If you’re trying to grow a business or build a brand, you need to keep on top of your socials. Here are some of the best social media trackers, to help you understand your analytics better!

Social media is all about connectivity, or at least it was originally. These days, it’s often about connectivity with the aim of selling or promoting. Of course, people still use the platforms to keep in touch with friends and family, or have a nosey at what your childhood nemesis is up to these days. However, Instagram is a powerful marketing tool, and TikTok can promote businesses through the medium of snappy and entertaining videos.

With options like business accounts available on Instagram, utilising social media to further your entrepreneurial efforts has never been easier. You can view valuable insights and analytics, indicating just how your content is performing, and whether you’re reaching the right audience.

Having all of this information at your fingertips is incredibly useful. It can also be a little overwhelming. If you’re a freelancer, busy content creator, or running your own business, you probably don’t have time to note down all your analytics. This is where third party services come to the rescue. You can hop on board social media trackers that will log and track your analytics, taking the faff out of your marketing strategy. Here are some of our favourites!

Sprout Social

You can check out Sprout Social with a 30-day free trial, allowing you to see if it’s the right platform for you to deep dive into your socials.

Track Facebook Page impressions, tally up Twitter link clicks, measure Instagram follower growth, evaluate LinkedIn engagement, asses content performance on Pinterest and much more, all from the same location. Organise and display your data in easy to read reports. You can even step it up a notch with the premium feature of creating custom reports that correspond to your business’ KPIs.

If you want to sign up to Sprout for the long haul, it’s $149 per user/month, billed annually. This might sound like a significant monthly spend, but if your business is growing, it is much cheaper than hiring another brain.

Buffer Analyze

Buffer Analyze is a social media analytics tool for online brands that want to make better decisions about their social media strategy and measure their results without feeling overwhelmed. Some handy features include:

  • Instagram Stories analytics
  • Posting strategy recommendations
  • Create professional reports in as few as two clicks

This platform works with Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. All features are generously made available for free for the first 14 days. This includes overviews of key metrics, posts and stories analytics, audience insights, and report builders.

After the first 2 weeks, you can subscribe from $6 per month per social channel.

BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo collects and aggregates data about the number of links to your site and content, via both backlinks and social media. This enables you to figure out what type of content performs best on which platforms. This can be super handy for determining which social media channel is right for you and your business.

A limited version of the service is available for free, however, after 10 searches you will need to pay to use it. Plans start at $99 per month, and range up to $299 per month, the latter being more aimed at larger corporations.

Hootsuite

A big name in the social media and marketing sphere, Hootsuite is a wonderful combination of social media management, listening, publishing and analytics tools. It helps you to determine which content is working best, improve your reach, and keep you and your team on the same page.

You can get incredibly detailed with your reports, by choosing from over 200 metrics. On top of this, you can better track your mentions by using integrated tools such as Brandwatch and Talkwalker.

Hootsuite works with all the major social media platforms; Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. Get started with a 30-day free trial, with plans after that starting from around $50 per month for one person.

TweetDeck

This is the only one in our list of social media trackers that is geared towards one specific platform. As the name suggests, this tracker is designed predominantly for Twitter.

Recognising that Twitter is a great social media marketing platform for small businesses, TweetDeck enables you to create a more customisable Twitter interface. This lets you monitor selected hashtags, users, search terms, and links. You can keep an eye on the content shared by the people you want, be it customers or competitors.

If your business is all about real-time events, TweetDeck is ideal for helping you keep on top of what’s happening and whether your content is hitting the desired spots. Since it’s an integrated part of Twitter, it’s free!