20 Social Media Analytics Tools for Small Businesses


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Social media analytics tools are essential to measuring social media ROI — that is, your company’s return on investment from using social media. If you are a social media manager or own a small business, you are going to need the best tools you can find. The same goes for those involved in influencer marketing or digital agencies that run social media campaigns.

Great tools make your job easier, save precious time and give you insights into each of the social networking sites that your company or clients are active on. They also help you shine in front of clients or others in your company. Luckily there are plenty of tools available. Some are free or offer a free version with limited features suitable for small startups. But if your needs are more robust, and you require a paid tool, many of them offer a free trial so you can check out the features in detail before you buy. We’ve included the best tools for small businesses of all sizes in our list.

What are social media analytics?

The definition of social media analytics is the systematic collection and evaluation of data that helps you measure how well or how poorly you are doing on social media. After all, resources are limited in most businesses. You can’t afford to spend time and money on activities if they don’t pay off. The analytics tools in our list help you decide where to spend time, how to maximize your efforts, and how to gain insights into your audience (see data analytics tips).

Analytics tools are different from social media management tools. There are plenty of tools that help you post updates on social media channels and even schedule content in advance. Those are not the kind of tools we mean. Below we are mainly focused on tools to understand and measure your social media performance.

Best Free and Paid Social Media Analytics Tools

We’ve assembled a list of the best social media analytics tools appropriate for small businesses. Click on one of the tools in the list below or scroll down to learn about what makes each the best in class.

  1. Zoho Social
  2. Hootsuite
  3. Buffer Analyze
  4. Sprout Social
  5. Studiorific
  6. Sendible
  7. Keyhole
  8. Rival IQ
  9. Social Report
  10. Planable
  11. Loomly
  12. Sociamonials
  13. Agile CRM
  14. Cyfe

Analytics Tools Provided by the Social Networks

  1. Facebook Insights
  2. Instagram Insights
  3. LinkedIn Analytics
  4. Pinterest Analytics
  5. Twitter Analytics
  6. YouTube Analytics

1. Zoho Social

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image: zoho
Touted as among the best Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software Zoho through its social media analytics tools Zoho Social offers some great tools to manage your social media outreach from a single platform. You can schedule publishing posts through an intuitive publishing calendar, monitor campaigns and create custom reports. The monitoring dashboard gives you the ability to easily to measure the pulse of your campaign and respond in real-time to engage with your audience. Zoho Social starts with a standard monthly billing of $10 that allows you to manage one brand across seven channels. The robust agency plus costs $300 a month and enables the management of 30 brands across a whopping 140 channels.

What it does:

  • Zoho Social is the part that enables you to understand your social media audience and how they engage with you.
  • You can listen to multiple channels from a single dashboard and respond in real-time.
  • You can also dig deeper into each post to measure their reach and engagement.
  • The integration with Zoho Desk makes Zoho Social ideal for a comprehensive social media outreach where you can create tickets from social media for your support team to see and resolve them from Zoho Desk.

What’s it great at:

  • It offers the complete package from managing your social media accounts,
  • publishing, monitoring and offering cutting-edge analytics.
  • It supports Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
  • It is compatible with mobile apps for Android and iOS.
  • It also seamlessly integrates with Zoho CRM for greater collaboration.

2. Hootsuite

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image: hootsuite
Hootsuite is another social media management tool. As social media analytics tools go, it helps manage posts, collaboration, scheduling and analytics. With it, you can automate posts, schedule them and take key performance metrics to gauge the performance of your marketing content. The starter package is set at $19 a month with support for 10 social media channels and unlimited scheduling capabilities for one administrator. The enterprise package offers a customized solution.

What it does:

  • It comes with all the bells and whistles you might need for your startup or growth stage as a small business when it comes to social media analytics tools.
  • It integrates with all social platforms including Facebook and Instagram so your social media analytics and management are done from one platform.
  • Hootsuite Impact also integrates with tools like Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, and your ad accounts on the various social platforms.
  • It comes with a complete toolbox for all your social media needs which includes contact management, conversion tracking, keyword filtering, customer targeting, multi-account management, and much more.

What’s it great at:

  • You have the ability to monitor multiple social media streams that include Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and WordPress blogs.
  • It comes with capabilities that include scheduling posts in advance.
  • User-friendly analytics data.
  • Team collaboration.

3. Buffer Analyze

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image: buffer
Buffer Analyze offers simple and easy social media analytics that includes comprehensive features for managing your social media streams. It helps you easily manage multiple social media accounts, allowing you to customize post-times and schedule posts. It offers a built-in social media analytics tool and gets recommendations to expand reach, engagement, and sales. The starter package for this social media analytics tool is $15 per month. And it allows you to analyze eight social channels and up to 100 scheduled content posts. The business tiered package comes at $99 per month you can analyze 25 social channels and a whopping 2,000 scheduled posts for six administrators.

What it does:

  • You can measure your social media performance by comparing paid and organic results.
  • Track engagement from social accounts.
  • Measure stories, individual posts and hashtags and see if you are reaching targeted audiences.
  • Reports can be generated in PDF or images that include charts.

What’s it great at:

  • Scheduling posts.
  • Analytics.
  • Cross-posting, so all your social media posting are consolidated in one place.

4. Sprout Social

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image: sproutsocial
Sprout Social is a social media management tool that offers a good mix of management and analytics to meet the needs of most small to midsize businesses. This platform focuses on social management, data, and employee advocacy. Pricing for Sprout Social starts at $99 monthly and you can analyze up to five social profiles, an intuitive all-in-one social inbox, social media CRM tools, compatibility with both android and iOS mobile apps, and more.

What it does:

  • Sprout Social has a dashboard that helps you manage social media channels as well as your brands in one go.
  • The Instagram stories analytics tool comes with a series of pop-up questionnaires to help you better determine your company’s needs allowing you fashion your social media experiences.
  • It is backed up with a strong social CRM platform and a help desk.

What’s it great at:

  • Well organized dashboard.
  • Seamlessly works with Twitter and Facebook.
  • Scheduling posts.
  • Discovery capability in terms of your followers, interactions, mentions, and likes.
  • Analytics.

5. Studiorific

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image: studiorific
Studiorific offers an all-in-one social media analysis platform that hosts all social management tools for scheduling engaging posts and reporting. You are able to put all your social media accounts under one roof for seamless integration of your digital content. Studiorific offers a real bargain with lifetime access to its starter package at only $29 for a one time purchase. This allows you to manage 12 social accounts, unlimited scheduling capabilities; image and video storage; a built-in image editor, analytics and much more.

What it does:

  • Track your social media accounts for posts performance and engagement.
  • Attract users in actual time.
  • Its analytic tool helps you optimize your marketing plan and opt to send and receive direct messages from Instagram users right from your Studiorific dashboard.
  • Has a photo editing tool to customize image size for all of your social media networks.

What’s it great at:

  • Competition analysis.
  • Works across several social media channels.
  • Post scheduling.
  • Built-in image editor.
  • Analytics.

6. Sendible 

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image: sendible
Sendible is a social media content management platform designed with agencies in mind. The platform brings all your social networks together into a centralized hub that helps you execute your strategy for multiple brands at scale. Pricing for this social media analytics tool starts at $29.00 per month. This allows you to analyze 12 profiles and generate eight quick reports. Sendible offers a 14-day free trial as well.

What it does:

  • Customize and preview posts on each social media platform and also keeps image pixel quality. Thanks to its built-in editor you can also design your own graphics using Canva.
  • See when your audiences are most engaged on Instagram so you know the best times to post. Collaboration is made easy with Sendible as you can set up approval workflows and keep your posts on-brand.
  • Use its one-click reports to pinpoint your most engaging content or choose to build and automatically send custom reports.

What’s it great at:

  • Competition analysis.
  • Works across several social media channels.
  • Post scheduling and auto-response.
  • Tracking visitors.
  • Analytics.

7. Keyhole

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image: keyhole
Keyhole comes with a real-time dashboard that shows you how many people posted with your hashtag, along with the number of retweets, likes and impressions your campaign is generating. The dashboard captures a detailed overview of your entire campaign and mentions all details and Key Performance Indicators (KPI) you need. Keyhole’s Suite comes at $59 per month and has a free trial available as well.

What it does:

  • With the metrics it provides you can set your specific KPIs and measure results accordingly.
  • You can monitor all your campaigns in one go.
  • Discover and track influencers.
  • See the performance of the content.
  • Monitor brand health.
  • Get real-time actionable data and reports.
  • Gain insights on trends and conversion rates.

What’s it great at:

  • Real-time tracking of campaigns, hashtags, and keywords.
  • Influencer and new client identification.
  • Event and engagement tracking.
  • Customized alerts.
  • Analytics.

8. Rival IQ

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image: rivaliq
Rival IQ helps deliver analytics and competitive intelligence to help your digital marketing. The solutions offered include the ability to show the data and easily make informed decisions, improve results, and better understand your competition. BRival IQ pricing starts at $199.00 per month, a free trial is also available.

What it does:

  • By using competitive benchmarks and comparative analysis Rival IQ sends you alerts whenever your competition posts high-performing content, such as boosting a post on social media.
  • Helps you move quickly to respond to and counter-messaging in actual time.
  • It integrates with Google Analytics to get a complete understanding of your customers’ journey.
  • Get a free head-to-head report against your main competitor on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter and see how you stack up.
  • Helps you to uncover new opportunities, identify trends, and track results across all major channels and the web.

What’s it great at:

  • Actual time dashboard showing  how many visitors posted with your hashtag.
  • Tracking retweets, likes and Impressions on campaigns.
  • Dedicated Influencers metrics.
  • Analytics.

 9. Social Report

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image: socialreport
Social Report management platform offers solutions that include advanced scheduling, social networks monitoring, analytics, one-click reporting, smart automation, and more. When it comes to tracking performance Social Report offers everything from your Facebook pages and Twitter profiles, to business reviews, website site performance and blogs. Users can quickly and easily organize their data by customers or business. The pricing starts at $49.00 per month, you can start it all with a 30-day free trial.

What it does:

  • Gives you the option to not only track your own social profiles but your competition as well.
  • With its Smart Inbox, you have the capability to get all of your social messages across all of your social media profiles gathered and organized in one stream.
  • Apart from publishing content in several accounts at once, you can also send the content you schedule to your teammates for administrator approval and tracking the content.
  • Once you dive into the stream, you will be able to engage, join conversations, and respond directly to customers.

What’s it great at:

  • Advanced scheduling.
  • Social network monitoring.
  • Analytics.
  • One-click reporting.
  • Smart automation.

10. Planable

image: planable
This social management tool comes with a dashboard that helps you manage multiple social media platforms in one place. Planable’s dashboard has a great visually focused user interface that helps even the novice amongst us to easily navigate through content management, automated publishing, customer engagement across multiple accounts. Planable unfortunately does not provide analytic and reports solutions for your business. Pricing for Planable starts at $39.00 per month in addition to a free trial.

What it does:

  • Planable’s strong suit is creating, planning, and approving posts and it is considered among the best social media tools.

What’s it great at:

  • Centralized social media content management.
  • Planning and scheduling.
  • Analytics.
  • Social media post preview.

11. Loomly

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image: loomly

Loomly offers a calendar-based social management platform for businesses. Pricing begins at $25, allowing you to manage up to ten accounts. You can start with a 15-day free trial to learn more. Solutions offered by Loomly include automated publishing and ads management.

What it does:

  • Helps users to engage and respond to audiences and measure outreach in terms of organic vs ads post overviews.
  • Offer notifications from emails, push, Slack, and Microsoft Teams.
  • Ideas for content in posts, trending topics, and RSS feeds
  • Monitor date-related events and social media best practices.

What’s it great at:

  • Centralized social media content management.
  • Planning and scheduling.
  • Analytics.
  • Collaboration.
  • Post ideas.

12. Sociamonials

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image: sociamonials
Sociamonials has social media analytics tools that help you manage multiple social media accounts that include Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Google my Business, LinkedIn and YouTube. The Social Pro package comes with a monthly $19 subscription for managing up to ten social profiles including Facebook, Twitter and unlimited scheduling capabilities. A free 14-day trial is available for those interested in trying this tool out.

What it does:

  • Run contests, tweak content,
  • Find influencers and capture leads.
  • Analytics for traffic, brand awareness, Return on Investment (RoI) and more.
  • Post scheduling.

What’s it great at:

  • Brand tracking.
  • Automated publishing.
  • Conversion tracking.
  • Customer targeting.
  • Contact database.
  • Email marketing.
  • Multi-campaign.
  • Analytics.
  • Keyword filtering.

13. Agile CRM

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image: agilecrm
Agile CRM has an all in one CRM that includes automation of all your sales, marketing and service efforts in one single platform. This cloud-based SaaS service comes with a mobile-ready feature allowing you to make tweaks while off location. It has a free version for users and the starter kit comes at $8.99 per month.

What it does:

  • It comes with a contact management tool for all your accounts.
  • Analytics to track stages and milestones.
  • Voicemail automation.
  • Appointment scheduling.
  • Lead scoring.
  • Email tracking.

What’s it great at:

  • Social suite.
  • Landing page builder.
  • Ticketing analytics.
  • Marketing automation.

14. Cyfe

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image: cyfe
Cyfe offers an all-in-one social management app that helps you easily monitor and analyze all of your business data in one, organized place. Cyfe has a free version where you get two fully functional dashboards and a 30-day history. The starter package comes at $29 per month and it includes unlimited widgets; custom logo; custom themes; and unlimited data exports.

What it does:

  • Users can connect and pull data from their advertising, email, monitoring, sales, finance, SEO, social media, support, and web analytics accounts- all in one go.
  • Cyfe’s unique selling point is that it helps you make business decisions by automating all of your business data into a single and highly-organized view thus saving you time from gleaning over spreadsheets.
  • See performances on your social media, analytics, marketing, sales, and support together.
  • The choice of reports in various formats including PNG, JPEG, PDF, and CSV formats

What’s it great at:

  • All in one monitoring.
  • Collaboration.
  • Monitor multiple campaigns.
  • Scheduling.
  • Analytics.

6 Analytics Tools Provided by the Social Networks

The third-party social media tools above have many advantages, not the least of which is a centralized dashboard to see stats from multiple networks in one place. However, don’t overlook the networks’ own analytics. While you can only get statistics and insights from that particular network, they can be very useful especially for those who spend most of their time on just one or two platforms. Here is a review of what six social media Networks provide for free:

Facebook Insights

Facebook Insights helps you track likes, page views, and more. This gives you valuable insights to help you track and measure your outreach efforts. With Facebook Page Insights you get access to detailed analytics for your Facebook Page where you can see which campaigns are working well and those that need more tweaking. You also learn how your audience interacts with your content and improve your results over time.

This tool helps you understand your Facebook audience so that you can create better-targeted ads and create more compelling content. You can see actions on your page; the number of views; likes generated by your content; fan source responsiveness followers; negative feedback; and orders. Facebook even has a dedicated resource center including free tools for small businesses that help you boost your online engagements both for Facebook and Instagram.

Instagram Insights

Instagram offers insights to help you learn more about your followers and page performance. You can learn about the demographics of your Instagram audience and track the performance of your Instagram posts and Stories. Instagram Insights lets you can view your audience’s engagement with specific posts, stories and IGTV videos. It is a free tool that gives you a great overview of your page’s performance in terms of the number of accounts reached, content interactions, followers, and approximate earnings. Each of these Instagram metrics comes with a detailed breakdown.

LinkedIn Analytics

With LinkedIn Analytics you gain valuable data regarding the performance of your LinkedIn page. It includes the receptions towards your updates including videos posted. The tool also provides a breakdown of visitors and followers including the number of likes, shares, comments, and mentions. Additional analytic tools include LinkedIn Career Pages, as well as access to Talent Brand analytics that help you measure your talent pipeline, talent flows, talent attraction, and application behavior. With the Pipeline Builder analytics, you can see metrics based on timelines ranging from the past seven days to 12 months. You can also customize the timeline to suit your particular needs.

Pinterest Analytics

With Pinterest’s Metrics tab, you will be able to track the number of pins created from your website to help you glean the average amount of daily content pinned from your website. You can also look at the number of repins users have used from your website on to their own boards, which helps you increase the exposure of your content to people who are not currently following your account. At the same time, you can also see the daily average number of people who saw your pins for both pins and repins. All in all Pinterest’s analytics come with a total of six metrics: pins; repins; most clicks; most repinned; visitors and visits; and reach.

Twitter Analytics

Twitter analytics uses graphs and reports to show the performance of important metrics. These include your top tweet, top mention and top follower(s). Additional insights include the number of tweets sent; number of visits your Twitter profile received; the number of mentions your account received; followers gained and tweet impressions received over a period of time. These also come with the number of impressions on videos, tweets, video completion rates, audience insights, and conversion tracking.

YouTube Analytics

YouTube analytics provides you with data about your videos’ performance including watch time, viewer demographics, traffic sources, impressions, subscribers and revenue. This comes in handy if you want to understand whether audiences like the content you produce, and what can be done to improve your videos’ performance. You can also segregate the data based on the playlist, time period, devices where your video was viewed, comments, and shares to decipher the nuances of your visitors.

What should small businesses look for in social analytics tools?

Depending on which social media analytics you decide to use here are some of the essentials you should be looking for:

  • Comprehensive analytics: Besides looking for a social media analytic process that crank out numbers, look for one that gives you further insights. This includes engagement, likes, demographics; conversations, hashtags, and even competitor’s performance. So there’s no need to flip through different systems just to get the results you need – these come in handy for tweaking your outreach. If your social media analytics tool integrates with Google Analytics it would help in building robust reporting.
  • Integration across social media platforms: Look for a solution that offers analytics for social media across the board that measures Instagram, Facebook and other data. This will help you get a good perspective on the performances on your various social media handles.
  • Offers customized team tracking and collaboration: Besides how you measure your social media analytics it should help you customize how you share, plan and collaborate across teams.
  • Multiple reporting options: A key component in analytics is in the manner in which reports are generated. Look for the best social media analytics tools offering data and reports in multiple formats this could be in PDF, JPEG, PNG or even .xls.
  • Additional tools: In addition to analytics look for tools that help you edit pictures as well as integrate with other Customer Relations Management System (CRM) solutions. Particularly integration with a CRM system will help you convert your engagement into leads thus helping you go up the ladder of engagement.

Finally, if you run a marketing agency or are starting a social media business, look specifically for agency features. These include the ability to track performance results by client, deliver white-label reports with your brand, or offer multiple client logins. Whatever your needs, make a list of your top requirements so that you don’t miss any as you evaluate the options.

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Samson Haileyesus Samson Haileyesus is a staff writer for Small Business Trends and has several years of progressive experience in media, communication and PR working with government, NGOs and private sector. He is passionate about public outreach, branding, media relations and marketing.

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