Social media analytics tools comparison 2017

A few months ago, my manager asked me to find a social media reporting tool to track and measure our activity on all channels. Most social platforms already provide analytics, but we needed a tool to aggregate all the data in one place.

The first thing I did was type “social media reporting tools comparison” in Google, but unfortunately I couldn’t find what I was looking for: an article that would help me find the right tool.

So I signed up to a bunch of tools, activated the free trial and I took notes. This article sums up my conclusions. Your needs might be different from ours so it wouldn’t make sense to announce a winner. The tool that we ended up using might not be your best option. However, this article will give an overview on all of your options. (okay, I might’ve missed a few, and I do hope you will help me with comments)

Below you have the 12 social media tools that I tested. Some of these tools do a lot more than provide reports and offer full marketing software platforms, so there’s a short presentation for each one, and some pros and cons, from my perspective. At the very bottom of the post you have a comparison table that presents integrations, price and free trial availability.

We’re not associated with or sponsored by any of these tools. All reviews are based on my own observations. I have tried to get a quote from all of these apps, but I only heard back from a few. Their statements are quoted in the article.  

Without further ado, let’s dive into reviews.

#1. Sprout Social
Social Media Management Platform

Sprout Social is a powerful social media tool that does a lot more than just analytics. Some other included features are: smart inbox, web mention monitoring, publishing and collaboration

Why should companies use Sprout Social? 

“Measuring the results of your social media efforts is crucial to long-term success. Sprout Social’s powerful reporting suite streamlines measurement across multiple social networks, providing key insights to inform better business decisions. We help your team save time, collaborate and simplify the process with presentation-ready reports – helping you communicate the value of social to leaders and clients.” – Greg Carollo, Senior Sales Manager, SproutSocial

Pros

• Smart inbox – a single stream inbox for all new notifications and messages, across all platforms; it let’s you hide resolved messages from the inbox, so you’ll always know if there’s a message or a tweet that needs a reply
• Scheduling option with an integrated calendar
• Collaborate with team members
• Assign tasks, use tags and comments
• For Twitter and Facebook you get very detailed reports & beautiful graphs

Cons

• Group stats are limited to Twitter and Facebook
• You can’t connect Pinterest and Youtube, so you don’t get reports for them

#2 Quintly
Social media analytics and competitor benchmarking

Quintly is all about social media analytics. It lets you track your brand’s performance and your competitors’ across all networks.

Pros

• Centralized analytics – Covers all social media platforms and provides individual reports for each channels, as well as overall metrics, to compare all your social channels
• Reports for competitors – You can get reports for any company by simply entering their name or URL, no matter if you are the admin of the page/ profile or not
• Tailored reporting – Set up custom reports; select what you want to track in your report, an impressively large list of analytics widgets: 65 for Facebook, 39 for Twitter, 29 for Youtube, 26 for G+, 22 for LinkedIn, 27 for Instagram, 18 for Pinterest and 6 overall metrics
• Add more users to get access to reports

Cons

• There’s no “pre-made” report template with the most important analytics. Choosing widgets takes time, because it feels like there are too many options (over 130 widgets)
• The cheapest plan starts at $199, so it’s a little bit on the expensive side

#3 Talkwalker
Social media analytics and monitoring platform

Talkwalker has some unique and interesting features, like a virality map and proprietary image recognition. 

Why should companies use Talkwalker?

“Companies should use Talkwalker if they want to create clear, visually appealing social media reports and distribute reports quickly and efficiently to all relevant departments. What makes Talkwalker stand out from the competition is the flexibility and simplicity of report creation and distribution. Talkwalker’s wide range of reporting functionality allows companies to create reports in multiple formats (including Word, PPT, PDF, HTML), schedule reports to go out automatically, add images, video and analyst comments to any report, add annotations directly onto graphs and adjust the size and look of any report element. Our pre-defined report templates for different business needs and data integration capabilities help companies to optimize social media performance and ultimately prove social media ROI.” – Christophe Folschette, Co-Founder and Strategic Product Development Lead, Talkwalker

Pros

• Centralized analytics – Covers almost all social media platforms
• Tracks brand images, not just texts
• Helps you benchmark your brand against industry peers
• Provides demographic data
• Automatic reports, with 30 pre built use cases
• Free Social Search, a slimmed down version of the full platform

Cons

• Too expensive for smaller companies

#4. SimplyMeasured
Social analytics solution

SimplyMeasured looks like a robust analytics tools for social media, for big companies. I signed up for the trial, but they suggested I try their free tools. This is the message that I got from them:

“Thanks for requesting a trial of our social media analytics suite. Based on your needs, we feel that you’d be a great fit for our collection of free reports.
Our pricing packages start at $500/mo and we’d hate to waste your time, but if our free reports don’t satisfy your needs please respond to this email with a short description of what you’re looking for and we’ll be in touch.”

Pros

• Free tools which offer individual reports for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, G+
• These reports are very detailed and packed with unique insights (e.g. top keywords in audience profiles)
• Beautiful graphs

Cons

• Free reports leave out a lot of data about audience growth and interaction
• Pricing packages start at $500/mo, targeting bigger companies

#5.  Social Report
Social media management and scheduling platform

Unlike the previous two tools, Social Report is a good option for smaller companies. The focus of the platform is analytics, but it’s packed with many other features for social media management.

Pros

• Tracks all social channels, and provides aggregated data
• Scheduling and posting capabilities incorporated
• Tracks mentions from social media and from a few blogging platforms
• Automated social replies, favorites, follows and more
• Team management and project management (with a premium account you can track multiple projects and add multiple team members)

Cons

• You can’t reply or engage the audience directly from Social report
• The design style of the platform and reports is a bit outdated

#6. Hootsuite
Social media marketing and management dashboard

Hootsuite is not a social media analytics platform per se, but I decided to include it in the article because it does provide reports, and it’s a very popular tool. We actually use it for scheduling, but we find their reports a bit limited.

Pros

• Scheduling and posting capabilities
• Content suggestions – a tools that for content discovery, which suggests tweets for you
• Manage teams and multiple projects
• Affordable pricing

Cons

• The reports are pretty limited and basic
• You can only get reports for Twitter, Facebook and Instagram
• No aggregate data for all social channels

#7. SumAll
Social media & ecommerce dashboard

I really like their website (both design and copy). Their reports look very good, and you can personalize them with your own branding. I really like their clean, professional aspect.

Why should companies use SumAll?

“SumAll provides an aggregated view of all your social and marketing data for one business or dozens. The tool is free and gives you your analysis in your inbox each morning. Hard not to use.” – Dane Atkinson, SumAll

Pros

• Beautiful design
• You can set autotweets (eg Thank you tweets) for whenever a particular action happens: follow, mention, etc
• Lets you export your Twitter audience data: Time Zone, Network Size, Following, and Engagement
• Explore segments

Cons

• You get very detailed reports for Twitter, but not as much for the other channels

#8. Mention
Real-time media monitoring

Mention is fantastic for tracking brand mentions across social channels and web, so the reports it provides are around mentions. One of my favorite features is the fact that you can reply to mentions directly through Mention. 

Why should companies use Mention?

“Mention shows you everything said about your brand or your competitors – anywhere online. We help agencies and businesses monitor comments about them on social media and the web, to help them provide the best service to customers, and make smarter business decisions.” – Patrick Whatman, Head of Content, Mention

Pros

• Monitors blogs, news, forums and Twitter
• Set up alerts to get notified whenever keywords are mentioned in real time
• Reply to mentions directly in the app
• Collaborate – share alerts and assign tasks to your friends or coworkers to improve your online presence
• Statistics & Exports – Get a snapshot of your mentions by source, language, and over a selected period of time

Cons

• The focus is on and limited to mentions, on web and Twitter

#9. Brand24
Social media monitoring and analytics

Brand24 is another tool that tracks mentions of your brand across all web, including social networks.  If you need more analytics regarding engagement or audience growth you will have to pair it with another tool.  

Why should companies use Brand24?

“Brand24 is a social media monitoring tool which lets you keep track of what people are saying about you and your brand or product by monitoring relevant keywords. It helps to advance finding leads, brand ambassadors, manage your image and build a loyal community around brands. They can even track what competitors are up to. Brand24 let companies stay up to date on all online mentions as they unfold in real time. The tool’s various filters also make it possible to follow online conversations and Influencers that are relevant only to brand’s specific projects, while the collected data is presented in clear and concise reports. Companies might also use Brand24 to find the right ambassadors for their brands and identify potential leads: sales, marketing, and otherwise. It’s efficient, affordable, and easy to use. A must-have for those who need to track their brand presence all over the web.” – Magdalena Urbaniak, Project Manager, Brand24

Pros

• Automated PDF reports and “Storm alert” – whenever the number of your mentions grows fast you got a call and exact percentage of this pick
• Monitors blogs, news, forums, videos, photos, Facebook and Twitter
• Shows the estimated social media reach
• Sentiment analysis
• Influencer score
• Links to reply to mentions
• Collaborate – share alerts and assign tasks to your friends or coworkers to improve your online presence

Cons

• Doesn’t provide analytics about follower growth
• Limited stats about engagement

#10. Allin1Social
Social media management and reporting platform

If you need a tool that’s equally focused on social media management (publishing, scheduling) and analytics (benchmarking, reporting), Allin1Social might be a great option for you, since it does all of this.

Pros

• Scheduling and posting capabilities incorporated
• Manage teams
• Full stats, imported from Facebook, Twitter, G+ and Instagram
• Benchmark – compare your own Facebook and Twitter page against your competitors

Cons

• No aggregate data, or comparisons between own accounts
• No integration for Pinterest, LinkedIn and Youtube

#11. Brandwatch
Social listening and analytics

Unfortunately Brandwatch doesn’t offer a free trial (they might on request, though not advertised on site), but it seems like a powerful tool for everything social.

Pros

• Monitors blogs, news, forums, videos, photos, Facebook and Twitter
• Influencer identification
• Collaborate – share alerts and assign tasks to your friends or coworkers to improve your online presence
• Track and measure campaign performance
• Benchmark – compare your own Facebook and Twitter page against your competitors

Cons

• No free trial
• No pricing
• It doesn’t cover all social networks

#12. Oktopost
Social media management for B2B

I’m still not sure whether Oktopost belongs to this list or not. When I first landed on their site and read about social analytics I didn’t realize that their focus is on social media advertising campaigns. But it is. If you’re looking for a tool for social media campaign management and reporting, this is it. It’s very easy to use, but it will only track what’s published through it.

Pros

• Great for campaign impact monitoring
• Collaborate – Assign team members to selected campaigns and social profiles
• Track and measure campaign performance

Cons

• Focus on campaigns
• No statistics at all if you don’t schedule content through them
• It doesn’t cover all social networks

#13. SocialBee

Social media management tool for training and teams

PROS

• Connect up to 25 profiles
• Post scheduling tools & automated publishing
• Evergreen Posting/ Share-Once options
• Import RSS Feeds
• Team Collaboration
• Over 10+ Integrations

CONS

This is it, guys!

Here’s a final overview, now that you know all the pros and cons for each SM analytics tool. The comparison table includes the Social channels that the tool provides reports for, the cost (the price for the cheapest plan) and whether there’s a free trial or not.

Have you tried any of the above? Let me know what you like or dislike about them.