So you’re looking for the best social media analytics tools for your brand, agency, or enterprise team. You’re busy, you’re drowning in choices, and you just want to cut to the chase and understand what the best tools really are.
Unfortunately, there is no “one best tool”. The best social media analytics tool depends on what your team needs. Before investing in a new tool, speak to your team and work out exactly what your use cases are. When it comes to social media, some common ones are:
- Publishing and scheduling content
- Social listening
- Agency reporting
- Gaining visibility over paid and organic performance
- Connecting social, search, paid and web results
Later in this article, we’ll examine these use cases, and the tools that best suit them, in more detail. But first, let’s look at the different types of social media analytics tools that are currently on the market.
What are the different types of social media analytics tools?
There’s a dizzying array of social media analytics tools on the market today… but what can they do for you?
Social media management platforms
Social media management platforms allow you to handle multiple social accounts from one dashboard.
Let’s say you’re running campaigns across Meta Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Google Ads, and TikTok Ads. Management platforms let you schedule and publish posts across all these different platforms, read and reply to comments in one feed, and collaborate with team members and clients.
The core purpose of social media management platforms is for publishing on social media. However, management platforms will usually also include analytics dashboards, reporting tools, and sometimes even enterprise listening tools. What are those, you ask? Read on.
Analytics dashboards
Analytics dashboards allow you to view the performance of all your social media accounts in one place. They will track metrics like engagement and visibility in real time, allowing your team to get a full picture of how campaigns are performing and to identify trends quickly.
Enterprise listening tools
Enterprise listening tools are a type of software that monitors digital conversations about your brand. They capture large volumes of data from across the web, letting you see who is mentioning your brand, products, and campaigns.
Agency reporting tools
Agency reporting tools help you collect performance data from multiple channels and easily communicate it to clients and other stakeholders. A good agency reporting tool will create client-ready reports at the click of a button. Many will also have a client access function so that clients can access performance insights at any time.
Performance intelligence platforms
Performance intelligence platforms are the next step up from analytics dashboards. Where analytics dashboards visualise your data, performance intelligence platforms help you interpret what that data means in terms of overall business performance.
Once you’re familiar with some of the common tool types, you can start to map these onto your team’s needs.
Best social media tools by use case
Let’s now compare social media analytics tools more efficiently by breaking them down by use case.
Best for publishing and scheduling
If you need a tool to help you publish and schedule content, you need a social media management platform. These allow you to post and comment across multiple accounts in one place. Examples include platforms like Hootsuite and Sprout Social.
Remember: by themselves, management platforms are not analytics tools, but they will almost always come with analytics features.
Best for paid and organic performance visibility
Want to gain visibility over how your content is performing? Use an analytics tool and look at it often. Your publishing and scheduling platform will probably have one built in. If you opt to use a built-in analytics tool, make sure you understand how to use it… and make sure that it actually tracks all the metrics you want to see.
If you want to understand how multiple marketing systems are working together to drive business outcomes, look into performance intelligence tools like Digivizer’s marketing insights platform. Their defining feature is bringing data together from different channels to reveal how they influence one another.
Let’s say your LinkedIn post got 10,000 impressions. Your performance insights tool can tell you that it also generated 1,000 website visits, 60 leads, 10 sales, and $11,000 in revenue, giving you a clearer picture to whether your efforts are actually paying off.
Best for social listening
Let’s say you want to know who’s talking about your brand and what they’re saying. As its name would suggest, enterprise listening tools are your best bet here. They can pinpoint your brand’s perception and competitors and unveil both trends and common talking points. Some examples include Brandwatch, Meltwater, and Lumen by Talkwalker. Sprout Social and Hootsuite also include social listening features, but more advanced insights are only available on their higher-tier plans.
Best for agency reporting
If you want to show how your marketing is contributing to leads, sales, or revenue, you need an agency reporting tool. These tools often include features like automated campaign reporting and clients dashboards, meaning that customers can see how content is performing without you lifting a finger.
Digivizer and Looker are analytics platforms that provide agency reporting tools. Digivizer’s platform creates client-ready dashboards and automated reporting for agencies needing cross-channel performance insights.
Best for executive dashboards
If you’re an executive, you probably need a dashboard that cuts to the chase and reveals the KPIs that matter.
You’re looking for an analytics dashboard: one that combines all data in one place and that you can easily understand. It’s no use paying for an analytics tool if you don’t know how to use it or if the layout is confusing and bloated.
If you want more insights into the wider public perception of your brand (i.e. who’s talking about it and what they’re saying) look into an executive listening tool, too.
Best for connecting social, search, paid and web results
Let’s say you’re running a campaign across different social media platforms and need to pull together insights from Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok, and several other channels. How do you put all this data together?
This is where performance intelligence platforms come in handy. They pull data from multiple channels into a single source of proof, allowing you to compare channels and get a much more holistic view of your campaign. For instance: did a well-performing piece of PR cause your web traffic to increase? Did paid amplify organic performance? Connecting these dots is crucial for getting the most out of your marketing.
FAQs
What is a social media analytics tool?
A social media analytics tool is a type of software that helps businesses understand how their social media marketing is performing. Your analytics tool will help you collect, analyse, and interpret data from multiple social media platforms and across different accounts. Not only do they offer insights not always visible on native platforms, they remove a lot of manual labour on your end.
What is the difference between social media analytics and social media management?
In short: social media management tools help you put the content out there, while analytics tools reveal how that content performs.
Social media management tools let you run multiple social media accounts from the same place. You can schedule and publish content across accounts and even respond to all your comments in one feed.
On the other hand, social media analytics tools allow you to see how your social media marketing is performing. They offer real-time insights into metrics like engagement and visibility.
What should brands look for in a social media analytics platform?
The most important thing to look for is a suite of features that actually meet your needs, and that you will use day-to-day (don’t pay for value you won’t take advantage of!).
Before choosing an analytics platform, ask yourself:
- Do we need all or most of these features, or is this overly complex for our business needs?
- Will it save my team time through automation?
- Will it still suit my team’s needs in the future?
Another thing to consider: You’ll get much more out of your marketing if you understand how social contributes to overall business performance. Analytics platforms can help you extract these deeper insights via the following features:
- Cross-channel reporting that helps reveal how different channels work together
- Analytics dashboards that consolidate all data in one place
- Tools that focus on business outcomes, not vanity metrics (think leads, conversions and ROI, not likes and followers)
Can social media analytics tools measure ROI?
Understanding the actual ROI of your social media marketing is crucial to avoid wasted time and money.
Thankfully, modern social media analytics platforms, like Digivizer, will help you measure ROI by connecting your social media data to business outcomes. These include your metrics like Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) or Cost Per Lead (CPL).
How does Digivizer help with social media analytics?
Digivizer’s marketing insights platform gives your business a complete view of your marketing performance across social, search, paid media, and web analytics. It’s a sophisticated analytics and performance intelligence tool that reveals how your social media marketing is actually driving business outcomes.
Want to compare your current reporting setup with Digivizer? Let’s talk.
