product tags and mentions, making it a cinch to spot and analyze the performance of user-generated content campaigns.
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
Hootsuite Insights powered by Brandwatch
Key benefits: Analyze brand sentiment and customer demographics in real time, alongside all your other social media performance data
Free or paid: Paid tool
Skill level: Intermediate to advanced
Best for: Social media professionals, PR and communications teams, small to large social media teams
Hootsuite Insights is a powerful enterprise-level social listening tool that doubles as an analytics tool.
It goes beyond Hootsuite Analytics, tracking your earned social mentions so you can measure social sentiment and improve customer experience.
It also analyzes data about your audience demographics like gender, location, and language. You can compare demographics across networks, or look at the aggregate picture of your audience for all networks combined.
This is a tool that really tells you a lot about your audience — and how they feel about you. It can tell you whether a spike in mentions is a victory or a disaster. And it can help you capitalize or avoid either one, respectively.
Brandwatch
Key benefits: Track and analyze data from more than 95 million sources, including blogs, forums, and review sites, as well as social networks
Free or paid: Paid tool
Skill level: Beginner to intermediate
Best for: PR and communications teams, social media marketers who focus on engagement and brand monitoring
Brandwatch is a powerful tool with five easy-to-use social media analytics report templates:
- Summary: A high-level view of social conversations about your brand, competitors, or keywords.
- Trends: A report on the conversations and accounts influencing a specific topic or hashtag, including mentions per hour or minute.
- Reputation: A checkup on sentiment trends you might need to monitor or address.
- Influencers: A report to help you identify influencer marketing opportunities relevant to your brand and analyze their activity.
- Competitor comparison: Benchmarking social media data for conversation volume, sentiment, and share of voice.
Talkwalker
Key benefits: Monitor conversations from more than 150 million sources to analyze engagement, potential reach, comments, sentiment, and emotions
Free or paid: Paid tool
Skill level: intermediate to advanced
Best for: social media managers, PR and communications teams, brand monitors, product marketers, researchers
Talkwalker offers analytics related to social conversations beyond your owned social properties, including:
- Mentions
- Brand sentiment
- Important influencers
- Author lists
You can filter by region, demographics, device, type of content, and more.
Talkwalker is especially useful to spot activity peaks in conversations about your brand. This can help you determine the best times for your brand to post on social media.
Social Report
Social Report provides an overview of your activity on multiple social networks as well as blogs. You can track new topics, measure ROI, and export the data into a handy report layout. Social Report makes it easy for you to monitor your social profiles as well as those of your competitors. It includes useful options to structure and manage your customer data.
3 cool features:
- Enable notifications to receive in-depth reports daily or weekly.
- List insights on different social profiles side by side to find correlations and contrasts in your overall marketing strategy.
- Create and share white label reports with your clients.
Social networks analyzed:
- YouTube
What analytics you get for free:
- All features for 30 days
- Analytics for social media, business reviews, and website performance
- Competitor tracking
- Unlimited PDF and Excel exports
Paid options: $49, $99, and $199 per month
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 analytics tools are useful for all types of industries that rely on social media marketing for their business. For example, fashion brands may find this tool beneficial to discover potential customers. Event planners and restaurants, on the other hand, can use these tools to get an idea of what people like to purchase or eat. Whether you are just getting started with your social media marketing efforts or want to improve your overall performance, there is a variety of options in this category.
Social media marketing is a powerful channel for businesses looking to reach customers and potential customers. Successful campaigns can have a significant impact on the bottom line, but it’s easy to get lost in the details and analytics of social media marketing. Social media analytics tools can help you gain deeper insights into how people are consuming your content, as well as provide clues into which channels to prioritize, what posts perform best, and how you can improve your streams in the long run.