The 11 Best Social Media Analytics Tools for Creators and Marketers

When I first started posting on LinkedIn consistently, I couldn’t understand why some posts were a huge hit and others flopped like soggy tacos. That is until I started monitoring my social media analytics.

Suddenly, it all became much clearer: I had data that pointed to which hooks grabbed the most attention, what time got the most engagement, and what the ideal length for a post was.  Everything clicked.

The clues are out there for you too, right in your analytics. And they can guide your social media strategy in the right direction.

But if you run multiple social media platforms, it can be hard to collate and stitch these insights together. Luckily, plenty of social media analytics tools help you do just that, and then some. I've road-tested dozens, and pulled together this list based on specific use cases — so hopefully, one of these will be a good fit for you, too.

Here are 11 of my favorite social media analytics tools.

What are social media analytics?

Before we begin, let’s define social media analytics: These are the numbers that showcase how your posts have been performing on various social media platforms. Social media analytics can help you answer questions beyond “How many likes did this post get?” For example:

• Which are my best content types?
• When is my audience the most engaged?
• What kind of content is the best for getting followers talking?
• What kind of content is the best for reaching new followers?
• …and so much more

Social media analytics help you measure your performance and benchmark them against your social media goals.

Don’t all social media platforms have native social media insights?

You’re right — they do. All major social media networks provide native insights within their platform. But there are a few issues when you rely solely on them:

1. Social media networks don’t always provide the insights you need. For instance, LinkedIn doesn’t show timestamps on past posts, making it tricky to understand what days and times are best to reach your audience.
2. Relying on native insights alone won’t give you the full picture. Let’s say you’re running a large-scale social media campaign and using multiple social media networks. You’ll have to manually cobble insights from all of them if you rely only on each channel’s native insights. In contrast, on many social media analytics tools, you can gather all posts under one tab and monitor collective insights on how your campaign performed across channels.

Social media analytics software collects and helps you make sense of your performance data — so you can spend less time tracking and more time improving your social media strategy.

Social media analytics tools vs. social media management tools

There are dedicated social media analytics tools that show only social media post(s) insights. And then there is social media management software that encompasses social media analytics along with scheduling posts, engaging with your audience, storing ideas, etc. This list contains options for both. But which one should you choose?

• Choose a social media management software if you’re a creator, or one-person or small marketing team managing your entire social media strategy.
• Choose a dedicated social media analytics software if you’ve already covered other aspects of your social media strategy (either manually or with another tool) and/or if you need specific insights about your social media efforts that a management tool can’t provide.

In most cases, social media managers and creators will likely prefer one-stop social media management tools. It makes things so much simpler to have everything in one tab — and the last thing anyone working in social needs is more tabs. 

Still,  there are times when standalone social media analytics tools might make more sense.

• When you need insights about a very particular aspect of your social media strategy — like competitive analysis. Many social management tools offer competitor analysis, but a standalone tool often digs a little deeper and can provide more useful insights.
• When you’re a small creator or team on a shoestring budget managing your content calendar and social media engagement manually. Maybe you can’t afford full-fledged social management software involving multiple social media channels. But you might be able to swing for a social media analytics tool that’s a little more budget-friendly.

You’ll find plenty of dedicated social media analytics tools and social media management tools on this list. Pick the one that best suits your needs!

Quick summary of the 11 best social media analytics tools

The 11 best social media analytics tools for creators and social media marketers

1. Buffer

Best social media analytics tool for creators and small teams

Price: Free plan for up to 3 social media platforms (10 posts/channel). Advanced analytics tools are available on paid plans, which start at $6/month.

Supported social media platforms: Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Mastodon, Pinterest, Threads, TikTok, YouTube, X

Buffer is a flexible social media toolkit that helps you schedule your posts, engage with your audience, store ideas, and a lot more. As a social media analytics tool, what I love is it gives you the answers straight up — no guesswork.

As soon as you open your social media analytics dashboard, you find your:

• Best type of post
• Best day to post
• Best type of content to post

Instead of just throwing numbers at you, Buffer helps you make sense of the data — which is crucial for strapped-for-time creators and social media managers. And of course, if you need it, you have all the raw data and graphs also:

• Follower growth
• Total impressions
• Total engagement
• Hashtag performance
• Audience demographics
• Engagement rate and reach on specific posts

You can create beautiful branded reports in a few clicks. Bye-bye, manual copy-pasting.