Social media has become essential to any successful marketing strategy in today’s digital age. But with countless platforms and ever-changing algorithms, how do you ensure your efforts produce the desired results?
Whether a small business owner or a marketing professional, social media analytical tools are powerful resources to give you the insights and leverage the power of data-driven decision-making.
There are so many social media analytics tools in the market. Choosing one that is best for your business can save you tons of time and effort for you and your team.
Let us start from the basics first.
Social media analytic tool is a software that enables companies to collect, analyse and interpret data from social media platforms.
It is not just about numbers; instead, it provides a comprehensive analysis of your online activity. It incorporates:
It extends through every corner of your online presence – content, engagement, response, reach, click-through rate (CTR), and more.
Social media analytics tool gives the company valuable insight into how your social media content performs, your audience engagement rate on each campaign, and your social media strategy successful.
And the insights into how your social media content performs, your audience engagement rate on each campaign, and your social media strategy success. For instance, every interaction – a like, comment, or share – leaves a data footprint. These data pieces, when analysed, offer insight into user behaviour. The metrics reflect how well your audience receives your content and how effectively your social media strategy.
For instance, every interaction – a like, comment, or share – leaves a data footprint. These data pieces, when analysed, offer insight into user behaviour. The metrics reflect how well your audience receives your content and how effectively your social media strategy.
Social media analytics tools gather data such as likes, comments, shares, and impressions. Measure follower growth and track social media trends.
However, not all metrics have the same value, it depends on your business objectives, specific metrics may hold more relevance.
Analytics tools help identify and track these key indicators. For instance, high likes but low engagement could point to an issue your must address.
Social media analytics tools enable this by giving pattern-based insights. Indications on what content type performs best or the ideal posting time can significantly influence your strategy.
Measuring social media performance without an analytics tool is like sailing without a compass.
These tools act as a digital compass, guiding social media strategies by identifying what resonates with the audience. They eliminate guesswork and provide actionable insights.
1. Measure for Success
“Do we measure up?” Social media analytics tools answer this crucial question. They accurately track likes, shares, comments, clicks, and engagement metrics.
2. Propel User Engagement
Engagement is the cornerstone of social media success. These tools paint a clear picture of user engagement. Analytics can depict the posts that get the most comments or what prompts users to share your content.
3. Harness the Power of Predictive Analysis
Keeping up with the changing digital landscape is a challenging feat. Social media analytics tools analyse the past and present and predict future trends. Studying these trends lets you anticipate changes and adapt your content strategy accordingly.
4. Optimise Resources
A salient aspect of social media analytics tools is resource optimisation. They streamline your social media efforts by determining where to invest your time and energy.
The number of people exposed to your content and assess your brand visibility. It also gives you an insight into your social media ad performance and how long you want it to go on.
The frequency of your brand is mentioned on social media.
The likes/comments, shares, and direct messages you receive in a single post.
The number of clicks on your post or link.
The percentage of followers’ growth over time.
If you have a paid social media ad, track CPC. You can measure how many clicks you have and how much you need to pay.
The number of times your content is shared and retweeted.
The percentage of traffic generated to your website. It helps you to measure your social media campaign effectiveness.
How many customers purchased your product or service.
Hootsuite is a popular and comprehensive social media analytics tool suitable for all levels of users.
It allows you to monitor and manage your social media accounts in one centralised location.
From tracking engagement metrics such as likes, comments, and shares to monitoring reach and impressions, Hootsuite gives you a holistic view of how your content resonates with your audience.
Sprout social is another top-notch analytical tool that offers a wide range of features and a user-friendly interface.
Sprout Social provides the tools to monitor, analyse, and optimise your social media performance.
Google Analytics Four is a powerful web analytics tool that provides insights into your website and social media performance. With its advanced tracking capabilities, you can monitor user behaviour, track conversions, and gain valuable insights into your audience.
Buffer is a powerful social media analytic tool widely recognized for its affordability and ease of use, making it especially appealing to small businesses and individual entrepreneurs.
Here are some of their main features and functionalities:
Buffer allows you to easily schedule and publish posts on various social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram (including stories), Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest from a single dashboard.
This feature allows users to visualize and manage social media posts across multiple profiles and platforms.
Buffer provides straightforward analytics to track the performance of posts and campaigns. It offers insights to improve the content strategy based on engagement, impressions, clicks, shares, and more.
Buffer has a feature that allows multiple team members to manage social media postings and provides options for draft reviews and approvals.
Buffer has a user-friendly mobile app for both iOS and Android.
The Buffer browser extension allows you to share web pages directly from the browser window.
Buffer allows integration with other services such as Canva, Feedly, Pocket, IFTTT, and Zapier, which can help streamline workflows.
This functionality helps users track engagement metrics and click-through rates.
Find the perfect way to engage and connect with your audience with Buffer’s prime feature, the ability to create your own customized landing page. This innovative feature represents the pinnacle of user personalization, enabling users to construct the ideal landing page explicitly tuned to their unique requirements and vision.
Additionally, this feature offers link consolidation, performance monitoring, and the ability to schedule dynamic content updates to ensure continuous user engagement.
The basic plan at $6/month includes engagement and analytics tools. The free tier allows up to three channels with no analytics and is free forever. A 14-day free trial is also available for the paid version.
Based on its feature list, Buffer is a strong candidate for ease of use, affordability, and functionality, especially for small businesses and individual entrepreneurs.
Keyhole is a real-time social media analytics platform that tracks hashtags, keywords, URLs, and @usernames. Here are some of its key features:
Keyhole allows tracking and analysing hashtags, URLs, @usernames, and keywords in real-time across platforms like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. Monitoring campaign performance, events, and trending topics is very useful.
This feature allows you to compare your performance and metrics to your competitors.
You can discover and analyse influencers based on keywords and hashtags. This can be very useful for businesses looking to leverage influencer marketing.
Keyhole provides real-time monitoring of brand mentions and sentiment.
You can use Keyhole to search and filter through public social media content to curate posts.
Keyhole has a unique feature that predicts future engagement and impressions for you to plan and optimise your social media posts.
Keyhole features extensive reporting functionally that allows for sharing real-time dashboard access with clients and team members.
Receive notifications when spikes or drop-offs occur in tracked social conversations.
Keyhole intriguingly stands out with its Social Listening feature.
This platform offers real-time tracking and reporting tools to keep a pulse on direct and indirect brand mentions, hashtags, influencers, and keywords in a consolidated manner. This allows businesses to quickly identify industry trends, measure campaign performance, and understand their audience’s sentiment about the brand.
The AI-driven sentiment analysis and volume predictions provide valuable insights into audience perception and potential viral posts. For market research, competitive analysis, or identifying influential advocates for partnerships, the social listening feature is a powerful tool that provides an edge to small businesses in the digital landscape.
Pricing options include a basic plan at $99/month (discounted to $79/month annually) and an Agency plan for $479/month (with LinkedIn and YouTube support). There’s no free tier, but a limited free trial is available, capping usage at 1,000 posts and providing only sample historical data.
Keyhole’s power in real-time tracking and analytics are its main differentiators, making it a robust tool for those small businesses who base much of their strategy on trending topics, hashtags, and influencer engagement.
Choose a social media analytics tool you can get the most out of for your business, go back to your marketing strategy, and analyse which tool will help you achieve your goals the most.
Compare the functionalities between a few tools. What are the crucial metrics you need to achieve your goals?
Social media analytical tools are great resources for any business to maximise its social media strategy.
By leveraging the power of these analytical tools, you need always go back to your goals and objectives and use the tools to serve you along the way.
Next, it is the price. Choose a tool that you can afford for the long term. Trust me. You do not want to change it every six months or a year.
You will need time to learn how to use the tool and get the most out of it. Changing the tool more often is not an ideal choice.
There are still many other social media analytics tools out there. I will talk about them in my next blog. In the meantime, learn about different tools and choose the best one suits you.
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