Long gone are the times when we used social media just to watch cat videos and read funny memes. Now, social media is more powerful than ever, allowing businesses to reach new audiences, build brand awareness, and drive revenue growth. Considering the sheer volume of data available on social media, you might find it difficult to make sense of it all. Well, not if you use an adequate social media analytics tool.
In this blog post, we’ll explore the top 10 paid and free social media analytics tools that can help you leverage the power of social media data, gain valuable insights about your activities, and optimize your social media marketing efforts.
So, let’s start!
Table of Content
- Why Use a Social Media Analytics Tool?
- Things to Consider Before Choosing a Social Media Analytics Tool
- 10 Best Paid & Free Social Media Analytics Tools
Updated on 05/05/2023
Why Use a Social Media Analytics Tool?
In short, social media analytics tools are your shortcut to the success of digital marketing campaigns. These tools show you what works and what not works for your social accounts.
With their help, you can develop data-driven strategies tailor-made for your business and grow your engagement on social media.
But that’s just one general benefit of social media analytics tools, and actually the idea behind the concept. There are so many other advantages. Using social media analytics tools, you can
Analyze all social media channels in one place
This allows you to easily compare performance across different platforms, track trends, develop insights, and more importantly, see the bigger picture. Additionally, analytics tools allow for more in-depth analysis of individual platforms.
Easily create social media reports
Creating a detailed report manually on the performance of several social platforms can be a daunting job. That’s why account managers and PR love the social media reports feature of analytics apps. You won’t find good social media analytics tools without a reporting feature.
Identify content that works
Social media analytics tools can help you identify content that works by gaining insights into what type of content is resonating with users.
This can be done by measuring social media metrics such as likes, shares, and comments on posts, or by analyzing the sentiment of comments and posts.
With this data, you can create content that is more likely to be successful and ensure that your efforts are not wasted on content that is not a match for your target audience.
Things to Consider Before Choosing a Social Media Analytics Tool
Before diving into the list of best social media analytics tools, it’s better to have a clear idea about the features that the tool provides. Generally speaking, there are several criteria to consider, when it comes to choosing a good social media analytics tool:
- Data Sources: Are the social media platforms you are on supported by the tool?
- Metrics: Is the tool tracks your main social metrics and KPIs?
- Features: Does it provide unique features such as report builder, sentiment analysis, and hashtag tracking?
- Price: Does the tool comes with a pricing plan suitable for your business?
- Data accuracy: Can your social media analytics tool provide real-time and reliable data?
- Customization and flexibility: Can you customize your reports and dashboards or use filters to modify the result that you want?
- Customer support: Does the tool provides reliable customer support, with resources such as documentation, and training materials?
10 Best Paid & Free Social Media Analytics Tools
Keep those criteria that matter to you in mind and now, let’s go over the best social media analytics tools.
Mentionlytics
Mentionlytics is an AI-powered and easy-to-use social media analytics tool that provides your business with a competitive advantage when it comes to analyzing what is happening on social.
Here are some of the key analytics features of Mentionlytics:
Mention and keyword tracking: Monitor how many times and by which accounts you were mentioned on social media
Hashtag tracking and analysis: See the popularity and trends of hashtags over time
Social media report builder: Customized or from 4 ready-to-use templates
Sentiment analysis: Capture the feelings behind comments, captions, and hashtags
Share of voice calculator: Measure your market share compared to the competitors
Social Intelligent Assistant (SIA): AI-powered assistant that informs you about emerging trends, threads, personal optimization tips, and much more.
It is available at the following monthly subscription plans:
- Startup @ $39 per month
- Essential @ $99 per month
- Advanced @ $199 per month
- Pro @ $299 per month
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is an online marketing and social media management suite that allows users to measure their performance and optimize their strategies.
The suite’s tracking software offers instant alerts for brand, competitor, and industry mentions in more than 35 social networks. Afterward, Hoosuite’s social media analytics tools analyze the data and come up with valuable insights.
The platform provides more interesting features, such as:
- Customizable reporting
- Keyword tracking
- Social media campaign monitoring
- Unified social management
- Review tracking
- Reputation monitoring
Hootsuite’s pricing offers the following subscription models:
- Professional plan @ $99 per month
- Team plan @ $249 per month
- Business @ $762 per month
- Enterprise plan @ custom price
Meta Business Suite (Free)
Meta Business Suite, formerly known as Facebook Business Suite, is a valuable free management and analytics solution for every Meta app –Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger.
Meta Business Suite works best with individual creators and low-budget companies, but its features can help users save time and learn how to grow.
Some of the most important features include:
- Scheduling and publishing on Facebook and Instagram
- Unified inbox management
- Paid ad creation
- All-in-one activity monitoring
- Business viewing at a glance
- Trend and audience insights
Twitter Analytics (free)
Twitter Analytics is one of the best functioning free social media analytics tools. Twitter offers users the opportunity to start measuring the impact of their Tweets and boost their performance.
This free tool focuses only on Twitter, but it has become a valuable cost-free asset for many content marketers.
Twitter Analytics provides three analytics dashboards:
- Tweet activity
The dashboard focuses on post-performance analytics –e.g. Tweets’ engagement, impressions, etc.
- Followers
This dashboard includes basic audience intelligence actions –e.g. audience demographics, location detection, and interest tracking.
- Twitter Cards
This dashboard monitors your Twitter Cards and tracks clicks, Retweets, and app installs.
AgoraPulse
As an all-in-one online marketing solution, AgoraPulse helps people manage their social media accounts and grow their social media strategies.
To give users accurate data-driven social media content recommendations, AgoraPulse streamlines social listening and analytics software. Brands measure their social media content performance and discover helpful insights to improve their marketing efforts.
AgoraPulse provides more features, including:
- Customizable reporting and CSV exports
- Social media trend analysis
- Team performance tracking
- Social media inbox management
- Scheduling and publishing
- Social media ROI measurement
AgoraPulse’s pricing includes the following subscription options:
- Standard plan @ €69 per month
- Professional plan @ €99 per month
- Advanced plan @ €149 per month
- Custom plan
Keyhole
As one of the most prominent social media analytics tools, Keyhole focuses on social listening and data analysis.
The platform specializes in Profile Analytics, monitoring accounts, and online conversations to provide helpful insights. All data go through visualization and end up in shareable reports for marketers to include in their performance evaluations.
Keyhole’s valuable features include:
- Campaign monitoring
- Hashtag tracking and analytics
- Influencer identification
- Historical data tracking
- Publishing and scheduling
- Social media trend analysis
Keyhole’s flexible plan-based pricing includes the:
- SMB & Freelancers plan @ $99 per month
- Corporate plan @ $299 per month
- Agency plan @ $599 per month
- Enterprise plan @ custom price
Sprout Social
While it’s mainly a social media management tools, Sprout Social offers analytics, as well, to help people make informed decisions.
The tool’s intelligent software helps streamline the workflow and speed up the social data collection process. Individual people and brand use Sprout Social to track mentions, discover trends, and improve their social media marketing strategy.
The platform offers many features, including:
- Report automation (for premium users)
- Online presence measurement
- Content marketing optimization
- Scheduling and publishing
- Audience targeting
- Campaign monitoring
Sprout Social offers the following subscription packages:
- Standard plan @ $249 per month
- Professional plan @ $399 per month
- Advanced plan @ $499 per month
- Enterprise plan @ custom price
Meltwater
Meltwater is a PR and media intelligence suite that companies employ to help them make the right business decisions.
Operating with smart social listening software, Meltwater can catch anything viral within an industry and important brand mentions for users. Clients can receive automated reports and understand what their customers want.
Meltwater offers many cool features, such as:
- Sentiment and emotional analysis
- Word clouds and keyword tracking
- Social media trend analysis
- Scheduling and publishing
- Consumer insights
- Influencer identification
Unfortunately, Meltwater doesn’t feature any information about their plan-based pricing publicly.
Sendible
Sendible is social media management platform that allows users to save time by completing time-consuming tasks for them, like quick responding.
Moreover, the tool offers social media data analysis, engagement boosting, and automated reports. Their analytics result in valuable and actionable insights that advise brands on how to streamline their marketing strategies.
Some cool Sendible features include:
- Website traffic reporting
- Scheduling with content calendars
- RSS feed importing
- White-label reporting
- WordPress and Canva integrations
- Team collaboration
Sendible’s pricing offers the following subscription solutions:
- Creator plan @ $24 per month
- Traction plan @ $75 per month
- Scale plan @ $165 per month
Rebrandly
Rebrandly is a link management solution that creates, shortens, shares, and tracks branded URLs to help brands improve brand visibility.
Seeing links as company assets, Rebrandly focuses on providing in-depth URL analysis. Hence, actions, like measuring CTR and website traffic, help brands understand what links perform better.
Some basic Rebrandly features that companies appreciate include:
- Workspaces and team collaboration
- Custom URL slugs
- Advanced link analytics
- Traffic routing
- Custom and aggregated reports
- Account management
If you’re looking for free social media analytics tools, Rebrandly offers a cost-free option with limited features. However, the platform’s subscription-based solutions include:
- Lite plan @ $12 per month (annual billing)
- Essentials plan @ $34 per month
- Professional plan @ $99 per month
- Pro+ plan @ $399 per month
- Enterprise plan @ custom price
To Sum Up
Social media analysis is an integral part of crafting your marketing strategy and evaluating if it’s really working for you.
Are you using the best social media analytics tools to measure the success of your brand?
Book a free live demo with Mentionlytics, and let our experts walk you through how our social media analytics can help you lead in your industry!
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