As a small business, you’re obsessed with showing how your social media efforts are contributing to your company’s bottom line.
You track social media analytics on each network daily, but you feel like you’re leaving valuable data and insights on the table that could elevate your social media strategy and tactics.
If this sounds like you, it might be time to invest in a social media analytics and reporting tool. But with so many options on the market, how do you know which one is right for you?
To help you make an informed decision, we’re breaking down 15 of the best social media analytics tools available today.
And since we have no stake in any of the following tools, you will find only honest, equal, and unbiased overviews of each.
Let’s get started!
Why You Need Social Media Analytics
With 64% of internet users discovering new brands and products via social media, it’s crucial for you to not only show up on social media but show up in the right way.
To do this, you need a clear, cohesive social media strategy that tracks and analyzes social media analytics, or the data available on social platforms that tells you how your content is performing.
With this data, you can understand the effectiveness of your social media efforts to make informed data-driven decisions.
You can gain insight into things like:
- Are you reaching your target audience?
- How many people are engaging with your content?
- Do you have consistent growth in your follower count?
Social media analytics tools help you go even deeper into the data. With comprehensive reports, you can compare data across time periods and social channels to gain a holistic view of your social media performance.
Social media analytics tools can help you answer questions like:
- Should you continue posting on Instagram or pivot to another platform?
- Is your TikTok content resonating with your audience?
- Does social media contribute to conversions on your website?
With social media analytics and the right tool, you can be certain your social media strategy is working.
15 Social Media Analytics Tools For Tracking Social Media Data and Performance
Now, let’s take an in-depth look at a handful of social media analytics tools on the market right now.
- Sprout Social
- Buffer
- Agorapulse
- Hootsuite
- Hubspot
- Rival IQ
- Keyhole
- Sendible
- IZEA
- Iconosquare
- Tailwind
- Google Analytics
- Followerwonk
- Emplifi
- Social Media Network Analytics
1. Sprout Social
Sprout Social is a comprehensive social media management platform designed to help you streamline your social efforts.
In addition to its standard features that make everyday actions like scheduling and publishing content easy, it offers robust analytics and reporting capabilities, allowing businesses to track key metrics, measure the success of social media campaigns, and gain valuable insights into their audience’s behavior.
Sprout Social goes as far as providing competitive analysis, so you can benchmark your performance against major competitors and gain an understanding of industry trends.
Price: Three main subscription tiers ranging from $249 to $499 per month; 30-day free trial
Skill level: Intermediate to Advanced Users
The perfect match: Social media professionals at more established companies with larger marketing budgets
| Pros | Cons |
| Competitor comparison tool | Hefty price |
| Advanced social listening | Steep learning curve |
| Comprehensive reporting and analytics | Limited customization options for reports |
| Team collaboration features | Issues posting to Facebook and Instagram |
| Scalability and integration | Limited niche social platform coverage |
2. Buffer
Yet another robust social media management tool, Buffer was designed to simplify and enhance businesses’ social media marketing efforts.
It offers a range of functionalities that help streamline content scheduling and engagement, but most importantly, offers analytics features that help you measure your results without the dreaded data overload.
With Buffer, you can access nitty-gritty, post-level metrics like engagement, reach, and clicks to evaluate the effectiveness of your campaigns, or you can zoom out and examine account-level metrics to gain a holistic view of your social performance.
One of Buffer’s stand-out features is its ability to track link clicks and engagement on shared links, which as you know, can help you understand the impact your social media content has on website traffic and conversions.
Price: Four subscriptions tiers ranging from free to $120; 14-day free trial
Skill Level: Beginner to Intermediate Users
The perfect match: Small social media teams and small businesses
| Pros | Cons |
| Posting strategy recommendations | Lacks advanced features and automation |
| Customizable reports | Small learning curve for more advanced features |
| Link tracking | Limited social listening capabilities |
| Team performance insights | Limited engagement features |
3. Agorapulse
Agorapulse is one of the top-rated, most known, complete social media tools out there, and for good reason. It offers all of the management features you could need, plus robust analytics and reporting capabilities. Agorapulse puts a strong emphasis on data-driven insights so businesses can make data-driven decisions.
Users can access comprehensive reports that offer in-depth insights into their social media campaigns, including detailed post-level analytics, sentiment analysis, and competitor benchmarking.
Social media managers can customize their reports based on what’s important to the business, but even cooler for SMMs in the trenches, the tool offers real-time analytics, providing up-to-date information on performance.
Price: Three main subscription tiers ranging from $49 to $119 per user/month (billed annually); 30-day free trial
Skill level: Beginner to Advanced Users
The perfect match: Great for social media teams of small businesses to large enterprises with a marketing budget
| Pros | Cons |
| Real-time analytics | User pricing structure |
| Customizable reports | No listening capabilities for LinkedIn or TikTok |
| Advanced social media listening and engagement for select networks | Reasonable learning curve |
| User-friendly interface | Limited niche social platform coverage |
| Highly rated customer support | Limited integration options |
4. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a widely recognized all-in-one social media tool that helps businesses and individuals effectively manage their social media presence.
Beyond a standard feature set, it provides powerful analytics and reporting features, letting you track engagement metrics, measure social media campaign performance, and gain insight into your strategy.
Hootsuite offers advanced analytics capabilities like customizable reports, comparative analysis, and social listening, but it stands out from competitors with its seamless integration with Google Analytics, providing a unified analytics experience that helps businesses measure the impact of their social media efforts on website traffic and conversions.
Price: Three main subscription tiers ranging from $99 to $739 per month; 30-day free trial for the first two tiers
Skill level: Beginner to Intermediate Users
The perfect match: Small business owners who manage their own social media accounts, and social media professionals at small-to-med-sized businesses with a marketing budget
| Pros | Cons |
| Integration with third-party tools | Pricing structure (no longer offers a free plan as of 2023) |
| Customizable reports | Steep learning curve |
| Social listening capabilities | Limited and unreliable customer service |
| Real-time data | Limited engagement features |
5. Hubspot
HubSpot is a feature-stacked marketing platform that offers a wide range of tools to help businesses grow and manage their online presence.
While primarily known for its inbound marketing capabilities, HubSpot also provides social media features that empower businesses to effectively engage with their audience.
From one central hub (pun intended), you can schedule and publish content across top social networks, plus create content right in the platform.
But most importantly, HubSpot offers in-depth social media analytics so you can stay on top of engagement metrics, follower growth, and content performance. You can also track keywords and social conversations where your brand is mentioned.
What sets HubSpot apart from its competitors is its ability to integrate social media data with other performance marketing metrics, providing a holistic view of marketing efforts and enabling businesses to make data-driven decisions across all channels.
Price: Two subscription tiers; Professional $800 per month billed annually and Enterprise $3,600 per month
Skill level: Intermediate to Advanced Users
The perfect match: Medium-to-larger businesses with a robust marketing team that collaborates across campaigns and initiatives
| Pros | Cons |
| Integration with marketing data | Hefty pricing |
| Social campaign publisher | Limited niche social platform coverage |
| In-platform content creation and editing | Complexity for new users |
| In-depth analytic capabilities | Steep learning curve for advanced features |
| Social reports | Limited social media listening features |
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6. Rival IQ
Rival IQ is a dedicated social media analytics and competitive intelligence tool that helps you gain insights into your social media performance—and stay ahead of competitors.
With Rival IQ, users can track and analyze social media metrics across various social platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube.
You’ll have full access to comprehensive reporting features, allowing you to measure everything from engagement to audience demographics.
Rival IQ’s stand-out feature has got to be its competitive intelligence capabilities, which lets you monitor your competitors’ strategies (like alerting you when your competitors post high-performing content), benchmark performance, and identify opportunities for improvement.
Rival IQ goes on to provide features like social media listening and content discovery so you can be sure you’re posting content your audience wants to see.
Price: Three subscription tiers ranging from $239 to $559 per month; 14-day free trial
Skill level: Intermediate users
The perfect match: Social media managers at mid-to-large businesses with a marketing budget
| Pros | Cons |
| Competitive intelligence capabilities | Learning curve for new users |
| Social media listening | Hefty price |
| Influencer and hashtag tracking | Some historical data limitations |
| Content discovery | Limited integration options |
7. Keyhole
Keyhole is another dedicated social media analytics tool that focuses on hashtag tracking, analytics, and real-time monitoring, so you can be a part of the conversation as it happens.
It touts itself as being good at four main things:
- Simplifying reporting
- Saving time
- Highlighting what attracts your audience’s attention
- And, getting you inside your customers’ minds
Keyhole’s intuitive dashboard provides easy-to-understand visualizations and customizable reports that help businesses make data-driven decisions to optimize their strategy.
The tool’s influencer tracking feature lets you identify key influencers in specific industries and reach out to them right from your Keyhole account.
In addition, it offers a scheduling and publishing feature that elevates it above other dedicated social media analysis tools.
Price: Three main subscription tiers ranging from $79 to $479 per month, billed annually, and a fourth enterprise tier with custom pricing; 7-day free trial
Skill level: Beginner to Advanced Users
The perfect match: Small businesses with a fledgling social media presence to large, enterprise-level businesses with a dedicated social media team
| Pros | Cons |
| Real-time monitoring capabilities | Limited social platform access on the first two tiers |
| Hashtag tracking | Historical data limitations |
| Influencer tracking and management | Hefty pricing after the first subscription tier |
8. Sendible
Sendible is touted as a social media analysis tool that offers powerful analytics and reporting capabilities.
It lets you track important social media metrics like engagement and reach, plus create visually appealing, white-label reports with its easy-to-use drag-and-drop builder. Hello, elevated social media presentations!
Sendible’s analytics also provide audience demographics and sentiment analysis, enabling businesses to better understand their target audience and make data-driven decisions.
Price: Three subscription tiers ranging from $29 to $399 per month; 14-day free trial
Skill level: Beginner to intermediate users
The perfect match: Freelancers and solopreneurs, social media marketers of small businesses and brands, digital marketing agencies with a large client base
| Pros | Cons |
| Social media listening | Limited data visualization options |
| Sentiment analysis | Fewer advanced analytics capabilities |
| White-label reporting | Limited historical data access |
| Team performance tracking | Issues with real-time data updates |
9. IZEA
IZEA is a social media tool specifically tailored for influencer marketing, so you can keep track of influencer ROI (a notorious black hole of data).
It offers robust analytics and reporting capabilities related to influencer marketing metrics like reach, engagement rate, and even the potential price tag of any given influencer.
With IZEA’s Flex software, you can get a detailed look into influencers’ audience demographics, influencer campaign performance, and most importantly, conversions and ROI.
The tool’s real-time monitoring and sentiment analysis keeps you in the loop on how you’re influencer campaign is being received.
IZEA has also jumped on the AI bandwagon. Its flagship AI feature, FormAI, lets you create both images and copy for everything from Instagram and TikTok posts to blogs and product reviews.
Price: IZEA’s pricing is broken out by feature…
- IZEA Flex is $130 per month; 10-day free trial
- The Creator Marketplace is free to access with pro plans starting at $6 per month
- Managed Services begin at $100,000
Skill level: Intermediate to Advanced Users
The perfect match: Small brands dipping their toes into influencer marketing, and larger brands with a robust influencer marketing program
| Pros | Cons |
| Influencer Marketplace | Metrics limited to influencer marketing |
| Streamlined influencer/brand collaboration | Limited historical data |
| Scalable and customizable features | Reporting customization constraints |
| Assistance with influencer marketing compliance and transparency | Data integration challenges with other software |
10. Iconosquare
Iconosquare has grown from its humble beginnings as an Instagram tool into a comprehensive social media management and analytics platform.
While the platform now supports all major social media platforms, its main focus is on Instagram and Facebook. Still, it can monitor 100+ different metrics across the big five (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and TikTok), ensuring you’ll have the data you need to measure your content’s performance.
Beyond its analytics and reporting capabilities, Iconosquare also features social listening and community management—never leave a customer on read again.
With Iconosquare, you can even see when your customers are online, so you can publish not just the right content, but the right content at the right time.
Price: Three subscription tiers ranging from $49 to $139 with add-on fees for additional profiles and team members; 14-day free trial
Skill level: Intermediate to advanced users
The perfect match: Small-to-medium businesses, social media managers, content creators
| Pros | Cons |
| Competitor analysis | Paid and organic analytics lumped together |
| Comment-tracking ability | Steep learning curve for more advanced features |
| Hashtag tracking | Delay in real-time data |
| Customizable reports | Limited social-listening depth |
| Social media listening and sentiment analysis | Advanced features only available in higher tiers |
11. Tailwind
Tailwind is a unique tool in the social media analytic space. While it does support a standard number of social platforms, its primary focus is on visual platforms including Pinterest and Instagram—and its analytic and reporting capabilities reflect this.
For Pinterest, Tailwind measures your overall Pinterest presence with high-level metrics like follower growth, engagement, and content reach, as well as in-depth analytics of individual pin performance.
For Instagram, it tracks basic metrics, letting you identify what content resonates most with your audience and optimize your Instagram posting strategy accordingly.
Price: Three main subscription tiers ranging from $12.99 to $39.99 per month; Free Forever tier with limited features and support platforms
Skill level: Beginner to Intermediate Users
The perfect match: Small businesses with a focus on Instagram and Pinterest
| Pros | Cons |
| Customizable reports with visualizations | Limited number of social networks |
| Instagram Hashtag Finder | Lacks social media listening |
| Bulk image uploader | Steep learning curve for advanced features |
| Link-in-bio feature | Historical data constraints |
12. Google Analytics (GA)
Whether you’re running your own business or working for one, you probably already know about Google Analytics. It’s one of the most powerful, free tools a business can use to learn about its website visitors, which is great if you’re tracking traffic from your social channels to your site.
While it’s not a true social analytics tool, GA still provides tons of valuable insight into your social media marketing strategy.
With it, you can:
- Identify the key social media platforms driving traffic to your website with attribution analysis
- Explore key metrics like sessions, page views, bounce rate, and conversion rate for your social media traffic
- Analyze the behavior and demographics of your social media visitors
With Google Analytics, you’ll be able to evaluate the ROI of your social media campaigns, drive more impactful traffic to your website, and understand your target audience like the palm of your hand.
Even if you end up using another social media analytics tool, you should still incorporate GA into your marketing strategy!
Price: Free for any website
Skill level: Intermediate to advanced users
The perfect match: All e-commerce businesses using social media as a marketing tool
| Pros | Cons |
| Seamless integration with social platforms | Not a true social media analytics tool |
| Robust audience segmentation features | Does not report on key social metrics |
| Attribution analysis | Learning curve for more advanced reporting |
13. Followerwonk
Although Followerwonk is limited to Twitter analytics, with it, you’ll never question if your tweet will fly with your target audience. It offers in-depth insights into followers, influencers, and engagement metrics.
With Followerwonk, you can analyze your Twitter audience, identifying key demographics like location and interests. The tool also provides advanced analytics on follower growth, engagement patterns, and social authority.
You can even spy on your competitors with its competitive analysis feature, which is even included in the free version.
Price: Three tiers ranging from free to $63 per month billed annually
Skill level: Beginner to intermediate users
Perfect match: Small-to-mid-size businesses with a Twitter-heavy social strategy
| Pros | Cons |
| Competitor analysis | Single platform focus |
| In-depth audience analytics | Advanced features only available in higher subscription tiers |
| Data visualizations | Reliance on Twitter’s API for data |
| Influencer identification | Lack of real-time data |
14. Emplifi
Emplifi seamlessly blends social media management features with analytics and reporting capabilities. This tool empowers you to do everything from publishing content to benchmarking your metrics against competitors.
Comprehensive data provides insights into key metrics like engagement and reach, allowing you to optimize your efforts as needed. But Emplifi’s advanced analytics go beyond basics metrics, providing sentiment analysis, competitive benchmarking, and campaign performance tracking.
The tool also features detailed reports with customizable dashboards, charts, and graphs.
Beyond its analytic and reporting features, it also lets you create personas, identify influencers, and manage your communities.
Price: $240 – $480 per month
Skill level: Intermediate to advanced users
The perfect match: Medium-to-large e-commerce businesses, enterprise-level businesses, global brands
| Pros | Cons |
| Sentiment analysis | Hefty price |
| Competitive benchmarking | Complex for small businesses |
| Campaign performance tracking | Steep learning curve |
| Digital personal mapping | Limited historical data tracking |
15. Social media network analytics
Most every social media channel includes built-in analytics and dashboards that provide a treasure trove of insights for assessing your social media performance.
Right in the app, you can tap into the key metrics and data visualizations that are most important to you and your social media goals.
When paired with free resources like Google Sheets and Tableau Public, you can analyze your metrics across multiple social media platforms and time periods, and create accompanying visuals like audience or engagement analytics reports.
It’s important to note that while this free option is great for businesses with only a couple of social accounts, it can become burdensome for those using multiple social platforms to execute their social strategy.
Price: Free
Skill level: All skill levels
The perfect match: Any social media professional looking to track their social media metrics outside of the social network
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Cost-efficient (free!) | Manual data collection |
| Customizable to your brand’s needs and goals | Time-consuming |
| Real-time data | Siloed data and information |
That’s All, Folks!
We hope this list of social media analytics tools has helped you narrow down your search. Soon, you’ll have all of the data and reports you need to prove the success of your social marketing efforts.
We’ll close out with a bit of advice: When choosing a tool, always make sure it aligns with your business goals, delivers the metrics you need to track performance, and ultimately, helps you make changes that advance your social strategy.
