When it comes to social media analytics, it is not just about collecting data but getting the answers you want, backed by data. What tactics are working for you? Which platform do you need to focus on? What type of content is performing well? How are your brandâs presence and perception overall?
Getting access to all these useful data insights means you will be better equipped to focus your time, efforts, and money to produce tangible results. However, with so many options available in the market, it might be challenging to choose the one to meet your business needs.
That is why choosing the right social media analytics, and reporting tools can surely make things easier and simpler. So, letâs dive in!
What is social media analytics, and why is it so important?
With the number of users (3.96 billion in 2024) increasing on different media channels worldwide, , it has become more important than ever to make sense of the data behind all your social media activities.
This is where social analysis or social media analytics can prove powerful.
Social media analytics is the process of collecting, monitoring, analyzing, summarizing, and visualizing social media data to:
- Craft social media strategies that improve conversions and boost business
- Facilitate meaningful conversations and interactions with your target audience Understand your online campaign efforts
- Maintain a competitive advantage over other brands
What is social media reporting?
You can achieve your social KPIs. However, your clients and higher management might not understand the logic behind all those numbers and graphs.
Social media reporting is the art of explaining and presenting your successes and failures on social media.
Although social media reports are usually associated with monitoring metrics such as engagement rates, growth of followers, posts per day, etc. In reality, there are more types of reports that social media teams need to have for a 360-degree analysis of their performance.
- Conversation activity report or social engagement report includes metrics such as average response time and period, the time distribution of replies, and auto sentiment analysis of your engagement.
- Social listening report includes metrics such as total brand mentions on social media, auto sentiment analysis of mentions, sources and their distribution, mention activity, etc.
- Competitor analysis report includes metrics such as the growth of competitorsâ followersâ, the number of posts, types of posts, engagement rates, interaction types, and the number of comments/likes/shares/replies of published and deleted content.
Top 10 best social media analytics and reporting tools and their pricing plans
Letâs check out our list of top 9 social media analytics and reporting tools to find the right solution for your business!
1. Sociality.io
Of course, this one is our favorite!
Sociality.io is an end-to-end social media management solution suitable for digital agencies as well as small to large-sized businesses. Apart from features such as scheduling and publishing, engagement, and social listening, Sociality.io offers multi-level access view, and edit permissions, a unified inbox for all social media engagement, team performance analytics, and reporting, and most importantly, one of the most advanced analytics modules.
Our Social media competitor analysis reports lets you see all your selected competitors in one report, which allows you to make more accurate decisions and keep track of your market trends. The tool allows you to compare up to 15 competitor pages at once, while you can add an unlimited number of competitor pages on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Using the Analytics module, you can export an unlimited number of reports of all your social accounts in PDF, PPT, or Excel formats. With detailed fan, reach, and engagement analysis, you can increase your performance and develop a more engaging content strategy. You can also access tool tips, team activity measurements, historical data, and more here!
With its starting price of $99/month and the complimentary 14-day long free trial, you might as well see why brands and marketers prefer Sociality.io! It also offers you the flexibility to manage your social media profiles through a mobile app anytime, anywhere.
2. Hootsuite
If youâre not new to social media management, itâs impossible not to hear about Hootsuite. One of the early entrants in social media marketing management and a market leader for a very long time now, Hootsuite focuses on small and medium-sized businesses and enterprises.
Hootsuite has many features of social media management, including publishing, engaging, social advertising, monitoring, and analytics. With its analytics tool, you get an overview of key metrics, unlimited real-time reports, and team performance measurement across all social platforms. From over 200 metrics, you can customize reports and export them in PDF, Excel, or PPT formats.
With its starting price at $49 /mo and a 30-day free trial period, you might want to jump and see what it has to offer!
3. Buffer
Buffer offers tools and many extensions to make your life easy as a social media manager. These tools include publishing, analytics, engagement, and new addition, start a page. Buffer analytics allows you to monitor the performance of your content and access reports for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn on a single dashboard. With its starting price of $5/month for Essentials which includes an analytics module, you can pick plans or add channels depending on your teamâs and brandâs needs.
4. Socialbakers
Socialbakersâ social media measurement and reporting tool analyze your social channels. It helps you benchmark your performance, according to which you can create more original content, set better advertising strategies, make decisions based on their AI recommendations, calculate ROI, and predict future engagement. It also offers an AI-powered audience analysis tool to help you map the personas of your target audience.
Moreover, its content intelligence tool helps you to dive into AI-driven Content Hub to get insights from all digital channels to help you create engaging content.
Apart from their social media management and monitoring tools, they offer solutions in influencer marketing, community management, and customer care.
5. Agorapulse
Agorapulse offers various features, including social media inbox, publishing, monitoring, reporting, and ROI. Its monitoring feature allows you to find content that is performing well, track trends and team performance, as well as offer content recommendations.
More features include custom reports based on chosen metrics and custom dates as well as a Facebook ROI calculator. You can compare time periods and schedule reports in your email and also download a CSV file of your social content for a detailed analysis.
Agorapulse is well suited for small/medium-size companies.
6. Sprout Social
Sprout Social offers various features or modules including analytics, engagement, scheduling and publishing, listening, and employee advocacy.
Measure performance across channels and let your data tell the story with presentation-ready network, content, team, and productivity reports. It includes 18 different reports on activities like task reports, team reports, Facebook competitors reports, and more. By measuring the ROI of your paid activity, youâll understand how your advertising budget impacts your company page growth by comparing paid versus organic impressions and fans gained.
The pricing starts at $99/month/user for the most basic plan and includes five social profiles.
7. Keyhole
Apart from social scheduling and publishing, Keyhole offers some unique analytical insights, including brand monitoring and reporting, social listening and analytics, influencer tracking and analytics, campaign tracking and monitoring, event tracking, and monitoring, as well as API access.
Related article: Social Media APIs and Best Use Cases
Keyhole is the only hashtag tracking solution that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to predict how hashtags will perform in the next day, week, and month. Keyhole uses Trend Analysis to show you which keywords are gaining traction, leading up repeatedly in conversations, and which popular ones are losing steam. That said, they help you predict the amount of engagement, reach and impressions it will get before it does so you can course-correct to reach your goal and know when youâre on track.
You can create shareable real-time dashboards with clients or download your report in PDF or CVS formats.
Keyhole offers custom pricing based on business needs.
8. Netbase
When it comes to next-generation AI-powered analytics, we have to name Netbase which is a customer and market intelligence platform. Social media intelligence (SMI or SOCMINT) represents the stack of technology solutions and methods used to monitor social media, including social conversations and emerging trends. This intelligence is then analyzed and used to create meaningful content and make business decisions across many disciplines.
Social Sentiment analysis uses natural language processing (NLP) to analyze social conversations online and determines deeper context as they apply your relevant topics, brands, and themes. Its net sentiment score and the brand passion index show how users feel about your brand and compare it across your competitors. Thus, as a brand, you evaluate your brandâs health, deal with any crises safer and earlier and understand the competition.
A social media analytics report gives you all the social metrics, social media listening, audience analysis, competitive analysis, Social Sentiment analysis, and social media monitoring services.
Image analytics and customer experience analytics are also available within the platform. 9.
9. Brand24
Brand24, a powerful social listening tool, features a web-based dashboard that shows real-time insights about your content and audience.
With its automated sentiment analysis, they use advanced sentiment detection to segment positive, negative, and neutral mentions, and you get your instant alert notification for social, news, blogs, videos, forums, podcasts, reviews, and much more.
. Moreover, with mention analytics, you get to see who is talking about your brand online and get insights about them. It also offers an influencer score to help you make informed decisions about choosing influencers for your business or brand. You can export your data into automated PDF reports, .xls files, and infographics. With pricing starting at $24/month, you can choose different plans for this media monitoring tool for your business.
đ§ Bonus article: 5 Proven steps to master social media automation
đ§ Worth checking article: Simplify sales and lead gen with 10 LinkedIn automation tools
10. Whatagraph
Whatagraph is a marketing reporting tool that supports a large number of social media platforms. There are 40+ data sources available to integrate with, including Facebook, LinkedIn Ads, TikTok ads, Pinterest and many, many others. Creating a social media report is a matter of minutes as you can just grab a report template and get going.
With Whatagraph, you can create a social media report for a single channel or go cross-channel and combine different social media platforms in one report. Either way, there are 100+ report templates you can use.
There is a 7-day free trial and paid plans start at $199 per month. This gives you access to 25 data integrations and unlimited reports, making it ideal for social media agencies.
Top social media analytics tools to try in 2024
| Tools | Social media analytics and reporting features | Pricing** | Rating (Ref: G2) | Suitable for |
| Sociality.io | -Comprehensive reporting tool for social media KPIs -Up-to-date cross-channel historical data-Engagement and interaction rate for individual posts -Content intelligence -Automated and centralized analytics reports (daily, monthly, or weekly) on hundreds of accounts in XLSX, PPT, and PDF formats directly into inbox -Secure and convenient APIs for social media intelligence -Competitor analytics and performance benchmarks | Staring at $99/month with a 14-day free trial | 4.5 | -Agencies -Entrepreneurs -Social media managers at small to large-sized businesses -Marketing teams |
| Hootsuite | -Social results and brand sentiments on a single platform -Performance benchmarks -Insights on the best time to post -Custom reports directly into inbox -ROI calculation and easy-to-read graphs, tables, and KPI summaries on your social media efforts -Competitor analytics | Starting at $49 /month with a 30-day free trial | 4.1 | -Business owners -Social media managers at small-to-medium-sized businesses, -Marketing teams |
| Buffer | -Detailed performance insights of social accounts -Paid vs. organic results of boosted posts-Key engagement metrics for each social account -Stories, individual posts, and hashtags insights -Audience demographics-Insights on the best time to post, the best type of post, and posting frequency -Custom reports in PDF format and charts as images | Free and paid plans with a 14-day free trial | 4.3 | -Individuals -Marketing teams -Agencies -Social media managers in small to medium-sized businesses |
| Socialbakers | -In-depth performance measurement of social accounts -Performance benchmarks -ROI attribution -Audience analysis and content intelligence -Paid social media, influencer campaign, sentiment insights – Custom reports | Staring at $200/month | 4.2 | -Social media managers at small to large-sized businesses -Marketing teams -Agencies |
| Agorapulse | -Insights on best-performing content and trends -Content recommendation based on user behavior -Team performance analytics -Reports based on custom date ranges and metrics -CSV file for data analysis -Social media ROI insights | Free and paid plans with a 15-day free trial | 4.5 | -Agencies -Enterprises -Social media managers at small to medium-sized businesses |
| Sprout Social | -Complete overview of social profiles on one platform -Competitor analytics and performance benchmarks -Reports on paid campaigns, posts, profiles, team, etc. with custom date ranges and filters -Additional metrics for social ROI -Insights on content ideas, trends, and audiences | Starting at $99/month with q 30-day free trial | 4.3 | -Business owners -Social media managers at small-to-medium-sized businesses, -Marketing teams -Agencies |
| Keyhole | -Influencer tracking and analytics -Hashtag reporting -Sentiment and advanced trend analytics -Brand monitoring and reporting-Event or campaign monitoring and tracking -Competitor insights and performance benchmarks -Social listening analytics -Custom and historical data reports | Pricing on request | 4.3 | -Agencies -Enterprises -Nonprofits -Social media managers at medium to large-sized businesses |
| Netbase | -Customer and market intelligence, including behaviour and sentiment insight -Social media analytics, including brand and competitive tracking -Competitive intelligence -Trend analytics -Image analytics | Pricing on request | 4.3 | -Agencies -Consulting firms -Enterprises -Large-sized businesses |
| Brand24 | -Primarily a social listening and monitoring tool -Sentiment analysis -Insights on discussion volume -mention analytics -Influence score to identify the right influencers -Data in PDF, XLS, and infographic format | Starting at $49/month with a 14-day free trial | 4.6 | -Agencies – Enterprises -Social media managers at medium to large-sized businesses |
** Although, it really isnât the right way to directly compare the pricing plans. You can use this link to help you to compare 150+ pricing plans from different solutions to see what fits your needs and budget
