Top 7 Social Media Analytics Tools [Best Rated 2024]

Want to know if your followers grew this month or which posts are crushing it? Well, guess what? The cavalry is here in the form of social media analytics tools powered by AI!  

In today’s social media world, basic analytics tools no longer suffice. As we step into 2024, what we really need are AI tools that do the heavy lifting for us. These aren't your everyday tools — they offer deep dives into data, revealing patterns and predicting trends that traditional tools might miss. They empower you with the ability to not only track your brand's journey but also anticipate the needs and behaviors of your audience, ensuring every post and campaign is both timely and relevant. 

In this listicle, we move beyond surface-level analytics to explore cutting-edge AI-powered social media analytics tools that are transforming social media analysis. With these tools, it's not just about posting and hoping for the best. It's about posting with a plan and really connecting with your audience. 

Let's jump right into the top 7 social media analytics tools that promise to transform the way you navigate the vast sea of posts and likes.  

What is a social media analytics tool? 

Social media analytics tool is a software designed to monitor, evaluate and improve social media performance. These tools tap into social media metrics, ranging from likes and shares to comments and clicks. Their role is to translate this data into meaningful insights, providing a clear picture of what's working, what's not and where your brand stands in the digital landscape.  

They offer intuitive graphical dashboards and data visualization techniques to decode the intricacies of your digital performance on various social platforms. They help track your social media growth, create automated reports and make data-driven decisions. 

No need to drown in spreadsheets or decode complex algorithms. Social media analytics software simplify data analysis, presenting clear visuals and actionable reports.  

They help answer crucial questions like: 

• Who are your followers and what are their preferences? 
• Which posts are popular and which need a boost? 
• When should you hit that "post" button for maximum impact? 

In a nutshell, these tools simplify social media management by strategically overseeing your brand’s performance across all pertinent platforms and arming you with actionable insights. 

7 best social media analytics tools to track every metric 

While this compilation isn't an all-encompassing list, we dedicated substantial time to research and gathered input from paying customers. First-hand feedback and authentic user reviews have shaped this list of social media analytics tools. Go ahead, compare the tools objectively and select the tool that meets your social media analytics needs. 

Sprinklr

Sprinklr dominates social media analytics software with a seamless blend of AI-driven insights and data integration from 30+ channels. Boasting an extensive library of over 7,500 pre-built queries, it ensures rapid results and minimal setup efforts.  

The platform accelerates insights across diverse verticals, creating a competitive edge for users. Additionally, it unifies earned and owned data in a holistic 360° view, driving unprecedented value with advanced analytics. Sprinklr transforms 500M daily digital conversations into actionable insights, providing a comprehensive view of brand, customers and competition for faster, more informed decision-making. 

🚀 Top 5 features: 

• Real-time visual reports: Stay on top with instantaneous reports on trending customer conversations across 30+ digital channels. 
• Integration capability: By integrating with 30+ channels, including Facebook, X, LinkedIn, Instagram and various web and mobile apps, the tool provides comprehensive insights for cross-channel campaign optimization. 
• Automated reporting and custom dashboards: Save time with Sprinklr's automated reporting and cultivate a data-driven culture using custom dashboards, widgets and AI-powered reports for seamless collaboration and swift insights. 
• Sprinklr AI+ (powered by Sprinklr AI, Google Cloud’s Vertex AI and OpenAI’s GPT models): Effortlessly receive key insights and actionable recommendations using Sprinklr AI+. Skip the long message streams — drill down for concise summaries. Get clear, actionable tips to boost metrics like user experience scores and star ratings, making insights quicker and more accessible. 

• Multilingual insight translation: Capture the global customer voice with the ability to translate insights into 100+ languages, ensuring a unified understanding across the globe. 

Overall verdict 

Sprinklr excels as one of the best social media analytics tools also offering robust features for scheduling, publishing, content creation and bulk publishing — in the form of Sprinklr Social. Its centralized management capabilities, advanced analytics, and customization options make it an invaluable asset for large-scale brands seeking a unified approach to social media. The platform's ability to seamlessly integrate data and provide actionable insights contributes to its standing as a powerful tool for optimizing brand performance across various digital channels.

Customer testimonial 

💪 Strengths 

“I love how customizable Sprinklr is. You can develop your own dashboards, reports and even custom metrics that help you measure your brand yearly, monthly, weekly and daily. It's incredibly helpful to have customization options for our KPI reporting.” 

💡 What could be better 

“It's a great tool, but the platform has a learning curve, and it isn't as intuitive as one might think. I often use the search function because I can't always remember when something I need is "buried" within the platform.” Source 

Trusted by: Cisco, Prada, McDonald’s, Honda, Diageo, L'Oréal 

Price: USD 299/seat/month Check full pricing here 

Trial: Available for 30 days 

Sprout Social

Sprout Social's analytics tools provide deep insights to understand your customers' preferences and spot market trends. This empowers your brand to strategically leverage social media — enhancing its impact on future business outcomes. Trusted by mid-size companies, it stands out as a robust and user-friendly social media management platform. It allows you to derive tangible business value, secure your market position and swiftly drive revenue. With a suite of features, including analytics, reporting and advanced management tools, Sprout Social is instrumental in optimizing your brand’s social media presence. 

🚀 Top 4 features: 

• Advanced analytics: Sprout Social provides in-depth analysis of social media performance, enabling you to make data-driven decisions and prove the ROI of your social efforts. 
• Customizable reporting: You can create tailored reports that align with your business needs, ensuring that key stakeholders receive relevant and actionable insights. 
• Integrations: It integrates with leading platforms like Instagram, X and LinkedIn, making it easy to work within your current processes. 
• Team and task reports: It offers reports that help track individual user performance and task management, allowing your teams to identify areas for improvement and optimize your social media management. 

Overall verdict 

Sprout Social excels in providing comprehensive insights through advanced reporting and efficient management tools, earning praise for its real-time performance tracking and collaboration features. Users appreciate the robust analytics focus and all-in-one solution, but some feedback suggests opportunities for improvement.  

The platform's limitation in creating custom reports tailored to specific metrics or goals is noted. While its social listening feature is helpful, users desire a more comprehensive approach to capture a wider range of mentions, which tools like Sprinklr provide. Despite these considerations, Sprout Social stands out for its overall excellence in analytics and user-friendly interface.  

Cut to the chase: SPRINKLR vs. SPROUT SOCIAL  

Customer testimonial 

💪 Strengths 

“I love the reporting capabilities. I frequently get asked about overall social media performance and before Sprout, I spent a LOT of time compiling analytics from each platform's analytics database into a cumulative report. Now, I can easily send performance weekly with one click!” 

💡 What could be better 

“Pricing for various features is steep, including premium analytics, listening and employee advocacy. This also applies to profile and user limits. Marketing teams will need to budget a hefty amount to get the full power of Sprout Social, especially when it comes to working across teams. As far as features, the team chat is quite clunky and unreliable. The platform sometimes feels a bit dated, with no major upgrades to the UI years. Additional integrations with CRMs would be ideal as well.” Source

Price: USD 199/seat/month (billed annually)  

Trial: Available for 30 days   

Hootsuite

Hootsuite's social media analytics platform is designed to give businesses a complete picture of their online performance. With features like an all-in-one dashboard, it brings together different social networks for easy monitoring. Advanced reporting removes the guesswork, providing clear insights to help businesses grow on social media.  

The tool lets users compare their performance with industry peers for valuable competitive analysis. Additionally, it suggests the best times to post based on when the audience is most active, aligning with business and social media goals. 

 🚀 Top 4 features: 

• Advanced analytics for ROI: Effortlessly demonstrate social media's value, tailor metrics to your goals, analyze web traffic impact and compare paid and organic posts. 
• Optimal posting times: Boost social media engagement by posting at the perfect moment, guided by insights on audience activity patterns. 
• OwlyWriter AI: Repurpose successful posts instantly with Hootsuite's AI, providing adaptability and efficiency in social media content strategy. 
• Unified reporting across networks: Simplify data tracking across all social networks, with Advanced Analytics facilitating tracking customer journeys from social media to your website. 

Overall verdict 

Hootsuite's social media analytics tool stands out for its user-friendly design and comprehensive insights, allowing businesses to streamline their online presence. The all-in-one dashboard simplifies monitoring across various platforms, while advanced reporting aids strategic growth. Positive aspects include strategic posting recommendations and competitive analysis.  

❗Please note: Unlike Sprinklr, Hootsuite doesn't provide AI-driven smart insights across a wide range of verticals, a feature contributing to Sprinklr's distinctive strengths.  

Customer testimonial 

💪 Strengths 

“Hootsuite is very user-friendly and connects to various social media. All the reports/analytics that I need are available, and I can also customize the reports that I need. I can monitor the performance of all the agents and the messages that were handled.”  

💡 What could be better 

“It can occasionally drop out of connections with the social platforms, which is a little annoying. I would also like to see more analytics for LinkedIn and less for Instagram. It suggests mostly Instagram post times which is not my main lead generation” Source 

Price: Starting from USD 99/month  

Trial: Available for 30 days 

Meltwater

Meltwater's social media analytics tool is a comprehensive solution, analyzing both earned and owned social media data to provide actionable insights across diverse business areas such as marketing, product development, customer service, supply chain, employer branding and investor relations.  

As part of Meltwater's social media management suite, this analytics platform offers real-time data from major social networks, blogs, forums, review sites, podcasts and online news media. Standout features include benchmarking against competitors, trend analysis, sentiment tracking, emotional analysis, identification of top channels and sources, influencer analysis and audience affinities.

 🚀 Top 4 features: 

• Explore competitor insights: Benchmark your performance against competitors by analyzing brand mentions, sentiment and marketing metrics to refine your strategy. 
• Audience profiling: Leverage sophisticated algorithms to conduct a detailed audience analysis, revealing demographic details, media consumption habits, brand preferences and influencer followings. 
• Customized dashboard and reporting: Enjoy flexibility with custom dashboards, on-demand historical research and exportable insights via API, tailoring your analytics to unique business needs.  
• Advanced trend analysis: Utilize trendlines and word clouds to track the popularity and underlying topic themes over time, gaining a deeper understanding of market dynamics. 

Learn More: 11 Social Media Trends in 2024 [+ 7 Actionable Tips]  

Overall verdict 

Meltwater impresses with its comprehensive social listening capabilities, offering global insights and competitor analysis. While providing valuable customization options for cross-departmental collaboration, there are some concerns about the learning curve and interface.  

Notably, it lacks the vast pre-built query library featured in Sprinklr, potentially impacting efficiency. However, Meltwater's emphasis on press release distribution and its powerful sentiment tracking and post scheduling features are distinctive strengths, setting it apart in certain functionalities.   

Customer testimonial 

💪 Strengths 

“Meltwater is truly the extra marketing team member our lean team needed. We start every Monday by looking at our dashboards, analytics and custom-made searches to gauge how our brand is doing. Meltwater's capabilities are a regular feature at cross-departmental meetings so we can look at what our competitors are doing and understand how our brand is being discussed across many channels. Honestly, the customization of the entire platform to suit our company needs and goals makes this software exactly what we need and levels us up as an organization.” 

💡 What could be better 

“It possesses the limitation of being unable to retain data coverage over extended periods of time, thus impeding its capability to archive historical data effectively. This constraint is further exacerbated by its inherent restriction, permitting capturing and storing a mere 15 instances of historical data. Consequently, the system's capacity to preserve and reflect upon a comprehensive historical context remains restricted, largely due to its incapacity to accumulate and maintain a broader scope of historical information.” Source 

Price: From USD 8,000/year (annual contract)  

Trial: Information available on request  

Zoho Social

Elevate your brand's online impact with Zoho Analytics — an all-in-one social media analytics tool designed to track, analyze and visualize your social media activities seamlessly. It includes features like activity analysis for peak engagement times, ad analysis for better advertising ROI, engagement analysis for audience insights and competitive analysis to stay ahead.  

It simplifies the process with social media dashboards, offering profile analytics for a detailed profile overview and follower insights to understand your audience better. You can gain insights into audience preferences, evaluate post and ad performance, and effortlessly monitor competitors. You can also draft dynamic social media dashboards to get a complete picture of your social media performance.  

🚀 Top 4 features: 

• Collaborative analytics: Foster teamwork by analyzing social media data collectively with your marketing team, facilitating shared insights. 
• Pre-built visualizations: Expedite your analytics journey with over 75 pre-built reports and dashboards, offering instant performance insights. 
• Email, export and print reports: Ensure accessibility by exporting or printing reports, with the option to schedule automatic email deliveries. 
• Smart analytical assistant: Leverage Zia, the AI-powered assistant, to obtain answers through intuitive reports and KPI widgets by simply typing out your questions. 

Overall verdict 

Zoho Social's social media analytics tool is lauded for its user-friendly interface, seamless integrations and competitive pricing, catering to businesses of all sizes. Users appreciate time-saving features such as post scheduling across multiple networks and the ability to manage brand profiles efficiently.  

However, feedback indicates a need for improvements in content creation, real-time notifications and certain limitations in Instagram support. Unlike Sprinklr, Zoho Social lacks AI-powered analytics tool with extensive pre-built queries and quick insights across various verticals — potentially limiting quick insights and anomaly identification.   

Customer testimonial 

💪 Strengths 

“Zoho Social is a great platform where we can link all our brand social media accounts and start posting and managing all activities from a single window. We can also respond to messages and comments using Zoho Social on all social accounts. The robust dashboard has all the analytics related to brand growth.” 

💡 What could be better 

"It does not integrate with all social media platforms whose content is based on images only such as Pinterest." Source

Price: USD 7.25/month/brand/team member (billed annually)  

Trial: Available for 15 days  

SOCi

SOCi is an all-in-one social media management platform that provides tools to visualize and analyze data. The platform offers a range of features to help businesses manage their social media presence, including social media analytics software, chatbots software and social media management software.  

SOCi's reporting suite enables users to monitor and gain insight into their organic social media campaigns — providing valuable data across each of their Google Business Profile, Instagram and X accounts. The platform also offers customizable and white-label options for reporting, allowing users to create impressive-looking reports for their clients or team.  

Additionally, SOCi's insights and reporting suite provides actionable, real-time insights across all solutions, enabling users to analyze data at the account, group and location levels. 

🚀 Top 4 features: 

• SOCi listening: Centralize conversations, manage social media crises and leverage user-generated content (UGC) for authentic strategies. 
• Online presence management: Protect brand reputation on social media, connect with customers through user-generated content and enhance marketing with real-time insights. 
• Insights and reporting suite: Access actionable, real-time insights across all solutions, with customizable and white-label reporting options for a visually impressive and informative presentation. 
• Competitive analysis and industry trends: Centralize insights on competitors and industry trends, benchmark strategies and optimize social approaches based on current market dynamics. 

Overall verdict 

SOCi's social media analytics tool emerges as a comprehensive solution for multi-location businesses, streamlining content deployment and ensuring brand consistency. The platform's listening feature provides valuable insights into customer conversations and industry trends, enhancing brand oversight. User feedback highlights its effectiveness in managing social media for both national and local teams. 

While praised for user-friendly implementation and intuitive interfaces, occasional disconnections and a learning curve are noted challenges.   

Customer testimonial 

💪 Strengths 

“I manage 10 franchises' social and Google business pages. This allows me to cut my time in half when responding to reviews and posting on our social pages. What used to take me hours takes me minutes!” 

💡 What could be better 

“No real downsides, but on "sentiment" it shows some positive words as neutral or negative. It would be helpful if it didn't automatically mark them and/or allow us to review.” Source 

Price: Contact sales/vendor for information  

Trial: Information available on request

Semrush Social

Semrush's social media analytics tool provides a comprehensive solution for businesses to track, analyze, and optimize their social media presence. With Semrush Social, businesses can track their competitors' accounts, monitor their niche's top social media accounts, and compare their KPIs to gain a 360-degree view of their brand's impact. The tool also allows businesses to create and share engaging content on all their social profiles, streamline community management, and hone their social strategy with analytical insights. 

🚀 Top 4 features: 

• Competitor insights: Track competitors' social strategies, frequency of posts, follower growth and identify high-engagement content and hashtags. 
• Automated reports: Receive automated reports directly to your inbox, offering comprehensive data visualizations and KPIs to streamline performance evaluation. 
• Cross-network analysis: Gain a 360-degree view of your brand's social impact by comparing key performance indicators across social networks. 
• Performance monitoring: Analyze your social media performance, including engagement metrics, follower trends and the impact of specific hashtags on audience interaction. 

Overall verdict 

Semrush social media analytics offers a comprehensive solution for elevating social media strategies, featuring cross-network publishing, competitive insights and automated reports. Users appreciate its intuitive interface and in-depth performance monitoring, enabling effective content curation and strategy optimization.  

While feedback notes the tool's learning curve and pricing concerns, Semrush excels in providing actionable insights for informed decision-making. 

Customer testimonial 

💪 Strengths 

“The best thing is that we can find every aspect of competitive analysis, take from keyword analysis, ads analysis, competitors' strategy and all the competition available in the market” 

💡 What could be better 

“I use it to send out PDF reports and I do not like the fact that the reports aren't more customizable.”  Source 

Price: USD 129.95/month  

Trial: Information available on request

How to identify the best social media analytics tool 

Selecting the right social media analytics tool is crucial for unlocking valuable insights and driving growth. Here are mission-critical features and capabilities to prioritize during tool selection: 

1. Unified platform: Avoid the pitfall of using siloed tools by opting for a unified social media management platform, like Sprinklr does. Many companies opt for separate tools to manage different aspects of social media, leading to fragmentated data and insights that hinder sustained growth.  

Need help? Check out our buying guide on the best social media management tools for 2024. 

2. Comprehensive analytics: Ensure the tool provides a wide range of analytics, covering engagement, audience demographics and content performance across different social platforms. 

3. Real-time monitoring: Look for tools that offer real-time monitoring capabilities, allowing you to stay updated on trending topics, brand mentions and audience sentiments as they happen.  

4. Competitor analysis: A good tool should enable thorough competitor analysis, helping you understand industry trends, benchmark your performance and identify areas for improvement. 

5. Customizable reporting: Choose a tool with customizable reporting features to tailor insights according to your business goals. This flexibility ensures relevant and actionable data for your team. 

6. Integration capabilities: Opt for tools seamlessly integrating with other marketing and analytics platforms. This ensures a unified view of your overall digital strategy. 

7. AI-powered insights: Tools like Sprinklr AI+, equipped with artificial intelligence can provide advanced insights, predictive analytics and anomaly detection, enhancing the depth and accuracy of your data-driven decision-making. 

8. Ease of use: User-friendly interfaces and intuitive dashboards contribute to the tool's efficiency. This is especially important for teams with varying levels of technical expertise. 

9. Collaboration features: Opt for tools that facilitate collaboration among team members, allowing seamless communication, task assignment and workflow management within the platform.

By prioritizing these features, businesses can identify a social media analytics tool that not only meets their current needs but also lays the foundation for sustained growth and success in the dynamic world of social media. 

Final Thoughts 

We've taken a rollercoaster ride through social media analytics, exploring tools like the Avengers of the digital world.   

Now, in the fast-paced arena of social media, having the right analytics tool is crucial.  

But how do you even pick the right one? 

From a basket full of social analytics tools, Sprinklr stands out — uniting and bringing order to the chaos. By providing a unified platform covering everything from audience engagement to analytics, Sprinklr could be your go-to, making social media analysis effective and preventing the dreaded fragmentation many fall victim to.  

Analytics just got interesting, isn’t it? Peek at these top 7 picks and find your match. Fancy a test drive with Sprinklr? 

👉 Give It a Go!