As we’ve previously helped outline the top 10 free social media monitoring tools, we thought it might be valuable to go beyond monitoring and delve into other types of analytics tools.
First question: what’s the difference between monitoring and analytics?
Well, it’s not actually that clear. Many would argue social media monitoring is a type of analytics, whereas others would say social media analytics tools are exclusively concerned with owned media.
Instead of writing 600 words on the specific difference and nuances of the terminology, here are eight analytics tools we think are pretty handy for anyone looking at measuring social media (assuming you’re already using Brandwatch, right?)
1) Sprout Social
Let’s kick off with Sprout Social, a tool which mainly focuses on three key areas: engagement, publishing and reporting (analytics).
What we like about Sprout Social is that it tracks owned activity in a great deal of depth.
One particularly useful feature is how it provides a score for sites like Facebook and Twitter, pointing out how effectively you’re communicating with your communities.
Some other cool features are: demographics, scheduling options and benchmarking against competitors in terms of engagement, influence, followers, etc.
The pricing ranges from $39 to $99 per month, depending on the features you need.
2) Google Analytics
This is one of the few platforms that we use on a daily basis – and it can be a bit addictive, but it’s incredibly useful.
Google Analytics lets you track page views, visitor information and conversion rates, allowing you to keep an eye on what’s working best and what needs to be improved in areas such as referrals, social media or email traffic to your website, for instance.
Additionally, being aware of how people found your site or where they’re clicking on your page facilitates the process of duplicating successful actions and expanding upon them.
Its user-friendly (but somewhat ugly) interface makes it really easy to use and even if you’re an analytics rookie, you can learn pretty fast how it works with buckets of resources available via – you guessed it – Google.
Anyone who’s anyone should be using a tool like this if they hope to apply some kind of ROI to their social media efforts.
Best part about it? It’s completely free, so we highly recommend giving it a spin.
3) Cyfe
Cyfe focuses on tracking social media and email accounts, blogs, websites and so on.
Inside your dashboard, you can add widgets (a maximum of five allowed for the free version, but if in need for more, you can always pay $19/month for unlimited widgets), to get a better idea of your audience size, activity and keyword searches.
It’s a robust tool for reporting as it lets you download reports of your data in PNG, JPEG, PDF and CSV formats, and also share the info with your team, ensuring smooth workflow management.
4) Tailwind
Our community management team uses Tailwind for tracking growth in terms of followers, repins and likes on Pinterest, as well as identifying relevant topics of conversation to our industry and connecting with influential pinners.
Usefully, you can also rely on Tailwind for benchmarking fan engagement levels against competitors and optimising your content.
You can use their “heat maps” for monitoring virality or getting immediate actionable insights regarding best days and times to pin based on when your audience is most engaged..
Fancy having a look? You can either go for the Lite version ($29/month) or if looking for more features, the Professional version ($99/month) might be best for you.
5) Beevolve
Beevolve’s monitoring dashboard provides insights such as sentiment & topic analysis, as well as top sources and tag clouds.
The tool also allows you to launch posts and get metrics such as conversions, shares and comments, for each of them.
Additional features include: competitive analytics, email alerts, daily summary reports, engagement & workflow, etc. The pricing plan starts at $19.95 per month for 1 user, 5 social profiles and email support.
6) Keyhole
Keyhole is worth testing if you’re seeking for a tool that looks at Twitter, Instagram or Facebook, as it tracks any hashtag, keyword or URL.
In a nutshell, insights such as demographics, location and topic clouds can be used for identifying brand advocates and their background.
Furthermore, with Keyhole you can also analyse buzz around campaigns in real-time, finding the most engaging content and amplifying it.
Their pricing is quite flexible, highly dependent on your needs and starts at $49/month.
7) Crowdbooster
Crowdbooster’s user interface is easy to navigate, as you can get instant visual feedback regarding your performance.
Similarly to Tailwind, it offers valuable insights with reference to the best times of the day to share content with your community, based on previous posts’ engagement, and there’s also a scheduling option.
With Crowdbooster, you can check the number of likes, comments, impressions, retweets and many more metrics, all in real time.
They do 30 days free-trial versions, so you can sign up for that before deciding whether any of their Bronze, Silver or Gold pricing plans works for you.
8) Social Bakers
Social Bakers provides social media network statistics from Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and YouTube, helping companies evaluate the success of their social media activity.
It also allows industry and regional benchmarking, and you can monitor and analyse any profile or page without admin rights.
Social Bakers is great for analyzing fan growth and user activity, while also finding out key insights about your brand advocates.
The pricing starts at $39/month and it covers up to 10 profiles, but the premium version is $99/month+.
If you’re looking for a cost-effective social media analytics tool, these suggestions are a promising start- go for a few free trials and see which app works best for you.
We’ve selected the tools on this list with social media monitoring in mind. Smart marketers are using a suite of technology to create their own toolkits, allowing them to effectively use and measure social media activity.
We’ve developed Brandwatch with this in mind, and believe our platform perfectly complements some of the vendors featured in this list.
If you’re assessing which software will help advance your digital marketing efforts, we’d be happy to show you what Brandwatch can do.