Running social media accounts and not looking at your analytics is like going to the gym and not tracking your progress - you’re putting in the effort but missing out on the opportunity to measure success and improve.
By using social media analytics, brands can gain valuable insights into their impact across platforms, identifying what’s working and what isn’t. With this information, you can fine-tune your content strategy, double down on successful approaches, and pivot away from tactics that don’t deliver results.
We'll be discovering how to find the right social media analytics tool for your brand needs and explore some of the best analytics tools on the market.
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A social media analytical tool is a software platform designed to collect, measure, and analyse data from social media platforms. These tools track various metrics, such as engagement, reach, impressions, and conversions, to provide insights into the performance of your campaigns or social media content. They help marketers understand audience behaviour, optimise content strategies, and measure the return on investment (ROI) of social media efforts.
Sometimes an analytics tool can take it a step further and include features like social listening which track online conversations and mentions about your brand or competitor monitoring that tracks your competitors' social media activity.
Social media analytics tools provide valuable insights into various aspects of your social media presence, helping you optimise your strategy and measure success. Understanding the different types of analytics is essential to gaining a clear view of your performance. Here are the main types of analytics available:
Audience analytics focus on the people who engage with your content. These metrics give you insights into who your followers are. Key metrics to track include:
Engagement analytics track how your audience interacts with your posts. These metrics provide insights into how well your content resonates with your audience and whether it’s sparking interaction. Common engagement metrics include:
Content analytics focuses on how well individual pieces of content perform. This includes tracking the success of posts, images, videos, and campaigns. Key metrics might include:
This metric tracks the number of posts you’ve sent or published across every social channel. It’s crucial for measuring your content output and understanding how frequently you are engaging your audience. Key things to track include:
Mentions refer to how often your brand, products, or content are mentioned across social media platforms. This can include direct mentions, tags, or discussions around your brand or specific campaigns. Key metrics to track include:
Firstly, it's important to define what you want to achieve with a social media campaign or strategy. In social media marketing, measurable goals provide the context for interpreting data and social media performance can look different from brand to brand.
Some common objectives include:
Once you’ve set clear goals, you can determine which social media metrics align with each objective, to help focus your social analytics and reveal actionable insight.
Based on your pre-determined goals, choose the metrics that will give you the most meaningful insights.
For example:
You may have different different key performance indicators (KPIs) for each social media network, so it’s important to understand what metrics matter most for your specific goals.
To gather and analyse social media data, you’ll need a got-to social media analytics tools, which also most likely a social media management tool. Many social media platforms offer their own built-in analytics (like, Instagram analytics, Twitter Analytics, etc.), but third-party tools like Sendible can provide a more comprehensive, detailed view.
A social media tool can help you:
Choose the tool that best suits your needs, whether it’s for tracking organic performance, paid campaigns, or customer sentiment.
Top tip 💡
Social media analysis should be an ongoing process. Set up regular social media reporting (weekly, monthly, quarterly) to track progress toward your goals - which is easily done within a social media analytics tool. Regularly monitor your performance to ensure you’re staying on track and adjusting to new challenges or opportunities on any social media account. whill make keeping your team or stakeholders informed with up-to-date insights to make data-driven decisions faster.
More often than not, as a social media manager, you're not given the biggest budget to work with, especially in a small business or solo entrepreneur. Tracking your social media analytics should never break the bank.
Alternative to third-party tools many social media platforms do offer free native social media analytics that provide valuable insights into your performance. While these free options may have some limitations compared to paid tools, they are still useful for getting started and understanding your social media presence.
Here’s how to track social media analytics for free:
Most major social media platforms provide free analytics for business or creator accounts. These tools allow you to monitor a range of performance metrics and gain insights into your audience and engagement without the need for a third-party tool. Some of the most popular social media platforms with built-in analytics include:
Instagram Insight: available for business and creator accounts, providing detailed data on your account’s performance. It contains:
Facebook Insights: available for Pages, offers comprehensive data to help businesses and creators evaluate their performance. Key features include:
TikTok analytics: available for Pro accounts, offers insights into video performance and audience behaviour. Its features include:
YouTube Analytics: offers robust metrics for creators and businesses to track video and channel performance. Key features include:
Another option is to use Google analytics as your social media analytics software. Although Google Analytics is traditionally used for website tracking, it can also be a great tool for monitoring the effectiveness of your social media efforts and to understand how each social platform is performing. You can use this by setting up UTM parameters, to track the traffic that comes to your website from social media platforms.
Extra: Did you know Sendible is integrated with Google analytics for even more analytical insight?
Choosing the right social media analytics tool can make all the difference in optimising your overall marketing strategy. Tools provide actionable insights into your social media performance, helping you track growth, and engagement. Below, we highlight 5 top tools, detailing their unique features, pricing, and suitability for different users. We’ve also included a quick advantages and disadvantages breakdown for each tool to help you decide.
Starting off with a personal favourite - Sendible is a social media management tool with advanced analytics features tailored for agencies, franchises, and brands handling multiple clients or accounts.
Sendible offers in-depth cross-social media reporting, enabling users to track performance metrics across various platforms in one centralised dashboard. Also, Sendible has the capability to report on individual marketing campaigns with detailed analytics to measure campaign success through key metrics like engagement and reach.
For agencies and franchises, Sendible’s white-label options are a game-changer. This feature lets users brand reports and dashboards with their own logos and colour schemes, ensuring consistency and professionalism in client communications
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Sprout Social offers a unified platform for social media management and analytics. Its analytics features include audience insights, post performance tracking, and social listening tools. Sprout Social also provides both pre-designed templates and customisable reporting options, offering flexibility in collecting key social metrics and presenting them to others in a clear and impactful manner.
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Buffer is an accessible and cost-effective tool for social media scheduling and analytics, tailored to meet the needs of small teams and individual users. You can incorporate metrics and charts from multiple channels into your reports, ensuring a clear and organised overview. Once set up, reports update automatically each day, allowing you to stay informed with minimal effort.
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Agorapulse is a flexible social media management tool ideal for brands focused on streamlined engagement and performance tracking. It helps you identify top-performing content on each platform, measure performance through reach, clicks, and engagement rates, and monitor team response times to ensure quick handling of brand interactions
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Zoho Social is a flexible tool designed for businesses and marketers to manage their social media presence while tracking analytics. It provides insights into engagement, audience growth, and campaign performance across key platforms. You can learn more about your audience, including their location, language, and demographic details.
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You've made it to the end! By now you probably understand social media analytics tools are essential for understanding how your content performs, identifying trends, and refining your strategy to meet your goals.
Whether you’re a small business owner, a marketer, or part of a large agency, the right analytics tool can transform raw data into actionable insights, saving you time and maximising your ROI.
The key to success lies in choosing a tool that aligns with your business objectives, fits your budget, and offers the features you need to optimise your social media efforts. As social media continues to evolve, staying on top of your analytics will ensure you remain competitive, informed, and ready to capitalise on every opportunity.