If you’re running social media accounts in 2024, you need to be tracking your analytics. How else will you know which content pieces pass the vibe check with your audience, and which ones fall flat?
Social media analytics tools provide a way to quantify your performance across lots of different content- and audience-based metrics, from impressions to engagement rate, shares, and more.
Figuring out which social media reporting tool will be best for your business isn’t an easy feat – in 2024, there are hundreds of options on the market. To help you out, we’ve rounded up 19 different options, including native tools and external social media analytics software, that you can mix and match to construct your perfect social media reporting strategy.
Native Social Media Analytics Tools
Often underestimated, native social media reporting tools—a.k.a. the analytics embedded within each respective platform, like Pinterest or Facebook—can be useful for gleaning top-level content performance insights and learning more about your audience.
These free social media analytics tools are suitable for anyone, but they’ll be particularly useful in the early stages of your reporting journey, as they’re often limited to specific metrics and reporting periods (e.g., 28 days or 365 days).
Depending on how much time and energy you can dedicate to social media reporting, it may also be clunky to use multiple analytics tools to measure performance rather than a platform (like Plann!) that aggregates all your data in one place.
Tool 1: Meta Business Suite
- Best for: All Facebook and Instagram account holders, especially those running Meta ads.
- Stand-out feature: Unified reporting for Facebook and Instagram analytics, as well as detailed audience data.
- Price: Free
Track page, post, and audience performance or behavior using Meta’s built-in social media analytics tool, Meta Business Suite, for Facebook and Instagram insights.
In Meta Business Suite, you can track common analytics like reach, impressions, reactions, shares, video views, and more across Meta products (Facebook and Instagram), and compare your performance to previous periods. There’s detailed audience data to help you get to know your followers, including where they live, how old they are, and how they engage with your content. Meta Business Suite is also where you can measure ad performance and contrast it with your organic insights. Unfortunately, one key limitation of Meta Business Suite is its historical data retention – many common metrics will only display information for the past 28 days.
Tool 2: Instagram Insights
- Best for: All Instagram business or creator account holders.
- Stand-out feature: In-app accessibility, helpful data visualizations, top-performing post data.
- Price: Free
See how your posts and Stories stack up with Instagram Insights, available within the Instagram app for business and creator accounts. At a glance, you’ll be able to see overall post and channel performance represented with handy visualizations, and drill down on your top and bottom posts to learn more. Instagram Insights also makes comparing your performance to past weeks or months easy, with increases and decreases automatically marked out for most metrics. However, note that Instagram Insights only offers reporting data for the last 90 days.
Tool 3: LinkedIn Analytics
- Best for: All LinkedIn users.
- Stand-out feature: Audience demographic information (e.g. job title, location), employee advocacy insights.
- Price: Free
LinkedIn Analytics offers content reporting, audience insights, and unique tools like employee advocacy and competitor analysis. See detailed audience data like location, industry, job function, and company size to better understand your followers. You can also create an employee advocacy program, recommend posts to employees, and track engagement, which could be a game-changer as an employee’s ‘influencing’ becomes ingrained in social media marketing.
Tool 4: TikTok Analytics
- Best for: All TikTok users, but especially creators, solopreneurs and small businesses.
- Stand-out feature: Search query insights, top words in comments, and viewer insights.
- Price: Free
TikTok Analytics lets you see which of your content pieces hit the mark with your audience and which don’t, which is important for such a fast-moving platform. It has some fantastic insights you won’t find anywhere else, including top search queries driving views to your content, top words used in comments across your posts, and granular viewer insights, like which other creators and posts they’ve engaged with.
Plann Tip: if you think TikTok Analytics is good in the app, just wait ‘til you see what’s available on desktop!
TikTok Analytics is one of the best reporting tools available natively within any social media platform.
Tool 5: Pinterest Analytics
- Best for: All Pinterest users.
- Stand-out feature: Trending pins, conversion insights, paid performance metrics.
- Price: Free
See your top Pins at a glance, split out organic, paid and earned engagement, track conversions and more with Pinterest’s native social analytics tools. Its available dashboards encompass all the common metrics for both organic and paid campaigns, including impressions, engagements, Pin clicks, link clicks, and saves or Repins. Unique metrics like audience affinity (which measures how interested your audience is in a particular category of Pin) can also help you build a better profile of the people who find your Pins useful.
Tool 6: X Analytics
- Best for: All X (Twitter) account holders.
- Stand-out feature: Real-time performance monitoring.
- Price: Free
X (formerly known as Twitter) isn’t known for its advanced analytics, but there are still a few features you can harness to report on your brand’s performance, including real-time analytics on mobile that let you see your impressions, likes and comments as they grow. However, if you’re reporting weekly or monthly or want to track performance beyond vanity metrics, it’s likely you’ll run into limitations quickly. If your brand has a strong presence on X, we recommend using a more comprehensive tool like Plann so you can enjoy better, more adaptable insights.
Tool 7: YouTube Analytics
- Best for: All YouTube users.
- Stand-out feature: Lifetime reporting period, broad audience insights.
- Price: Free
Report on your YouTube wins and learnings using the platform’s built-in analytics tool, which provides insightful audience data and an overview of your channel and video performance. YouTube Analytics has better data retention than many other native analytics tools, offering lifetime reporting that updates in real-time. It’s a useful tool to learn more about your audience’s behavior, including which other channels they watch, their preferred format (regular videos vs Shorts), and how they engage with your content.
YouTube Analytics lets you see a top-line social media analytics report including lifetime view, watch time and subscriber data.
Tool 8: Google Analytics
- Best for: Anyone looking to tie social performance to website traffic.
- Stand-out feature: Acquisition reporting to track user behavior on your site from social media sources.
- Price: Free
GA4 (the latest and greatest edition of Google Analytics) is an extremely powerful tool for marketers, and if set up correctly, its capabilities extend to social media tracking. Use it to see whether your social media performance leads to website visitors and what their behavior is like once they’ve landed on-site. The best way to do this is to generate a social media analytics report using GA data that wraps up your acquisition and user behavior info and sends it straight to your inbox to complement your other reports.
Analytics-Only Social Reporting Tools
If native tools aren’t cutting it, consider specialized social media analytics software designed for better functionality like customized reporting, longer data retention, aggregated audience insights, benchmarking and more. Analytics-only tools are a good option if you want really powerful insights and are prepared to pay for them alongside your go-to social media management software.
Tool 9: Facelift Data Studio (formerly Quintly)
- Best for: Big businesses and social media marketing agencies.
- Stand-out feature: Customizable dashboards, competitor benchmarking.
- Price: Plans start at $300 USD/month.
Facelift Data Studio (formerly Quintly) is a social media analytics tool that harnesses powerful data-driven insights, particularly for big businesses.
Facelift Data Studio is an analytics-only social media tool that offers all the insights you’ll need with no unwanted features (e.g., post-scheduling). It’s best equipped for big data handling and in-depth analytics, making it a top choice for larger companies and agencies managing multiple accounts. With over 350 metrics to choose from across all the major social networks, Facelift Data Studio is undoubtedly a best-in-the-biz analytics tool. However, pricing is steep, so it may not be the right tool for small businesses or freelancers.
Tool 10: Rival IQ
- Best for: Medium to large businesses and agencies.
- Stand-out feature: Social listening, smart competitor analysis.
- Price: Plans start at $239 USD/month.
Rival IQ is another social media tool driven predominantly by analytics, meaning it doesn’t include scheduling – however, it has a few other interesting features that make it a strong choice for larger businesses. Its Boosted Post Detection feature uses AI learning to identify and track high performers from competitors and replicate their winning formula for your own posts. Rival IQ also boasts social listening functionality, which includes advanced search for Instagram and X.
Tool 11: Emplifi Social
- Best for: Big corporations looking for a powerful all-in-one solution.
- Stand-out feature: Detailed campaign management, high-level insights.
- Price: Paid; Essential plan starts at $2,400 USD/year.
Emplifi is a comprehensive business reporting tool that encompasses social media, commerce, and customer care.
Combining social media marketing, influencer marketing, brand sentiment analysis, benchmarking and more, Emplifi Social is an extremely comprehensive social media reporting tool that integrates with the broader Emplifi suite of commerce and customer care products. Notably, it’s an excellent choice for brands with extensive community management needs or lots of accounts to manage. This tool is best suited to larger businesses as it carries a high cost and requires a complex setup to get the most out of it.
Tool 12: Cyfe
- Best for: Businesses of all sizes looking to contain all their data in one place.
- Stand-out feature: Cross-platform business dashboards.
- Price: Plans start at $29 USD/month.
Make better business decisions using Cyfe, which pulls data from all over – including social media, Google Analytics, your website, and your internal databases – into one platform. With finance, marketing, sales and more housed in one place, Cyfe enables cross-platform reporting and gives users the tools they need to derive holistic insights into their performance. This software is definitely more suited to corporate and established brands, especially as it hasn’t integrated with TikTok yet.
Full-Service Social Media Management Tools
If you’re looking to speed up your social media management processes and make time for the things that really matter, your best bet is a full-service tool that encompasses reporting, social media scheduling, and community management.
It’s important to note that some of these platforms, such as Hootsuite, Brandwatch and Sprout Social, are designed for big businesses, so they carry high price tags that may render them inaccessible for small businesses and solopreneurs. Other options, including Plann and Buffer, are geared towards small brands and offer flexible pricing options to suit a range of budgets.
Tool 13: Plann
- Best for: Small-to-medium-sized businesses and brands, solopreneurs, creators.
- Stand-out feature: Advanced social media analytics plus a comprehensive suite of content management tools, including an AI caption generator, easy cross-posting functionality, auto posting for Reels and TikTok videos, native integration with Canva + so much more!
Price: Plans start at $12.50 USD/month.
From top color palettes to audience location and beyond, Plann’s social media analytics tools give you unmatched insight into your performance.
Oh hey, we’re Plann! Nice to meet you. We couldn’t tell you about the best reporting tools for social media without tooting our own horn. Plann is an easy-to-use, customizable social media management and reporting tool with analytics that span all your major platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Pinterest.
Within our desktop platform and the Plann app, you’ll find heaps of detailed analytics that can be used to build a powerful snapshot of your brand’s performance across social media. We’ve got all your favorite bells and whistles, as well as our own unique flair – think embedded hashtag recommendations, an AI caption generator, a free stock library, easy cross-posting between channels, and even done-for-you content themes every month.
Our plans start at $12.50 USD/month, making Plann an affordable option for businesses of any size. Why not get started with a free 7-day trial?
Tool 14: Iconosquare
- Best for: Small to large businesses and agencies.
- Stand-out feature: Custom reporting dashboards, collaboration tools.
- Price: Plans start at $49 USD/month.
Iconosquare is a well-known, relatively affordable social media management tool that comprises publishing, collaborating, social listening, and reporting. Notably, it’s got a range of plans to suit different budgets and business needs, and lots of great customization and collaboration tools within, including seamless approval workflows to circumnavigate the email back-and-forth. However, Iconosquare only covers reporting for Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, and LinkedIn, so you’ll have to measure your Pinterest and YouTube performance elsewhere.
Tool 15: Loomly
- Best for: Small businesses, solopreneurs and agencies.
- Stand-out feature: Easy-to-use interface, Loomly Inspiration.
- Price: Plans start at $26 USD/month.
If you want to improve your social media workflow but don’t have a big budget or a massive team, Loomly offers an easy-to-use solution. It’s designed for small businesses and freelancers, so its interface is top-level and easy to navigate, with simple calendar and list views. As an analytics tool, it checks all the basic boxes, but there are definitely limitations if you want to produce advanced reports. One feature social media newbies will love is Loomly Inspiration, which is curated thought-starters for your posts accessible from the main dashboard.
Tool 16: Buffer
- Best for: Small-to-medium-sized businesses.
- Stand-out feature: Broad range of available platforms, machine learning insights.
- Price: Free for up to 3 channels, paid plans start from $6 USD/month.
Buffer offers social media reporting in an easy-to-use interface that expertly aggregates performance at a glance.
Buffer is one of the OG social media tools, and over its almost-15 years in the biz, it’s done well to stay ahead of the curve. As well as the usual suspects, Buffer offers management and analytics for Bluesky, Mastodon, and Instagram Threads. It also boasts AI-powered insights as part of its analytics suite, which sheds light on why your posts are (or aren’t!) performing and gives advice on how to strengthen them in future. While Buffer is an affordable option, you might run into some limitations using its basic plans, especially if you need detailed analytics.
Tool 17: Hootsuite
- Best for: Large organizations and agencies.
- Stand-out feature: Powerful integrations, and built-in social listening.
- Price: Plans start at $99 USD/month.
Most digital marketers know Hootsuite, one of the earliest players in the world of social media management. In 2024, it’s a very capable tool with all the features you’ve come to expect from a social management tool, as well as integrations with other big platforms like Google My Business, Vidyard, Creative Cloud, Canva, and more. Hootsuite also has its own apps within the platform that power additional features like social listening and benchmarking.
Tool 18: Sprout Social
- Best for: Large organizations and agencies.
- Stand-out feature: Interactive data visualization, hashtag tracking.
- Price: Plans start at $249 USD/month.
Sprout Social has skyrocketed in popularity over the last few years, and is now one of the most widely-used social media scheduling and analytics tools for big businesses. Innovative features include its interactive charts and graphs, which make it easy to isolate the right information for specific reports and functions, and hashtag tracking, which gives you unmatched insight into which hashtags your audience follow.
Tool 19: Brandwatch
- Best for: Large organizations and agencies.
- Stand-out feature: Team collaboration tools, automated custom reports.
- Price: Paid (contact for pricing).
Brandwatch is a go-to social media analytics tool for big businesses with advanced reporting requirements.
Another go-to for big businesses, Brandwatch (once known as Falcon) is a comprehensive social media management tool with solid analytics capabilities. Its collaboration features are intelligent and easy to use, making it a good choice for large teams with multiple brands and social media users. To make reporting a breeze, Brandwatch allows you to customize your reports and set up automations so they’re delivered to your team’s inboxes at your desired frequency.
Level-up your social media content with Plann
Whether you’re struggling to keep up with the fast-paced nature of social media or simply want to devote more time to growing your business and focusing on those tasks that take place offline, Plann’s range of features is sure to help save you time with an automated social media strategy.
From AI-generated captions to cross-posting, analytics, hashtags and more, Plann can help you maintain a consistent posting schedule while you remain focused on business growth. We even auto-post your Instagram Reels to take the hassle out of growing organically on the platform!
Go on, and redeem your 7-day free trial of Plann Plus. If you don’t like it, keep using Plann for free!
