15 Best Social Media Analytics Tools

Social media is a sector of enormous size and importance in our personal lives as well as in our professional lives, all in this modern digital age. Among the many wonderful opportunities presented to businesses by social media are connecting with customers, creating brand awareness, or inspiring engagement. However, the number of thousands of sites it takes for that amount of data is very difficult to know exactly what is being created. That is precisely where social media analytics tools come into play.

We will learn what social media analytics tools are, why they matter, and what key features should be looked into while choosing the right tool for your business needs.

What are Social Media Analytics Tools?

Social media analytics tools are applications that gather, analyze, and also give data derived from social media in one place. They gather several sources, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and much more, into a top-level view of how your brands are performing on social media.

Functions of Social Media Analytics Tool

At its core, what social media analytics tools are really doing is performing three very important functions:

Data Fetching: All tools automatically fetch data from social media accounts and sites as mentioned in the list, including likes, shares, comments, follower growth and other rates of engagement.
Data Analysis: The data gathered will be processed and analyzed to look for trends, patterns, or any other insight that might be drawn from it, depending on the analytical techniques to be used in this process.
Reporting and Visualization: Such data are set up in plain formats-charts, graphs, and dashboards-so that the user can rapidly gain the most important insights and trends by using these tools.
Performance Tracking: These instruments can be used to track social media performance over time and to track how campaigns affect businesses compared with other competing businesses.
Audience Insight: Majority of the social analytics tools provide brands with complete information about the kind of audience it has, which would incorporate demographics, interests, and all other behavioral patterns.
Content Optimization: Based on performance analyses of various types of contents, businesses will understand what kind of contents influence their audiences; they would then adapt their content strategy accordingly.

Benefits of Using Social Media Analytics Tools

Most importantly, when selecting the best social media analytics tools to use, you should consider your business needs and goals. However, some are common features held valuable by most users:

1. Cross social media analytics

The choice of tool that connects all the social media your business uses provides you with an all-round view of social media performances. And guess what? The best social media analytics tools do this for you.

2. Real-time analytics:

It is important to monitor real-time social media activity so that timely responses can be provided for customer inquiries, emerging trends, or possible crises.

3. Customizable Dashboards

Use customizable dashboards to focus on metrics most important for your business and to present data in ways most useful to your team.

4. Automated Reporting:

Look for tools that automatically generate reports, which would save time and ensure consistency in reports across your organizations.

5. Sentiment Analysis:

Advanced tools use natural language processing techniques to analyze the sentiment from social media mentions- thereby creating understanding about how people feel about your brand.

6. Competitor Analysis:

This will give you an idea whether or not you are in comparison with your competition, and how exactly it is in more detail.

Comparison Table

Top 15 Social Media Analytics Tools

1. Sprout Social

Sprout Social is the most comprehensive social media management and analytics platform, designed to understand types of organizations. Altogether, it integrates various features with the purpose of streamlining social media workflows, increasing engagement, and deriving meaningful insights into social media performance.

Sprout Social will help make tracking of key performance metrics relatively easy and understand audience behavior, including reach across various social networks. Advanced Analytics helps businesses make smart, data-driven decisions on their social media strategy and track improvements to their results.

Key Features:

Cross-Platform Analytics and Reporting
Competitive Analysis
Metrics for Engagement and Team Performance
Customized Report Builder
Automated Scheduling and Publishing

Suitable For:

Small to big businesses, agencies and enterprises

Pricing :

$99/month for the Standard plan

Website:

www.sproutsocial.com

2. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a very popular and one of the free social media analytics tools with paid versions too and very strong analytics. The tool has a centralized dashboard to control hundreds of social media accounts. It also lets you have a comprehensive overview of social media performance. Hootsuite allows a user to monitor engagement, monitor reach, and monitor audience growth across multiple social media outlets.

Technically speaking, the platform generates data intuitively, allowing marketers to quickly determine what works and does not in their content and campaigns, so as to enhance what will perform better simultaneously.

Key Features:

Real-time analytics, reports customizable for scheduled or on-demand distribution
Monitoring the performance of contents
Metrics of productivity among teams
Benchmarking with competitors
Measuring Return on Investment for paid social campaigns

Suitable for:

All; agencies and social media professionals

Pricing:

Professional starts at $49/month

Website:

www.hootsuite.com

3. Keyhole

It is one of the niche tools, focusing solely on tracking and real-time analytics of hashtags, keywords, and accounts in different social media platforms. It gives profound insights into the working of social media campaigns, influencer marketing, and brand mentions. It presents very important algorithms that provide sentiment accuracy.

That will help businesses see public perception and, through the same, get involved with them in a bigger way. Its intuitive interface makes customizable dashboards easy for marketers to visualize data or generate actionable insights that can be put to use.

Key Features

Customizable dashboards and reports
Competitor tracking and benchmarking

Best for:

Marketing agencies, brands, and social media managers

Price:

Starting at $49/month for the Professional plan

Website:

www.keyhole.co

4. Rival IQ

Rival IQ is competitive intelligence and a social media analytics platform through which businesses can benchmark their performance against their competitors and industry leaders. It goes very deep into the insights of social media strategies, content, audience engagement, and much more across a choice of platforms.

This tool generates automatic reports and alerts for marketers to not miss industry trends or competitor activities that work on data-based judgment to make fast decisions quickly. This is a feature through which a user can create different groups of competitors or industry peers for in-depth analysis and comparison that makes it a desired tool for businesses.

Key Features:

Post Performance Analytics
Audience demographics and insights
Lead generated
Conversion rate tracked

Suitable for:

Marketing teams, agencies, and businesses for competitive positioning comparison

Pricing:

Starting from $199/month with Drive

Website:

www.rivaliq.com

5. Buffer

Buffer is one of the super user-friendly Instagram social media analytics tools for social media management. Also the analytics tools which helps businesses create their social media presence across several platforms. The extremely simple yet powerful analytics dashboard offers insight into performance of posts, engagement metrics, and audience growth.

Analytics in Buffer allows measurement of the effectiveness of content strategies and detection of performing posts. The simple interface and easy reporting facilitate easy comprehension by marketers of their social media performance and proper data-driven decisions.

Key Features

Followers and engagement
Trackable engagement rate
Reportable via mail
Instagram Stories analytics

Suitable for

Perfect for small businesses, solo-preneurs

Pricing

From $5/month per social channel on the Essentials plan

Website:

www.buffer.com

6. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is one of the free social media analytics tools that can’t be categorized as social media but still has a few nice, definitive insights regarding the influence of social media traffic on website performance. With Google Analytics, companies would be able to track referrals from the social media, user behavior, and conversions from coming back to the source channel.

Google Analytics allows for very deep reporting about people’s demographics, interests, and engagement patterns; thus, marketers must know what share of the overall digital marketing strategy comes from social media.

Key Features:

Social media referrals
Audience demographics and behavior
Conversion tracking and goals creation
Customized reporting
Integrate with other Google marketing products

Suitable for:

All types of business, regardless of size, digital marketers, and website owner

Pricing

Free with paid version for Google Analytics 360

Website:

www.analytics.google.com

7. HubSpot

HubSpot is an all-rounded inbound marketing, sales, and customer services platform who has highly advanced features in social media management and analytics. Allowing businesses to create content, monitor engagement, and collect performance on many social media channels in one dashboard.

Analytics in HubSpot helps marketers identify at what level of Return on Investment is created on social media, which kind of impact those actions will give to generate leads and close sales. It keeps track of all the social interaction all the way from the customer’s journey into the CRM of HubSpot.

Key Features:

Social publishing and monitoring through social media
Performance analytics with ROI tracking
Lead generated
Conversion rate tracked
Hubspot CRM and other marketing tool integration
Benchmarking against the competition

Suitable for:

From small businesses to big ones, B2B business or a marketing team

Pricing:

The Marketing Hub Starter starts at 45 a month

Website:

www.hubspot.com

8. Iconosquare

Iconosquare is a dedicated platform that is concerned with social media analytics and management, with focus mostly on the analysis pertaining to Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. That is, it is only when social media platforms’ advanced analytics and performance tracking are involved that businesses can be optimized through their strategy on social media.

Iconosquare allows marketers to monitor the level of engagement their audience is experiencing, the performance of their content, as well as how it’s growing, based on which data-driven content and campaign decisions are made by social media marketers. Scheduling features and the content calendar in itself streamline the planning and execution process of social media campaigns.

Key features:

Analytics for Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter
Tracking post performance and the response in terms of the readers’ engagement metrics.
Audiences’ insight into growth analysis
Calendar setup and content planning
Competitor monitoring and benchmarking

Suitable for:

Social media managers, influencers and brands with a strong visual brand image

Price:

Starting at $49/month for the Pro plan

Website:

iconosquare.com

9. Sendible

This makes Sendible a comprehensive social media management service that also brings robust analytics capabilities along with publishing and engagement features. From one dashboard, it manages multiple accounts with detailed insights into performance on different social media channels.

The analytics on Sendible ensure user tracking and measurement of engagement with how this reach can improve your strategy on the basis of audience growth for businesses. A customizable reporting system and white-label options make it especially friendly for agencies and businesses that work with several clients.

Key Features:

Multi-platform analytics and reporting
Custom report builder with white-label options
Content performance metrics
Team productivity metrics
Client management tools

Suitable for:

Marketing agencies, social media managers and businesses managing lots of accounts

Price:

$29 / month

Website:

www.sendible.com

10. Talkwalker

Talkwalker is an enterprise-class product in social listening and one of the free social media analytics tools, that enables getting deeper insights into consumer perceptions about a brand, industry trends, and all the activities of competitors online and on social media. Some of its advanced AI analytics capabilities, for example, include image and video recognition and sentiment analysis among others.

Talkwalker has an extremely powerful data processing engine, which gives businesses the real-time view of huge social media data analysis.

Key Features:

AI-based Social Listening Analytics
Real-time brand tracking and crisis handling
Image and video recognition
Identify influencers and analyze
Customizable dashboards and alerts

Suitable for:

Large companies, Global Brands, and agencies managing large groups of popular clients.

Pricing:

Custom-pricing based on requirement (reach out to sales)

Website:

www.talkwalker.com

11. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is a social media content discovery and analytics tool that helps businesses discover popular topics, understand performance of their content, and track influencers in your niche. It provides insights into the most shared and much more engaging content across various social platforms, which allows marketers to develop better-optimized content strategies.

Using Analytics in BuzzSumo helps track performance about its own content, competition activity, and reveals key influencers with whom one can collaborate. All these alerts and social media monitoring and analytics tools help the business keep rhythm with trends and up-to-date information.

Key Features:

Content performance analysis
Influencer identification and outreach
Brand monitoring and alerts
Competitor content analysis
Trending topic discovery

Suitable For:

Content marketers, social media managers, and businesses focused on a strategic approach toward content.

Pricing:

The Pro account starts at $99/month.

Website:

www.buzzsumo.com

12. Quintly

Quintly is an advanced professional social media monitoring and analytics tools service that provides business insights and customizable reporting to businesses of any size.It is therefore capable of allowing true holistic analytics across multiple platforms through which performance metrics can be tracked and compared on just one dashboard.

What makes this analytics tool special is its customizable reporting feature, which empowers business organizations to make analytics dashboards tailor-made to their specific KPIs and goals. Because it offers some form of competitive benchmarking, businesses can measure up against the competition or industry standards and improve their social media strategy.

Key Features:

Availability of several analytics profiles on various social networking sites.
Customizable dashboards and reports Competitive benchmarking Automated reporting and scheduling
Data Integration with API Access

Suitable For:

Agencies and data-driven marketers, mid-sized and large businesses

Pricing:

300/month billed at the Business plan and up

Website:

www.quintly.com

13. Brandwatch

Brandwatch is an all-in-one social intelligence solution that combines various functionalities in listening. It is also one of the free social media analytics tools, and provides consumer insights. It provides in-depth insight into brand perceptions, consumer behavior, and market influences on social media and the web.

Advanced AI and machine learning technologies at Brandwatch enable businesses to run through enormous volumes of social data in a bid to identify such trends of emerging changes in consumer attitudes at scale. The platform also offers ways of making complex data more understandable to give information that can quite easily be reported live.

Key Features:

AI-powered social listening and analysis
Consumer insights and trend analysis
Crisis management and reputation tracking
Influencer identification and tracking
Vizualizations and reporting Customizable

Suited for:

Enterprise companies, research and consultancy firms, global brands

Pricing:

Depends on the requirement. Contact the sales team.

Website:

www.brandwatch.com

14. Tailwind

Tailwind is also one of the free social media analytics tools, mainly for visual networks such as Pinterest and Instagram. It gives businesses a set of features that actually help businesses manage content, schedule posts, and analyze performance on those image-based platforms.

It is also an Instagram social media analytics tool. Tailwind offers insight into engagement for the posts, the growth of the audience, and content performance so that users can further hone in their visual marketing strategies. It provides SmartSchedule – the platform’s feature that uses AI to decide the best times for posting in order to maximize engagement.

Key Features:

Analytics for Pinterest and Instagram
Smart scheduling and content calendar
Hashtag suggestion with the monitoring of its performance
Engagement and growth track
Competitor analysis

Suitable for:

E-commerce companies
visual content creators and marketers who would want to reach out to Pinterest and Instagram.

Pricing

$9.99/month

Popular for their Pro plan

Website:

www.tailwindapp.com

15. Zoho Social

Zoho Social is a powerful social media management tool that integrates analytics capabilities into its publishing and engagement tools. It gives you an aggregation dashboard to manage multiple social media accounts with deep insights into the performance of the social media on all the different platforms.

With Zoho Social, you can measure engagement, track reach, and analyze audience growth – thus helping businesses hone their social media strategy.

Key Features:

Multi-channel analytics and reporting
Real-time monitoring and measurement of engagement
Report builder on what matters with custom reports
Team collaboration
Connect to Zoho CRM and other Zoho Apps

Suitable for:

Small and medium businesses and social media managers and teams, who are using other tools from the Zoho bundle

Pricing:

$ 10/month

Website:

www.zoho.com/social

How to Choose the Right Tool for Your Business

To choose the best social media analytics tools, some specific business requirements need to be known. Considering this, here are a few reminders below:

Coverage of Platform: The tool needs to cover all the social media platforms you plan to use for your business. Majority of tools specialize in particular specific platforms while others give coverage across a broad board.
Key metrics and features for your goals: These may be engagement rate, reach, sentiment analysis, or competitor benchmarking.
Ease of use: Easy to use, easy to find your way around and understand the data, particularly if you are not a data analyst.
Scalability: A solution that scales with your business. Some solutions have tiered pricing plans based on the level of service needed.
Integration Capability: Understand how well the tool integrates into the larger marketing stack-into your CRM and/or your email marketing tool.
Reporting: Quality is good, but in this case, being able to customize reporting is key in terms of getting data across to stakeholders-not just reporting, but actually reporting in a way that is clear and easy to read.

The Role of AI and Machine Learning in Social Media Analytics

All this through Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) that revolutionizes analytics in social media by being way more advanced and informative than ever before. Here’s how such technologies make social media analytics tools shine brighter:

Predictive Analytics: Tools powered by AI can even predict trends. It helps businesses to be better prepared in what they need to create, message, or deploy campaigns around, staying ahead of the curve.
Sentiment Analysis: Machine algorithms can produce analysis of the text to identify the emotional tone behind brand mentions and further understanding the perception of the brand.
Image and Video Recognition: Identify logos, objects, and even emotion in visual content with the help of machine algorithms to gain insight on how your branding visual elements perform across platforms.
Automated Reporting: ML algorithms will automatically generate insightful reports and save you much time with point significance.
Personalisation: AI supports the creation of more personalized content recommendations based on user behavior and preferences.
Natural Language Processing (NLP): This implies that with this AI technology, the tools will better understand and analyze human language as related to insights generated from text-based data or information.

Final Words

The social media analytics tools are really different with respect to their diversity and changeability. Every business size and need will find its solution there. The difference is finding your specific needs and choosing a tool that will accordingly help you attain your goals and budget. This implies that, from now on, this analytics capability will be much more advanced because further advancement in AI and machine learning is yet to come.

FAQs

Q: How often should I check my social media analytics?

Best to check for analytics on an ongoing campaign on a weekly basis, check on overall performance on a monthly basis.

Q: Would social media analytics tools help in measuring ROI?

Most tools allow tracking of conversions and help measure the ROI of a social media strategy.

Q: Would free social media analytics tools work for small businesses?

Free is good for the beginning stages, but as your business and the needs get more complex so do the depth with paid tools.