For many webmasters who have been in the field for a long time, analytics is crucial in ensuring the success of plenty of online campaigns, much more so in ones that focus on social media. They are also well-aware of the fact that analytics involves correct gathering and interpretation of data. While Google Analytics is free and easy to integrate, you would still have to know how to use the tool properly.
There is also the point where it becomes limited, making it necessary for you to look for more specialized tools that would be able to provide better insights. For this purpose, you would have to rely on an actual social media analytics tool that is more suitable for your chosen social media platform. It’s understandable that they’re no longer essentially free. However, there are no-cost gems out there that you should never hesitate to use. We have opted to list 20 of the best below, which is a clear sign that you really don’t have to pay too much money just to get the right data to ensure your campaign’s success.
Facebook Insights
It’s vital to tackle the built-in analytics tool in arguably the largest social platform first, because it already offers plenty of must-have data for your Facebook campaigns. It is able to show you in great detail how your Page is performing, particularly when it comes to factors such as engagement, views, reach, and likes. You won’t be able to acquire this data elsewhere, making this tool an essential part of your social media endeavors.
Youtube Analytics
This video-sharing platform is just about as impactful as the Big G as far as user engagement is concerned. With its built-in Insights feature, it is able to accurately pinpoint tell-tale signs of how your audience is receiving your content. For instance, you are given accurate graphs and data of the average time that your audience spends on a video in a specific range of dates.
Twitter Analytics
Twitter deserves nothing less than the most number of praises when it comes to the analytics tool it has incorporated. After all, it is able to display more in-depth data about your audience, particularly important ones like interests and gender. It also gives you a good overview of Tweet impressions as well as changes in followers over time.
Instagram Insights
One downside of Instagram’s analytics tool is that it requires you to convert your account to a free business one. It does pay off, though, as it unlocks access to vital data that range from profile views to average impressions and post reach in a set time. It doesn’t stop there, for it also gives plenty of demographic data about your audience, such as how active they are in the platform.
Pinterest Analytics
Pinterest also requires you to get a business account to be able to avail of its analytics features. It is also well-worth the effort as it also affords you a good overview of crucial audience insights, in such a way that you would be able to pinpoint the best pins to make.
Buffer
You need to make use of this tool’s primary function of scheduling social media posts to make the most of what it offers analytics-wise. After all, doing so would give you plenty of important data concerning the social media posts that are the most popular or which ones got the most clicks or retweets. For its basic free service, these are insights that any campaign can’t do without.
Google Alerts
While not necessarily a standard analytics tool, this platform is indispensable for it gives you good insights into what topics are currently becoming a trend. It is able to inform you promptly about brands that mentioned online, for instance. You only have to set keywords and alert settings to receive them automatically.
Audisense
A great complimentary tool to Twitter Analytics as it actually helps you figure out the best times of the day to tweet. It goes further by providing analytics that allows you to know and target the geographic location of your followers as well as their influence level. However, its free version is limited to accounts with less than 5,000 followers.
Keyhole
Marketers who like to use Twitter and Instagram would love this tool as it is able to provide real-time statistics that range from posts, reach, impressions and users (and pretty much the complete deal). More in-depth insights are available as well like influence (as represented by engagement and Klout score), besides sentiment, source, location, and post shares.
SocialRank
Another platform that focuses on Instagram and Twitter is SocialRank. It capitalizes on filters that you can set to view your most engaged tweets and posts, as well as finding out which of your followers are finding value in your content. You’d also be able to know the words and hashtags that are most-used.
ViralWoot
For those who are Pinterest-centric in their endeavors, ViralWoot should never be found absent from your analytics arsenal. It has ways of measuring your Pins’ reach and engagement, as well as how they’re performing in other social media networks like Facebook and Twitter. What’s even better is the fact that you can use to help your Pins gain more exposure.
Peakfeed
This is an all-around, fully automated analytics tool that is compatible with any social platform of your choosing. While the data you receive is not in real-time, it does offer a good peek into your engagement scores as well as increases (and decreases) in followers. For its no-effort-involved functionality, Peakfeed should be considered as a good bonus by most marketers.
SumAll
This is another platform that offers support for the major social networks at present. One nifty feature is that it sends you consistent e-mail reports of your stats, and the icing on the cake is that you there’s no limit to the number of accounts you can add.
TweetReach
A Twitter-focused analytics tool that lets you get detailed data about tweet impressions and frequency of retweets that it is getting. What’s makes things even greater is the fact that you can set specific terms in your tweets to monitor the said parameters.
Klout
Since Klout score has since become an important engagement parameter in your online endeavors, it’s no wonder that this platform has chosen to specialize in it. It allows you to measure your impact as represented by the said score if set against other important factors such SEO, content marketing, writing, and publishing, to cite a few.
HowSociable
If you want a good look into your brand awareness, know that HowSociable would be able to do just that for pretty much all social media platforms you are using. Measurements are based on levels of activity that a specific brand is getting in a set duration.
Followerwonk
Twitter marketers would love this as it allows you to simply connect your account to their platform, and you would promptly get insights about follower activity, their specific locations, as well where you stand in the rankings of social authority. Keywords can be used as well to narrow down and gain more in-depth info about demographics.
Hootsuite
This social media management tool has received plenty of positive reviews for good reason. After all, it lets you seamlessly apply your strategies to multiple social media campaigns with the help of its automated scheduling tool, allowing you to give your endeavors that much-needed organization. It complements all this with analytics for all major social networks.
Cyfe
Think of Cyfe as a parent platform in which you can integrate a lot of other online tools for better analytics. It is able to incorporate a lot of important platforms like Google Analytics, Adsense, and Facebook, to name but some of them. It provides insights on not only social accounts but blogs as well.
Klear
Last but not least, Klear offers analytics support for Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and focuses on your overall influence based on the age, gender, location, and specific cities of your audience. Different graphical representations are used for easy reference.