Where do you turn for meaningful stats on your social media marketing?

I’m grateful for the insight from some truly incredible tools that help make sense of the actions I take on social media. How have my followers grown this month? Which posts seem to perform best? Which times make the most sense to post?

The answers are out there, and there are tools to help you find them. I’ve collected a bunch of my favorites here in this post. Feel free to give them a try and see what insights you can find!

1. Buffer

With Buffer’s free plan, you get all the major engagement stats for every update you post on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn. My favorite feature — and one I’m always stoked to see! — is the Top Tweet/Top Post badge that pops up when an update goes above and beyond the average performance.

2. Followerwonk

One of our favorite Twitter tools, Followerwonk shows you detailed breakdowns of your followers and activity. Click on the Analytics tab, enter a Twitter username (either yours or someone else’s), and view information on followers and following. See stats like when your followers are online, when you typically post, and how your followers fall into categories like social authority, activity, total tweets, and follower count.

3. ViralWoot

This Pinterest tool helps with much beyond analytics. You can schedule pins, promote pins, and gain new followers all through Viralwoot. The analytics on the free plan shows you basic account metrics (boards, pins, followers, etc.), Pinterest stats (Pinfluence, reach, activity, and engagement scores), and how to increase those stats. Paid users have more comprehensive analytics, including data on best day and time to post and best-performing colors.

4. Google Analytics

The №1 use for Google Analytics is for analyzing website traffic. And as part of the analysis, you can dig into the referral stats on your social media marketing as well. Click through to Acquisition > Social > Overview, and you can check out how many visits your site receives from each of the major social networks. If you choose to add goals to your GA tracking, you can see the direct impact of social on the goals and paths as well.

5. Quintly

The free plan on Quintly lets you access analytics for up to three Facebook Pages, offering stats on the main engagement metrics (likes, comments, shares) plus stats on follower growth. When you add multiple pages, you can quickly see at-a-glance how the pages compare on the graphs.

6. Cyfe

The robust features at Cyfe let you create a custom dashboard filled with stats from dozens of marketing tools. Its social media section lets you sync up all the major networks and pull overview reports or individual reports for the accounts you manage and the accounts you want to follow.

7. Tailwind

Tailwind is a Pinterest and Instagram marketing solution that helps you schedule content, monitor conversations, and analyze performance. For Pinterest, its analytics tells you insights such as the number of pins with your domain, the potential impressions, and the number of followers for your boards. For Instagram, it tells you basic metrics such as followers, posts, comments, and likes.

8. Keyhole

Keyhole offers a free yet powerful preview of its hashtag, keyword, and account tracking service. For hashtag and keyword tracking, it provides a wealth of information such as reach, top posts, share of posts, and more. For account tracking, you can monitor your brand’s or competitor’s engagement on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.

9. Klout

Working with your profiles and pages across the major social channels, Klout puts together a score from 0 to 100 on your influence on social media. Klout also suggests content, which you can schedule and share through its app to improve your Klout score.

10. Klear

Once you connect your Twitter, Instagram, and/or Facebook Page, Klear will analyze your profile and your followers. Two of my favorite information are my profile insights (whether I’m active and approachable) and my followers’ interests.

11. Audiense

If the sum of your followers and following is less than 5,000, Audiense provides a free analysis of your Twitter profile. You can learn your followers’ demographics, interests, and influence. You can also use its tool to manage your Twitter contacts and find your optimal time to tweet.

12. TweetReach

Type in any keyword, hashtag, or username, and TweetReach returns a snapshot of analytics on your search, including charts and graphs for reach, exposure, activity, and contributors. It’s quite useful for checking in on mentions of your Twitter username and tracking branded hashtags and industry keywords.

13. IBM Watson Personality Insights

If you are ever curious about your (brand) personality and tone on Twitter, this tool by IBM uses linguistic analytics and personality theory to work out your personality from your tweets. It’s a neat way to find out if your perceived brand personality and tone match what you have in mind.

14. Peakfeed

Peakfeed sends a simple report with your key social media profile stats to your email every week. You can connect up to three accounts for the major social media platforms. Peakfeed seems to be still in beta at the moment, and you might be able to grab a lifetime free account!

15. WolframAlpha Facebook Report

A fun tool built by the team behind the Wolfram Alpha search engine, the Wolfram Alpha Facebook Analyzer shows you all sorts of fun and useful information for your Facebook profile and posts.

16. SocialRank

The free plan for SocialRank allows you to manage and analyze with your Twitter and Instagram followers. It also provides a summary report of your followers including their distribution, top locations, popular words in bio, and more.

17. WEBSTA

WEBSTA is an Instagram-only management tool that goes beyond just Instagram analytics. You can also reply to comments, create up to three custom feed of Instagram accounts you are interested in, and explore featured users and top hashtags.

18. Talkwalker

Talkwalker gives you unlimited free searches for hashtags and keywords across major social media platforms, news, blogs, and forums. It provides a wide range of data such as mentions, sentiment, distribution of conversations, top posts, and more.

19. LikeAlyzer

Pop in your Facebook Page URL, and LikeAlyzer will analyze your Facebook Page and provide metrics such as posts per day, engagement per post, timing, and length of posts. It also offers recommendations for improving your Facebook Page.

Which social media analytics tools do you use?

I’d love to hear how you gain insights into what’s working. Feel free to share your best tips and ask any questions about how we get things done here at Buffer!

The full version of this blog post was first published on the Buffer Social blog on March 7, 2017 by Kevan Lee.