Knowing your social media analytics is so essential in every business that marketers need to be regularly updated to make intelligent decisions about marketing strategies that can directly affect sales.
Some factors can affect the marketing strategies of a company, but one thing is for sure. All efforts must go towards achieving the company’s goals.
Why is social media analytics important?
In a nutshell, your social media analytics directly affect your campaigns which in turn affect sales. If you want a successful social media campaign, you must be able to know, understand, and manipulate your social media data.
Did you know that 68% of US adults are on Facebook and more than 56% of online adults use more than one social media platform? Plus, the average user spends two hours on social media daily. Just look at how much time you can use to get your message across and to convince your audience that they need your product or service. That is why tracking social media analytics is so important in modern business.
There are many different types of analytics and many different kinds of tools to track them. Track only the ones that matter to your business to avoid getting overwhelmed. Figure out how these data factor into meeting your targets.
Here are some of the best social media analytics tools that you can use:
Union Metrics
With Union Metrics, you can monitor all the important topics and profiles on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. The analytics are easy to set up, use and share. They offer real-time monitoring so marketers can make fast, better decisions. They offer affordable subscriptions that start at only $99 per month. With Union Metrics, you can get in-depth analytics on your social posts across the three major social media platforms. You can monitor reach, engagement, content performance, and more.
It is no wonder that Union Metrics tops our list of the best social media analytics tools. The service provides you with highly powerful tools for segmenting your target audience, studying the characteristics of individual consumer groups, analyzing communication channels, and planning marketing campaigns. In the application, you can process survey results, study historical data, and make forecasts for the near future.
Audiense
Audiense is a platform for studying your audience on social media. It’s simple but very effective. By collecting information, you can draw typical portraits of your subscribers, determine their attachment to influencers, and build graphs of interconnected groups or channels on social media. Although the service works with different platforms, it was developed specifically targeting X (formerly Twitter). If you have also chosen this channel for your marketing campaigns, the app will be an indispensable tool for you.
Audiense gives accurate information about your followers so you can interact with them efficiently. You can also create your opt-in chatbot to engage with your subscribers via Twitter. They offer advanced monitoring with complete global coverage of real-time and historical Twitter content. You can get a conversation analysis. They offer four kinds of subscriptions starting at $31.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Salesforce Marketing Cloud allows marketers to know their consumers, engage them, and even personalize their experience across all social media platforms. You can see a single, comprehensive view of your customer to aid with your sales efforts. Automatically discover new segments, identify which consumers are likely to engage, and get predictive recommendations. Marketing Cloud has pre-built templates, mobile apps, and streamlined messaging flows so you can easily create and execute your campaigns. With this tool, you can engage both individual customers and business customers. Solutions start at $400 per month.
If you decide to choose this platform, you will be interested in a specific Marketing Cloud module — Social Studio Analyze. It offers custom dashboards that can be set up to meet the needs of workgroups, management, or clients. Social media analytics tools allow you to track the activity of specific accounts, monitor certain topics, or find all mentions of your brand. The platform will also alert you to spikes in certain metrics and potential trends in future discussions.
Klout
Klout helps individuals and businesses create meaningful content that will have a great impact on their audiences. Each user gets a Klout Score which tells you how much influence you have. The higher your score, the more influential you are.
Although the system looks like another invention from the Black Mirror, it works quite effectively. A total of 35 indicators are used to calculate the integral score. But the most influential of them are the following three:
- True Reach. It is the number of users who, on average, see your posts, including by chance and through friends. They do not include inactive and blocked accounts, as well as bots and commercial pages.
- Amplification Probability. The probability of viral spread of posts. To calculate this indicator, the frequency of posts with abnormally high reach is used.
- Network Influence. The influence of your posts on other influencers, starting from the nano level.
Google Analytics
Google offers a myriad of resources for different types of customers and Google Analytics is one of the most used tools.
With Google Analytics, you can track your website traffic easily and evaluate some social media metrics. You can get information on all your sites, apps, and even offline channels. They have solutions and products for all kinds of businesses. Use Google Analytics to measure the value of the traffic coming from your social platforms.
The service is included in the list of top social media analytics tools because of its versatility. It’s ready to answer all your questions if you have the right skills and a subscription of the required type. Google Analytics will calculate the profitability of your social media advertising campaigns, provide you with information about your target audience using demographic data, and help you to break down your traffic geographically. You will see what kind of content attracts users from each specific communication channel.
You can register for free and then upgrade your plan as you see fit.
BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is another tool popular with many big names in successful businesses in different industries. BuzzSumo is fairly easy to use. Just type in a URL, keyword, or topic, and the tool will tell you which content performs the best regarding Facebook engagements, LinkedIn and Twitter Shares as well as Pinterest shares. If you get advanced plans, you can get detailed analysis reports, find influencers on any topic, and review the content they share. You can keep track of your favorite authors or competitors when they publish new content. You can also make detailed comparisons of your competitor’s performance. Prices start at $99 per month.
BuzzSumo also allows you to analyze each social media campaign in detail. You will see the level of engagement and profitability of each post. The platform will show you the best posts and help you identify the characteristics of the perfect content that your followers expect from you. And, best of all, you can compare your performance with industry standards and competitors’ results at any time. This gives you a holistic view of the situation, allowing you to determine the company’s current market position.
Keyhole
Keyhole is another easy tool that marketers should take advantage of using. By choosing such software for social media analytics, you will never work in spreadsheets again. The platform has a simple and user-friendly interface. It offers many report templates that can be customized to meet the needs of your business. There is also a white-label mode for large agencies, which allows you to brand your reports to automatically send them to clients.
e-Clincher
You can easily manage all of your social media platforms with e-Clincher. You can schedule posts for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. in one site. It offers both general and customized social media analytics reports and shows you which influencers are engaging with your brand. A basic plan costs $49 per month.
That’s not too much, considering the platform’s extensive list of features. Here are just a few examples:
- A smart automatic posting system that can automatically start or cancel marketing campaigns when certain conditions are met.
- An inbox that combines multiple accounts on different social networks. It’s an ideal workplace for an in-house SMM specialist.
- A visual calendar for building media plans and publication schedules.
- A system for monitoring brand mentions and managing online reputation.
HootSuite
HootSuite is also a social media management tool that allows you to schedule posts for all your social media accounts.
You can pre-approve content and upload it to the cloud then your staff can schedule and tag them. HootSuite offers comprehensive reporting so you can measure how much ROI you are getting from your different media. One of the highlights of this tool is it gives the user the ability to find and filter social conversations by hashtags, keywords, and location in multiple languages. You will be able to know what people are saying about your brand across different aspects. Plans start at $19 per month.
HootSuite also offers some of the best analytics tools for social media. The application evaluates dozens of metrics — from post views and paid advertising impressions to the number of saved images and video views. It shows the ratio of positive and negative reviews and even tracks the productivity of your team, highlighting the best employees. HootSuite goes further than most of its competitors. The platform helps you create perfect posts by selecting content on a given topic and choosing the best time to publish.
Oktopost
Oktopost lets marketers track leads and gives analytics so they can understand which areas are most effective in their campaigns.
You can arrange and categorize all your content to improve analysis. Oktopost helps you keep your streams fresh so your audience will keep sharing them. Find social conversations that impact your brand and easily reply to your customers. You can also keep track of your competitor’s activities so that you can formulate the perfect campaign. Oktopost prices start at $65 per month.
Oktopost differs from other platforms by focusing on the B2B segment, which is just beginning to actively use social media. It provides powerful tools for planning marketing campaigns, analyzing their effectiveness, and managing employee permissions. Much attention is paid to data privacy: managers receive notifications when their employees behave atypically, which may indicate a risk of corporate espionage.
Followerwonk
Followerwonk gives you more detailed Twitter analytics.
You can view information on your followers, who you’re following, and who your competitors are. You’ll be able to see when your followers are online so you can schedule posts to go live when they are online. Categorize your followers, find and connect with new influencers in your industry, and match your activities to follower losses and gains. This last feature is especially useful if you want to know what your followers like best. Price starts at $29 per month.
After the project was acquired by Tweepsmap, the list of its analytics tools for social media expanded significantly. The emergence of AI has made it possible to automatically segment the audience down to the nano level to launch marketing campaigns with tens or hundreds of participants. AI also allows you to segment subscribers by the level of engagement, identifying the most and least loyal among them — those who remain loyal to your brand and those who may soon unsubscribe.
Viralwoot
If you use Pinterest in your business, then Viralwoot is for you.
Aside from scheduling and promoting pins, you can also gain new followers using this tool. You can reach your audience with the maximum impact. Viralwoot has a free Chrome extension that allows you to schedule your pins from anywhere on the web, and it also teaches you how to improve your metrics. You can rotate and republish your old pins and pin your new ones in bulk. Track contests and campaigns in real-time. Viralwoot starts at $10 per month.
The service also allows you to share materials from Pinterest on other social platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. It has an in-depth knowledge base — its guides will help you create viral posts, increase your reach with each new publication, and choose the right time to post certain content.
Tailwind
Tailwind is another tool you can use if you are active on Pinterest and Instagram.
You can schedule content, monitor what’s going on in your accounts, and analyze performance. You can upload bulk images and multi-board pins. It offers many shortcuts so you can save time. You can automatically optimize your accounts based on when your audience is online. Tailwind also offers deep social media analytics.
This program offers a Hashtag Finder where you can automatically get the best hashtags for your Instagram posts. It’s affordable, and they offer a free trial with no credit cards required. And yet, a paid subscription also makes sense. Advanced analytics allow you to monitor current trends, use this data to publish your posts, search for brand mentions, and set up automatic replies to comments. Tailwind is on the list of the best tools for social media analytics because of its simple and user-friendly interface that allows you to create personalized reports and dashboards.
Klear
Klear is an influencer marketing software. You can easily find the top influencers in your category or industry across the world through Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and blogs.
You can interact with these influencers and boost your brand. You can use filters so you can focus on the influencers who are relevant to your brand. The startup plan is $249 per month.
Klear is the best social media analytics software for people who have vast experience in communications but are not very good with technology. Built-in AI allows you to form requests in simple natural language. Just tell it what kind of influencer you’re looking for to see a list of all the candidates. By the way, there will be no problem compiling this list. Currently, the platform’s database includes more than 30 million influencers of various scales.
Peekfeed
If you want to view your stats in a simple way first thing in the morning without fuss, Peekfeed is for you. You get a simple dashboard with all the statistics that matter. You can monitor Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, Klout, Pinterest, YouTube and LinkedIn. The dashboard lists your total and new fans, new posts, and engagement for each social media account. You can also schedule weekly reports to arrive in your inbox. Plans start at $5 per month.
You can connect three accounts to Peakfeed at once. Each of them collects statistics on 7 key indicators — the data is updated automatically even when you are not logged in to your accounts. The platform also offers a handy Chrome extension that allows you to keep your important metrics at hand at all times.
Websta
Are you focused on Instagram? If so, then Websta will help you to understand your audience better, engage with your followers, and even find new potential fans.
Websta gives social media analytics about posts, engagements, and relationships. You can discover influencers and customize your Instagram feed. Websta is free.
Another reason to include Websta in the list of the best analytics software for social media is the active role of this service. With the right settings, it will automatically generate a feed of posts based on your interests, follow new users, like, and leave comments according to certain scenarios. With Websta, you can also connect a widget to your website to announce new posts on social media.
Talkwalker
Talkwalker allows you to track your campaigns and hashtags for free and in real time. You can enjoy unlimited searches. You can find a wide range of data such as mentions, distribution of conversations, top posts, etc.
The platform was once free, but it has outgrown this status.
Now, you can use it only on a paid subscription basis. What can you get in return? Lots of advantages:
- Blue Silk AI for automated target audience segmentation and informative reporting;
- Intelligent dashboards with dozens of templates for both internal use and discussion with clients;
- A system for monitoring competitors and calculating industry standards to determine the company’s current status.
Likealyzer
Likealyzer is a free Facebook advisor. This tool will give you recommendations about your Facebook activities.
You can benchmark your page with the industry leaders, and people you admire or even compare it with your competitors. It will give you an easy-to-understand report so you can immediately understand what’s going on in your Facebook community.
The Instant Review feature offers a general overview of a user’s page in a single report. By tracking its changes, you can evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns and quickly make the right management decisions. The service is ideal for beginners. It offers basic social analytics tools for free and without unnecessary complexity.
Facebook Insights
Most marketers forget about the tools that come with their social media accounts such as this one from Facebook.
This tool lets you see information about your posts, your fans, and the reach of your posts. You can also set up a list of pages that you want to monitor and get information about their performances.
Today, these tools for social analytics are located in the centralized Meta Business Suite dashboard. This allows you to analyze the effectiveness of Instagram and Facebook page promotion simultaneously. An interesting fact: by clicking the People Reached button at the bottom of each individual post on the social network, you will open a widget with detailed statistics that will allow you to go to Facebook Insights.
Instagram Insights
Another forgotten tool is Instagram Insights. You can use it with an Instagram Business Profile. You can get comprehensive data about your posts, stories, profile, etc. You can also get detailed data about your followers. Again, the service is currently hosted by Meta Business Suite. A single analytics system for two social networks is quite convenient. You can easily see the days and hours when your subscribers are most active. This allows you to determine the ideal time for new posts to increase the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns.
Pinterest Analytics
Pinterest Analytics allows you to create better Pins and boards using metrics from your profile. You can also learn how people save your Pins and how they interact with your Pins across different devices. You can easily see your best-performing Pins at a glance. Pinterest Analytics is available for Business Accounts.
Interestingly, Pinterest offers the best in-house social media data analytics tools. The built-in dashboard allows you to evaluate the dynamics of the number of subscribers and views, changes in the characteristics of the target audience, and parameters of interaction with the site. By clicking on any report, you will get maximum detail — down to specific boards and posts. Thanks to this, you can build the perfect content management policy.
Twitter Analytics
X (formerly Twitter) also offers an analysis of how your tweets have performed over the past 7 days. It gives you data on mentions, retweets, favorites, etc. With these stats, you can learn how to make your tweets better. Learn more about your followers — where they are, their interests, and their demographics. To get X Analytics, start using X Cards.You can study your post statistics even deeper by setting customized time frames. In addition, clicking on the graph with the level of engagement of your tweets will provide you with complete information — from clicks and views to the number of new followers after publishing this content. Since Twitter has recently transformed into X, the analytics system may change — check the functionality of social media analytics software on a specific date.
LinkedIn Analytics
LinkedIn Analytics is available for both individual and business users. Analytics provides data about your LinkedIn articles, and reader demographics and tells you which people have engaged with your posts. Analytics Business gives information about your posts and followers.
The data set for a personal LinkedIn profile is quite simple. It includes post views, clicks, subscriptions, and the appearance of your page in search results. The business-level analytics system also allows you to identify followers who are potentially brand advocates. You can contact them to use their efforts in your marketing campaigns.
Over 65 million businesses have a Facebook page, and surely, most of them have a presence on other social media platforms. That means you have your work cut out for you. If you want to be a successful marketer, you need to be able to tailor your campaigns so that they resonate with your target audience. Understanding the data using the tools mentioned above is the first step to creating powerful marketing campaigns.
Conclusion
Modern social networks are a very serious market, which is already comparable in scale to the top marketplaces and search engines. Experts predict that they may soon come out on top. These platforms can become full-fledged ecosystems that will contain everything an average user needs — work, movies, games, communication, delivery of goods, etc.
Are you ready for such a scenario? Whatever the answer, you will need analytics systems for social media marketing. Today, you have many solutions — paid and free, highly specialized and universal, in a “thing in itself” format, and with the possibility to integrate with other software systems.
These services don’t just collect information already available in standard social media dashboards and present it in a new way. They analyze trends and post content, allowing you to create perfect posts and attract the maximum number of subscribers. With such applications, you can generate viral posts, contact influencers, and create content plans independently.
