Does the complex interface of Meta Business Suite or LinkedIn Analytics make you sigh in frustration? With overwhelming data and performance glitches, native social media analytics tools can be a source of annoyance.
Luckily for digital marketers, business owners, and social media managers managing multiple social media accounts, third-party social media analytics come to the rescue with at-a-glance traffic analysis and content performance KPIs. I’ve rounded up my top 8 tools for tracking engagement metrics, audience insights, sentiment analysis, and social listening:
1. Planable Analytics — best for intuitive social media analytics
2. Sprout Social — best for sentiment analysis
3. Hootsuite — best for social listening
4. Buffer — best for basic tracking
5. HubSpot — best for web & social media traffic bundle
6. Google Analytics — best for overviewing the customer journey
7. Keyhole — best for influencer campaigns
8. Rival IQ — best for competitive analysis
What can a social media analytics tool do for you?
Social media analytics tools are your trustworthy friend in social media management. They’re software platforms that help you monitor your social media data, including key metrics, target audience insights, competitive analysis, etc.
But why do you need a separate social media reporting tool? Can’t you use a native analytics tool?
You can. But you probably don’t want to.
Meta Business Suite can often feel like an absolute social media tool nightmare. Not only does it show data that differs from Instagram in-app analytics — which is pretty weird since it’s practically the same thing — but it also shows inconsistent numbers in different tabs for the same Facebook page!
Every SM manager opening Meta Business Suite ⬇️
Plus, it’s probably the most user-UNfriendly interface ever created — difficult to navigate and constantly getting updates that move things around without bringing much improvement. And if you’re also looking into other platforms’ native analytics, that adds up to even more hassle navigating different interfaces.
As a social media marketer, I cannot stress enough the importance of properly monitoring your social media efforts. And since I’m always looking for ways to streamline and optimize my work, I’m a big fan of specialized tools. Here’s how a sound analytics tool can enhance your social media presence:
- Get actionable insights. Many platforms offer valuable insights into audience demographics, content consumption patterns, and active times. You can use this data to enrich your social media campaigns.
- Optimize your social media strategy. Monitoring your content performance helps you quickly tweak your social media marketing strategy to ensure it works at its best.
- Improve engagement. Along with key metrics, some tools monitor comments and DMs across major social media platforms. You can use these insights to keep your users engaged.
- Achieve marketing objectives. A social media analytics tool is like a control center for all your social media networks. You can set particular goals and KPIs and then use report templates to communicate your success to the higher-ups.
- Have one dashboard to rule them all. Running several social media accounts means jumping back and forth between different platforms. A social media analytics tool provides an overview of all your efforts on a single dashboard.
Top social media analytics tools for an easy business dashboard
Choosing the right tool to track your social media performance is not easy. More often than not, it’s about trial and error. Most platforms, including various Facebook and Instagram analytics tools, offer a free trial period to get familiar with the functionality — I strongly recommend using this time wisely!
Now, here are eight social media analytics software for you to begin exploring:
1. Planable Analytics: best for intuitive social media analytics
Planable Analytics is a social media analytics tool that allows you to constantly monitor your social presence and gather insights on your performance.
Social media professionals love Planable Analytics for its sleek interface and easy reporting capabilities.
Because the analytics tool comes integrated into the complete Planable social media management platform, you can assign post labels for each content type or social media campaign, and track how each of them perform. You thus gain specific insights, perfect for action changes in your content strategy.
Analytics dashboard in Planable
Planable Analytics supports Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. More social media platforms will be added soon.
The downside of Planable Analytics is that it doesn’t cover competitor analysis, social monitoring, or listening.
Key features
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See all your social insights at a glance. Monitor your accounts’ performance on key metrics like number of followers, posts, impressions, engagement, or page visits.
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Easily spot winning content. See what content works best according to your relevant metrics. Elevate your social media strategy and double down on what works.
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Get in-depth insights for each post. When a specific post catches your eye, get the advanced metrics with one click. No tab switching, it’s right there.
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Create easy-to-read reports. Generate custom reports with a few clicks, download or share via the dedicated link.
Pricing
Planable Analytics has a 7-day free trial and costs $9/month per workspace. It’s available as an add-on for all of Planable’s paid plans (that start at $11/month).
2. Sprout Social: best for sentiment analysis
Sprout Social is a powerful all-in-one platform for marketing agencies managing multiple clients. It provides comprehensive social media analytics for multiple channels and lots of additional features like social media listening, or employee advocacy.
Its strong suit is sentiment analysis, which helps you monitor conversations about your brand to overview a general attitude toward your company and your products or services.
Sprout is an excellent example of a complex tool that is still user-friendly and more or less intuitive (yes, Meta Business Suite, I’m looking at you).
The software supports all major social platforms and offers tons of other solutions for social listening (like Reddit, Tripadvisor, etc.).
The drawback is the price. Sprout Social is expensive, and if you truly want to leverage the power of its analytics tools, you probably need at least the Professional plan (which costs $399/month).
Pricing
Sprout Social is not for thin budgets: the cheapest Standard plan costs $249/month with five social media channels included.
3. Hootsuite: best for social listening
Hootsuite is a pioneer social media management platform that includes scheduling and publishing features alongside social media monitoring. Hootsuite supports Instagram, Facebook, X, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, and Pinterest.
One of my favorite Hootsuite add-ups is its social listening feature, which teams can use to track conversations and get insights that can be leveraged in social media strategies.
With Hootsuite, tracking brand mentions across multiple social media profiles and quickly jumping into the conversation is pretty easy.
Hootsuite comes with two significant drawbacks. The price — the cheapest pack is still pretty expensive ($99/month), and it requires a bank card right away. The UX — which many complain is a bit outdated.
Pricing
Hootsuite has three paid plans: Professional for $99/month, Team for $249/month, and the custom Enterprise plan.
4. Buffer: best for very basic tracking
Buffer is a social media management tool that you can use to schedule and publish content, as well as access analytics data. The platform doesn’t offer any flamboyant solutions, but that’s what I like it for.
Buffer analyzes your social accounts and content. Based on this data and enhanced by Buffer AI, the platform provides tips, such as the best time to publish, the recommended cadency of posting, or the best-performing type of content.
Buffer supports all major social media networks, including Pinterest, Mastodon, Shopify, and Google Business Profile.
The downside of Buffer is that its free version doesn’t include analytics tools. Also, based on my personal experience, tracking paid ads in Buffer is not that good.
Pricing
Buffer bills based on the number of channels and feature set. The platform has a free version that includes three channels and three paid plans. The cheapest plan costs $6/channel per month and offers extensive analytics.
5. HubSpot: best for web & social media traffic bundle
HubSpot provides a whole set of marketing products, including social media marketing tools. Its social analytics tool is a part of Marketing Hub.
Even though I’d call HubSpot more web traffic-oriented, you can still leverage it for social channels, especially if you aim to increase web traffic through social media.
The tool is pretty basic in tracking metrics — impressions, reach, follower count, nothing too fancy. However, two things make HubSpot special: the web sessions from your social posts and seamless integration with HubSpot’s CRM.
HubSpot supports Facebook, X, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube (although the latter is only included in the Enterprise plan).
The drawback of HubSpot’s social media analytics tool is that it doesn’t include data from boosted posts or social ads. The reports only consist of organic social data. It also doesn’t provide historical data from before you integrate HubSpot.
Pricing
HubSpot’s Marketing Hub has two packages: Professional for $880/month and Enterprise for $3300/month.
6. Google Analytics: best for overviewing the entire customer journey
Google Analytics is the ultimate frenemy of any marketer. Although it’s not tailored for social media, it’s still a helpful tool that helps you understand where your social channels stand in the grand scheme of all things relating to the customer journey.
The most common use for Google Analytics as a social media tool is monitoring social media ads, especially if your final conversion happens outside the socials, on the website (a sale, a registration, or a subscription).
With GA, you can track the traffic source, tying social media efforts to actual ROI-generating results.
The downside is that GA doesn’t track your social media performance per se. It concentrates on the connection point between socials and the web, so you won’t be able to monitor your monthly Facebook page impressions through it.
Pricing
Google Analytics is free (it only takes marketers’ tears as payment).
7. Keyhole: best for influencer campaigns
Keyhole is a social media management platform with both scheduling and analytics features (however, the latter prevails). The platform allows you to track your performance, compare it to competitors, analyze campaigns across multiple social accounts, and conduct market research on keywords.
Its star feature is influencer marketing. With Keyhole, you can generate reports on your influencer marketing campaigns, discover and compare influencers by topic and region, and stay on top of social media trends.
Keyhole supports Facebook, Instagram, X, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, and media, which allows you to tap into mentions across news websites.
Speaking of disadvantages, Keyhole only supports scheduling content for X, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram, so you can track your TikTok performance but not manage the content.
Pricing
The Keyhole social media analytics tool has five paid plans, the cheapest costing $79/month.
However, it only includes Facebook, Instagram, and X. To add TikTok, YouTube, and LinkedIn to the bundle, you’ll have to upgrade to $249/month.
8. Rival IQ: best for competitive analysis
Rival IQ, as the name suggests, concentrates on competitor analysis. Besides this, the platform provides in-depth social media analytics (including popular topics and hashtag performance), comprehensive audits to get an overview of your social channels, and social listening.
A nice perk of Rival IQ is that you can run a free head-to-head comparison with your main competitor on Instagram, TikTok, X, or Facebook to try the platform out.
Rival IQ can detect likely boosted posts and offers to set content alerts to monitor your competitors’ game.
Rival IQ supports Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X, YouTube, and TikTok.
On the disadvantage side, Rival IQ is not a scheduling tool — it’s strictly analytics. But if you already have software for scheduling, publishing, and collaborating on content (like Planable, for instance), you can opt for a powerful analytics-only platform like Rival IQ.
Pricing
Rival IQ has three paid plans. The cheapest one, Drive, costs $239/month and offers enough features for a smaller team: 10 tracked companies, six months of historical data, benchmarking, and social media analysis.
However, according to the platform, the most popular plan is Engage, with 20 tracked companies and Facebook Ads tracking. Engage costs $349/month.
Social media analytics FAQs
Can you track social media analytics?
Yes. You can track social media campaigns and content performance either through native analytics tools (which are often complicated and over-the-top) or designated social media analytics tools. Planable Analytics is a good option if you’re looking for an intuitive interface that makes it easy to gather insights and create reports.
What is the most common metric for social media?
The most common metrics for social media include reach, impressions, likes, engagement rate, brand mentions, number of followers, and click-through rate.
Conclusion
Tracking social media analytics is crucial for any marketer. To build a sound marketing strategy, you need to easily review the impact of your current tactics. Social media analytics tools make data accessible, easy to interpret, and easy to showcase to stakeholders.
So go ahead: use those free trial periods, find your perfect analytics tool, and rock your marketing strategy like never before! Planable is a great option that covers all your content flow, from creation to approvals, scheduling, and insights.
Content marketer with a background in journalism; digital nomad, and tech geek. In love with blogs, storytelling, strategies, and old-school Instagram. If it can be written, I probably wrote it.
