Social media is playing an increasingly important role in our lives and has become a vital part of the way we do business on the Internet. But it may prove difficult to determine which social media platforms are worth your time and which ones will not provide you with the return on investment (ROI) that you had hoped for.
This article details five of the best free social media analytics tools to help you understand how popular and active your chosen social media channels really are and some of the key metrics (e.g., followers, retweets, engagement rate) that you can use to measure success.
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)
YOUTUBE ANALYTICS
Videos are one of the most engaging and social analytics rich types of social content out there, so it’s great that YouTube now offers analytics of their own. Grow your channel and maximize revenue with social analytics on earnings, engagement, and traffic sources with filters for sorting by content, geography, and date to see if a video is popular in a certain location, or over a specific date range. Earnings reports let you track earnings and total views, as well as which ad formats were most successful for driving revenue. Audience retention reports shows you how style, length, and promotion efforts affect your videos. Pro tip: Use Average Watch Time data as a guide for front-loading key information in your videos.
LINKEDIN ANALYTICS
LinkedIn offers distinct, and basic analytics about visitors, page updates and followers. On the Visitor view, brands see page views from desktop or mobile, or combined. As well as Visitor demographics that revolve around job functions. The Updates view shows post impressions and a list of previous posts ripe for creating an ad around (they’re all listed, it doesn’t show you top contenders for your ad spend). And then Followers shows you the change in follower count, where in the world they’re from and gives a super handy list of companies you may want to consider reaching out to, as they’re watching you!
Klear
Klear is an influencer marketing analytics tool that helps you easily identify influencers in any category, in any location across the world on Twitter, YouTube, or Instagram, and manage your relationships with them with a CRM-like system. Klear can analyze not just influencers, but also your own profile and followers, and segment them by niche or interests.
3 cool features:
- Identify influencers in your Twitter feed with a Chrome extension.
- Extract qualitative metrics by tracking hashtags on Twitter and Instagram.
- Generate PDF reports for your social activity, engagement, content performance, fan-base growth, and brand awareness.
Social media channels:
- Instagam
- YouTube
What analytics you get for free:
- Analytics for Facebook Page, YouTube, and blogs
- Social PDF reports
- Hashtag tracking and influencer campaign monitoring
Paid options: Custom pricing
Viralwoot
Viralwoot is a popular name in the analytics segment. They have developed some of the best Pinterest analytics tools. Even, They are have developed a multi-functional tool. They have specific tools dealing with different areas of your Pinterest account. You can schedule pins to be posted in bulk.
This enables you to have multiple pins posted at the same time helping you target the best timing for your audience. They allow you to access real-time data. This helps you remain apprised of your account at every moment. You can track the performance of each pin you post or even track the performance of the entire board.
You should consider their more expensive packages as they contain SEO analysis. This helps you make some changes to your content which makes it more discoverable. Their packages start at $10 per month and go up to $49 per month for the more premium accounts.
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
HOWSOCIABLE
HowSociable seeks to be “your trusted resource for dependable reviews and social media analytics tutorials. It shares reviews, guides and how to’s of the most successful tools, software and apps to reach your target audience. It also offers training courses, certifications, and conferences that will increase your influence online, along with insider tips on improving content, building a following and creating a consistent brand.” Price: Free insight, but need to pay for courses and such And now for those 8 Free Social Media Analytics Tools
Quintly
Quintly is a social media benchmarking and analytics solution that tracks and compares the performance of your social media marketing activities. Whether you are using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, or all of them, their tool visualizes and checks your social marketing success, benchmarking your numbers against your competitors or best practices.
HOOTSUITE
Hootsuite is a social media management and scheduling tool. It helps teams work together when it comes to keeping social postings organized and moving forward. Beyond its free offering, it also has plans for individuals, SMBs and the enterprise. With sentiment-driven insights, conversation maps, customizable dashboards, and reports, it’s a solid choice for brands who need a place to start and a play to grow when they can afford more. Price: Reach out for a custom quote
Cyfe
Cyfe is an all-in-one dashboard that helps you monitor and analyze data found across all your online services, including Google Analytics, Salesforce, AdSense, MailChimp, Amazon, Facebook, WordPress, Zendesk, and Twitter from one single location in real time. No more wasting countless hours tracking down your data from all over the Web every day!
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
BOARDREADER
Boardreader uses search bar simplicity to put you in touch with reviews and forum posts – which are an oft-forgotten part of social media analytics data. See consumer posts or threads within the past day, or as far back as a year. Advanced search features let you filter results to get a better sense of things. The “Trendy” graphs let you compare conversation volume against other brands – though you won’t know what is actually being said, or whether it’s good or bad. Still, it’s a starting point that could work with other free web and social analytics tools. Price: Free
Buffer
Buffer is a renowned social media management tool. Their clients get some of the most premium tools for data analysis and scheduling. Their tool works with all social media platforms. Even, Their tools are compatible with Pinterest and generate amazing results for their clients.
They provide you with tracking features at various levels of your account. You can track individual elements of your account. This allows you to gain specific details about the functioning of the account. The overview allows you to track all aspects of your account at once to provide you with a general overview.
Ninja Pinner
They provide you the option to automate the majority of your account. This leads to pins being posted at accurate times. You will be able to reduce the element of human error when posting pins. Their tools have been listed as some of the best Pinterest analytics tools. Their tool is a great way to get followers and automate your pins. You can choose categories and based on your selection the tool auto follows people.
This improves your chances of a follow back leading to better engagement on pins. You can schedule comments to be posted on your targeted pins without any supervision. These tools can be simultaneously used on multiple accounts. This saves time and makes the entire process much more efficient.
They are one of the cheapest tools on the list. You get 1-year access for $28 for a single account. If you want to add more accounts, you will have to upgrade your account.
Conclusion
Social Media analytics tools are essential for any social media marketer because it allows us to understand what’s working and what needs improvement. For the past few years, I have been testing different free social media analytics tools, so I decided to put together this list of my favorites.