Social media analytics tools are used to help analyze your social media efforts. Perhaps, you’re a small business owner and want to know what types of posts will affect your marketing efforts the most. Or maybe you post on multiple social media networks and want to know how well your content is doing on each channel. Fortunately, there are many tools for social media analytics that can seem overwhelming at times.
No matter what your brand or industry, the right business intelligence can help you identify opportunities, and empower you to make timely decisions that increase sales, conversions and profits. Each of the following Social Media Analytics tools will help you stay on top of your game
SME Intelligence is the key for any business In today’s world, social media analytics has become the major force to generate leads and drive revenue. While there are many social media intelligence tools that are available, you may find ample of them can be bewildering. Here’s a list of free social media analytics tools which will help you to choose the right one for your small business.
With the help of a good social media analytics tool, you can measure, understand and maximize your social media marketing efforts. Social listening tools are used to monitor relevant conversations across the web and identify business opportunities, customer insights and lead generation. They enable you to identify key influencers, track real-time engagements, find out how to generate stronger leads and discover all the essential metrics that are crucial for planning effective strategies. Here are the top social media analytics tools in 2021:
Understanding your audience
Social media is one of the best places you can observe your target audience.
This is where they speak their mind, react in real-time, and freely express their emotions about something – a product, brand, or service.
Social media are a gold mine of audience insights. By tracking social media metrics and analyzing social platforms, you can get to know your audience, for example:
- Who they are?
- What their needs are?
- What they think about your business?
- What types of content resonates with them?
- What time do they hang out on social networks?
And much more!
Keyhole
Keyhole is a social media analytics tool that automatically collects social media data & creates reports for you. It excels at four key things:
- Getting you inside the minds of your customers.
- Simplifying your reporting — so you can easily share results with your team.
- Showing you what attracts your consumers’ attention.
- Saving you a huge amount of time — as you don’t have to crawl different social platforms looking for and reporting your social analytics.
These are critical features to look out for when making social media analytics software comparisons.
As Neil Patel says, “This tool (Keyhole) does a lot of things others can’t. And as a bonus, it’s extremely user-friendly.”
The tool shows you when your users are most active, so you get to see your audience’s best engagement days and times.
Rival IQ
Similar to many other social media analytics tools, Rival IQ helps you track your social media performance.
Rival IQ will send you alerts whenever your competitors post high-performing content, such as boosting social media posts. This gives you the chance to quickly respond before you start losing a chunk of your market share.
Rival IQ also lets you see what content your audience prefers to see, and helps you discover fresh and relevant content ideas.
Pro: Easy to conduct competitor analysis because of the alerts and the tracking you can implement with this platform.
Con: Rival IQ is competitively priced on a tiered structure which can get expensive if you want additional data.
Price: $199 – $499 USD per month.
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.
DashThis
DashThis is an automated reporting tool for marketers, agencies, and social media managers.
With this tool, you can create one dashboard that includes all your social media data and marketing data, automatically updated every single day!
Native integrations include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube, Google Analytics, multiple SEO tools, and much more.
Pro: DashThis provides time-saving features to help you set up your dashboards in seconds like preset report templates, preset KPIs, and much more.
Con: Users reported that once your dashboards are set up, you can’t change data sources manually, and require third-party assistance for any changes to your dashboard.
Price: Professional accounts start at $109 per month
Quintly
If you want to reach the young, check out Quintly. They support both TikTok and Snapchat. You’ll get the in-depth information expected with social media analytics tools, along with automated reports. This includes competitor analytics and actionable insights to help you improve. There are different features for various industries, including agencies and media companies. Finally, if you have enterprise-level needs, their API may be useful.
Pricing: from $300 a month
YouTube Analytics
If you have a YouTube presence, this is one of the more valuable tools in the creator studio. Once you access the analytics feature from the studio, you get a wide variety of analytics features. First, there’s the “overview” section that gives basic performance metrics. Then, the “reach” tab tells you how people discover your content. Check out “engagement” for all the info you might need on that topic. “Audience” will show you detailed information about those people and what else they’re interested in. Finally, “revenue” lets you see how much money your channel is generating.
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.
Sprout Social
Brands like Adidas, Nordstrom, and Edelman use Sprout Social for social media reporting and management.
This tool lets you create social media calendars, schedule posts, and listen to relevant social media conversations.
Sprout Social also provides an agency partnership program, where they partner with agencies — providing them with educational materials, reporting templates, social media marketing strategies. But most importantly, it gives agencies exposure to brands who already use Sprout Social.
Pro: Sprout’s publishing workflow supports multiple channels and has an intuitive link preview mode so you know exactly what you’re posting.
Cons: Sprout has an á la carte pricing that makes it expensive if you want extra data such as more analytics. Also, reviewers experienced hiccups when posting on Facebook and Instagram.
Price: $99 – $249 USD per month; agency plans vary.
Snaplytics
One thing lacking from most of the “all-in-one” type social media analytics tools is any recognition of Snapchat. You will usually have to look at a specialist platform if Snapchat is an essential channel for you or your business. To compound things, Snapchat does not have a robust internal analytics tool.
One useful third-party tool, however, is Snaplytics. You can use the platform to discover data relating to the performance of your snaps with your audience. Snaplytics also provides data relating to your Instagram Stories.
You can use Snaplytics to track open and completion rates over time, to give you a better understanding of how your audience engages with you. You can track engagement down to story level, even tracking screenshots and replies to discover the point where your viewers drop off. You can then use this data to optimize the length and flow of your future stories.
You can also track your Snapchat and Instagram followers, and determine your most successful acquisition methods.
Snaplytics is more than just analytics, however. You can create and schedule stories (both Snapchat and Instagram Stories) from within the app. You can also capture incoming snaps and repost them as user-generated content. Snaplytics is also ideal for managing your account, messaging, and even seamlessly collaborating with a team.
Google Analytics
You might not naturally think of Google Analytics as a social analytics tool. It is, after all, where Google shows you analytics about your website. However, it is relevant, because it shows you how people arrive at your site – including via social media.
Unlike most of these tools, Google Analytics is totally free.
You can set up reports in Google Analytics that monitor your search traffic. You can even use it to measure your social ROI. To do this, you first need to determine your aim for engaging in social media. For instance, if you are a business, why do you operate company social accounts? What are you hoping to achieve by running these accounts? How will you measure success? Note that you do not have to measure this in money terms. For instance, you might want to build up brand recognition, and choose to measure your ROI by the number of people who click through to your site from your social posts.
You can use Google Analytics to track your progress towards this type of goal. It allows you to set a wide range of social goal types. Once you enter your goal information, you can choose to set a value for each “conversion.” This will obviously depend on the goal in question.
You can then use Google Analytics to track your progress towards meeting your goals. It will automatically collect relevant information and make any necessary calculations.
LikeAlyzer
LikeAlyzer is a simple tool designed to help you improve your Facebook performance. You begin by searching for your Facebook page. It analyzes your page and gives you an overall LikeRank score. This is a combination of your Facebook page’s Best Practices (60%) and Performance (40%).
LikeAlyzer gives you a free report on your page. The report contains three sections: Page Overview, Page Insights, and Content Portal.
The Pager Overview shows you your LiverRank score. It also offers personal advice on what you could do to improve your Facebook page. It gives you a series of other percentage scores for Front Page, About, Activity, and Response.
It shows graphs for your Likes growth, Engagement, and Ranking.
The Page Insights page gives more details about your overall performance for a set period. It also shows how your LikeRank score has changed over the period. It tells you your top performing posts and your types of engagement. This page features more information about your audience and their demographics.
The Content Portal page concentrates on the content you have posted to your page in the most recent period.
HubSpot Social Media Software
HubSpot provides a deep look into the way social media impacts your bottom line and gives you the ability to report on social media ROI. View and compare performance across different platforms, campaigns, and publishing times — all from a single tool.
Monitor your brand on social to understand how your target audience perceives your business and content. Additionally, YouTube Reports provide insight into how your audience and buyer persona’s engage with your videos. Lastly, effectively reach certain audiences by using data and context from the Contacts in your CRM (which this social tool integrates seamlessly with).
Mailchimp
Mailchimp is a full-service marketing platform that offers analytics for social media ads. It’s easy to use for small marketing teams and requires little time to pour over the accompanying analytics.
With Mailchimp, you’ll have an audience dashboard, which is a page dedicated to understanding audience behavior. Additionally, the software offers tools to look into smart targeting and mobile integrations. These tools can diversify a social strategy and deliver higher engagement numbers by helping you create content that specific audiences will respond to.
Databox
Databox is an expansive analytics platform that lets you set and track social media campaign goals. It’s a good choice for businesses that have many contacts, social accounts, campaign goals, and target audiences.
Customize metrics that matter most to your campaign or social channels for your reports. Any integration you have, such as HubSpot, will be visible from your dashboard as well.
Grow
Grow users gain full visibility into engagement on all of the social accounts. The tool integrates with HubSpot, Salesforce, Google Ads, Facebook, Marketo, and Microsoft Office so you can view all data in one place.
Grow breaks down complex data into graphs and visuals, and your social reports are easily sharable which is helpful if multiple people are working on the same project. Grow’s reports are built with metrics chosen by the user — meaning, you can customize reports in a way that works for your needs.
Audiense
Audisense stands out among social media analytics tools in three ways. First, it’s very Twitter-focused. While Audisense supports several networks, they have a marketing tool just for Twitter that’s priced separately. For that reason, if you’re big on Twitter you should check it out. Second, they have a built-in influencer discovery tool. That means if you need to hire influencers regularly then this is a great option. Finally, there’s a segmentation functionality that helps you break down your audience into types.
Pricing: from $696 a month
Buffer
For small business owners, Buffer is one of the best social media analytics tools. Why? Because it’s open-source and was designed with you in mind. They help manage to spend by showing you how your engagement breaks down between free/organic traffic and paid-for results. You’ll also get complete analytics on your organic posts, and insight into your social media audience. This lets you fine-tune your strategy without getting loaded down in excess data.
Pricing: $5 per month, per social channel
Sendible
For agencies, Sendible is among the best social media analytics tools. The app gives detailed analytics information on each social media account, and it presents the information in easy reports to enhance your client reporting. As a bonus, these reports can be sent automatically to clients at designated intervals. Meanwhile, you get the analytics information presented in a way that makes it easy for you to make recommendations for future growth, along with where you should double down.
Pricing: From $29 per month.
Cyfe
Sick of switching from one app or tool to another all day? Check out Cyfe, which does much more than just analytics. You can select several widgets and put them on a bulletin-board-like page to view lots of information at a glance. They have a huge number of integrations, from social media to Bing and even your web hosting service. CRMs, email, and just about anything else can be added. That’s why Cyfe is called a “business dashboard.”
Pricing: from $19 per month
Instagram Insights
According to Instagram, the Insights feature is only available to business and creator accounts. And although Facebook Business Suite gives you Instagram information, it doesn’t go the other way with Instagram Insights. Within Instagram, you can get information about most metrics within the last 90 days, such as how many different accounts engage with your content. In addition, info is available for each piece of content, not just global stats. Best of all, you can see how people discover your profile.
Twitter Analytics
If you have an advertising account on Twitter or use Twitter cards, you get access to their free analytics functions. Like most social media analytics tools, this native Twitter feature tells you the type and level of engagement you’re getting. This information comes with suggestions for improvement. You’ll also get demographic information about people that engage with your content. Finally, Twitter provides information on the performance of Twitter cards.
Pinterest Analytics
For business account holders, Pinterest has its own social media analytics tools. First, they’ll tell you about your overall presence and engagement from owned Pins. Second, you can get account insights, where you can learn about the ways in which people engage with your content, and what searches you show up in. At the same time, they’ll let you know what Pins have been the most effective, allowing you to build on those successes. Finally, Pinterest gives you insights into audience interests.
Iconosquare
For brands that are on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Twitter, Iconosquare is an easy-to-use tool. They advertise that their analytics are easy to understand, report, and benefit from. The information is presented in one place, so you don’t have to switch back and forth. For Facebook and Instagram, you can get industry benchmarks for comparison. Reports are automatically generated for all supported networks except LinkedIn. Finally, there’s a scheduling tool that lets you save even more time and reduce the need for more tools.
Pricing: From $49 a month
Hootsuite
Since Hootsuite is a complete dashboard, it has a wide variety of functionalities. What makes its analytics functions stand out, though, is the ability to integrate the data with other aspects of your social media management. For instance, you can get tailored reports for each KPI or for a particular objective. This means that much of the analysis is automated, making your life easier. Especially if you have significant paperwork to show a campaign is paying off, check out Hootsuite.
Pricing: from $49 per month
Sprout Social
If you struggle to see the forest through the trees, then check out Sprout Social. The company prides itself on automating analytics data, then showing you the big picture. At the same time, dedicated reports help you show ROI and decide what to do next. And, unlike some competitors Sprout shows you results for the competition. Finally, they generate reports which are specific to paid campaigns, helping you maximize impact and manage to spend.
Pricing: From $89 per month
How is social media analytics done?
Simply put, social media analytics is done by analyzing data provided by social networks through their APIs to understand your performance. There are many different metrics available, such as the cost per impression and the extent to which your campaign is increasing the discussion around your brand. And in most situations, quality analytics show how much it costs to get a specific, measurable result.
Once you get those raw numbers, it’s easy to match them to your KPIs. For instance, you might find that your latest influencer marketing campaign increased brand awareness by 50%, or your advertised special brought in 500 new customers. Marketers who need to justify the expenses can immediately point to these analytics as evidence of success. Likewise, analytics data help you plan future campaigns for greater effectiveness.
Conclusion
Social media tools are the hottest thing on the market today, and all businesses are looking for a better way to do everything related to social media marketing. It has become so important that your business needs have much more to do with measurement techniques than with existing tools. Various social platforms have been offering users the tools to track their progress and analyze their activities on the platform.
Social media analytics tools are very important to give meaning to the large amounts of data collected by social media. These data include information on the number of social media followers, as well as their demographic information, engagement statistics, and much more. All of this data can be used to make important business decisions.