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Social Media Analytics for Small Businesses

July 25th, 2022 15 min read

Building a solid social media presence is the fastest and cheapest way for small business owners to increase brand engagement, boost revenue, and grow at scale. Without a large marketing budget, you’ll have to focus your efforts on where you can have the biggest impact for the least amount of money. Social media has always helped people stay connected. Over 75% of consumers have purchased at least one product they’ve seen on social media profiles.  

Making social media a central part of your marketing strategy can get you noticed by your target audience without breaking the bank. Social Media Analytics tools measure your social media performance and provide essential audience insights. Actionable data to support your social media marketing strategy is critical to maximizing ROI and revenue.         

The Benefits of Social Media Analytics for Small Businesses

Social media analytics and reporting tools allow you to understand the engagement of current or potential customers with your brand on social media. They also track hashtags to help you see what’s trending in your industry. 

Relevant hashtags are also a great way to increase your organic exposure on social. Competitor analysis features give you a glimpse into what your rivals are up to on social media. This serves as an ideal benchmark against competitors. 

Social media analytics can track several important metrics to help gauge the performance of your social content. Important social media metrics include:

  • Follower growth over time
  • Page views
  • Time spent on page 
  • Post performance based on time of day
  • Impressions
  • Engagement rate
  • Bounce rate
  • Conversion rate
  • Cost-per-click
  • Shared posts
  • Comments
  • Number of likes
  • User demographics 
  • Customer journey tracking

Integrations with Web Analytics Tools like Google Analytics can help you track social activities via tags and tracking codes. Automated data feeds converge into a single dashboard, which lets you access analytics reports in one place.  

In short, social media analytics gives you the ability to harness the full power of social media marketing.

Use Social Media Analytics to Grow your Business

You need engaging content to grow your audience and generate demand for your products on social media. Social media content should target existing and potential customers. Analytics can help you determine which of these customers are most likely to convert. 

Great content improves the customer experience and boosts your organic search engine rankings. The more relevant and accurate your content is, the more people will see it. 

Almost all social media platforms also offer paid advertising for businesses. These include Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. Analytics allows you to track social media campaign performance, including engagement and revenue attribution per post. Seeing what works and what doesn’t will simplify the optimization of your ad spend. This will allow you to adjust post scheduling or ad spend with confidence. To save time and money, focus on channels where your target market tends to congregate. 

Small businesses can’t afford to waste precious resources. Analytics tools will help keep your social media campaigns on the growth path when it comes to advertising. Customer feedback is essential to the process. Direct replies from users give you a first-hand look at the impact of your social campaigns and content strategies. 

Some analytics tools offer social listening and monitoring features that group positive and negative feedback for your products. Customer responses can be leveraged to improve both your digital marketing and your products.      

Connecting with influencers on social media networks is another great way to build brand awareness. Businesses of all sizes are using influencer marketing for audience engagement. The more followers they have, the pricier they get. Some influencers might be willing to work with small businesses in exchange for free products or discounts. Others might offer discounts to users who buy products through an affiliate link, taking a small cut of the earnings. If you work with influencers, your analytics tool should be able to map the reach and in-depth engagement of their promotional work.    Best Social Media Analytics Tools for Small Businesses

There are many social media analytics products available on the market. The ideal tools for small businesses will offer solutions that maximize value at a relatively low cost. Here are four of our favorite social media analytics picks for small businesses in 2022. For those who would prefer to try out a free solution at first, check out our post on Free Social Media Analytics Tools.

ProducttrScoreProsCons
Zoho Social9/10
Cost
Usability
Campaign success analytics
Bulk posting
Customization
TikTok integration availability
Sprout Social8.7/10
Real-time tracking
Competitor analysis
Campaign success analytics 
Paid media management
Lead generation
Campaigns and promotions
SocialPilot9/10Facebook integration
Usability
Customer support
Instagram analytics
Paid media management
Iconosquare8.5/10Comparative dashboards
Engagement metrics
Instagram analytics
Automated scheduling
Follower reports

Zoho Social

Zoho Social has won TrustRadius Top Rated awards in multiple categories for 2022, including in social media analytics. This product also boasts three Best Of awards including Best Relationship, Best Value for Price, and Best Feature Set. The software allows you to track campaign performance and create customized reports. Zoho’s products are famous for their ease of use and streamlined user interface. Zoho Social is no different. Over 90% of Zoho Social reviewers on TrustRadius work for small businesses. If you’re looking to grow, this product also provides a high degree of scalability. If your business expands and your needs increase, you can access more features and enhanced analytics capabilities at a relatively low cost. These include post insights as well as dashboards for monitoring and reporting. This flexibility makes Zoho Social a great social media analytics tool for businesses of all sizes.

Zoho social ui

Key analytics features for Zoho Social include:

  • Summary reports
  • Post insights
  • Monitoring and reporting dashboards
  • Custom and share reports
  • Integrations with Facebook, Instagram, Google, LinkedIn, and Pinterest

Zoho Social Use Cases

Other use cases for Zoho Social include Social Media Monitoring, Social Media Publishing, Competitive Intelligence, and Social Media Management. Key capabilities include bulk uploads, post scheduling, and competitor analysis. Integrations with other Zoho products like CRM are also popular. Zoho suite solutions can be used to generate and assign leads, as well as streamline the output of social media content. 

Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a social media management platform that enhanced its analytics functionality with the acquisition of Simply Measured in 2017. Sprout Social has won Top Rated status on TrustRadius, having also won a Most Loved award for 2022. 

sprout social ui

The main analytics features for Sprout Social include:

  • Campaign analytics
  • Competitor analysis
  • Customizable dashboards
  • Performance reports
  • Real-time tracking
  • Sentiment analysis
  • Social data
  • Tag reporting
  • Team and task reports to optimize productivity
  • Integrations with Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, Google Analytics, and Zendesk

Sprout Social Use Cases

Many users rely on Sprout Social to manage multiple aspects of their social media marketing, in addition to analytics. This includes scheduling, publishing, and content optimization. Customer engagement and lead generation are other common use cases. Social Media Monitoring and Social Media Customer Service features help you track and respond to comments and direct messages. 

SocialPilot

The SocialPilot platform offers an easy-to-use single dashboard for social media analytics. This means that users can easily toggle between analytics reports for their pages on different social media platforms. This software specializes in tracking social media performance and identifying trending hashtags. 

social pilot ui

While SocialPilot can integrate well with several social platforms, they’re particularly popular with businesses that are active on Facebook and Instagram. Pricing is accessible, with plans varying from $25 to slightly over $100 per month. A full feature and pricing overview is available for SocialPilot here

Here is a summary of the top analytics features available for SocialPilot customers:

  • Content performance
  • Audience insights
  • In-depth analytics for social media posts
  • PDF analytics reports
  • User rankings
  • Facebook Ads Management

SocialPilot Use Cases

SocialPilot is also frequently used as a Social Media Management tool to create, schedule, and post social media content. This software is designed to simultaneously handle internal social media needs as well as third party social media content. This capability makes it popular both with small businesses and agencies who manage social media for their clients. 

Iconosquare

Particularly popular with Instagram users, Iconosquare offers analytics, publishing, and monitoring solutions for small businesses, enterprises, and marketing agencies. If you’re planning on scaling quickly, Iconosquare will provide you with a smooth transition.  

iconosquare ui

The Pro plan is specifically designed for small businesses, with annual billing rates fixed at $49 per month. This plan offers analytics for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and TikTok. Users also get access to industry benchmarking, customer conversations, and basic competitor analysis. See the full feature lists for Iconosquare here.  

Standout features for Iconosquare Pro include:

  • In-depth analytics for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and TikTok 
  • Competitor analysis
  • Hashtag analysis
  • Scheduling
  • XLS reports
  • Social listening

Iconosquare Use Cases

Iconosquare is widely used by small and medium-sized businesses as well as agencies. Users especially appreciate the ability to track social media KPIs that can be integrated into customized reports. Social Media Marketing tools offer social media advocacy features that encourage brand promotion by employees and customers. They also facilitate the reuse of user-generated content (UGC) and social media curation. Overall, Iconosquare has been praised as a great tool for promoting brand awareness.

Optimize Social Media Performance with Analytics Tools

With an economic downturn on the horizon, small business marketing needs to be more focused and efficient than ever before. Analytics tools for social media are designed to help you get the most out of your social media channels. By breaking down the performance of social media accounts, these tools help you make adjustments to your social media strategy. Social media analytics makes it easier to optimize both and spend and the type of content in your posts.

If you want to know more about Social Media Analytics Tools, visit TrustRadius to access hundreds of verified reviews. If you’ve used any of these tools before, feel free to leave a review yourself! Your valuable input helps vendors improve their products, and other software buyers informed purchases.     

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