Table of contents
The 15 Best Social Media Analytics Software to Use in 2026
Your audience is online, forming opinions every single day. And if you want your marketing to land, you need right social media analytics tools!
What Are the Best Social Media Analytics Tools?
Here are the top 15 social media analytics tools that every marketer, social media guru, and business owner should have in their arsenal.
| Tool | Main use | Key note |
|---|---|---|
| Brand24 | Monitoring + analytics (mentions, reach, sentiment, influencers, trends) | Strong AI + reporting; not a management tool |
| Google Analytics | Website + social traffic/conversion insights | Free; setup can be complex |
| BuzzSumo | Content performance + influencer research | Great for trending content; pricey for full version |
| NapoleonCat | Social analytics + management + reporting | Benchmarking + automated reports |
| Sotrender | Organic + paid social analytics + reporting | Fast reports; no LinkedIn |
| Cyfe | Multi-tool dashboard (incl. social analytics) | Tons of integrations; UI can be unintuitive |
| CoSchedule | Editorial calendar + social performance recommendations | Strong scheduling insights; can be pricey |
| Social Status | Multi-channel analytics + automated white-label reports | Great reporting; limited history on lower plans |
| Sprout Social | Social management + analytics + listening | Powerful but expensive; missing YouTube/TikTok integration |
| Keyhole | Hashtag + keyword/account/URL tracking | Historical data option; pricing is hidden |
| Brandwatch | Web-wide listening + advanced analytics | Deep features (demographics/image); pricey |
| Quintly | Multi-network analytics + benchmarking + dashboards | Lots of metrics/exports; expensive for small brands |
| Audiense | Twitter/X audience analytics | Strong follower insights; limited scope |
| HeyOrca | Planning + collaboration + publishing + basic analytics | Great for approvals; not deep analytics |
| Buffer | Scheduling + publishing + analytics | Easy + affordable; lighter reporting than bigger suites |
15 Best Social Media Analytics Tools
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes once said:
Data! Data! Data! I can’t make bricks without clay!
Just like Sherlock Holmes carefully gathers evidence and puts together another piece of the puzzle to solve a case, you should gather and analyze bits of data to make sense of your marketing efforts and get the full picture of the situation.
The Analytics tool is here to help!
So, what are the best social media analytics tools? Some are free, some are paid… let’s dive in!
01 Brand24
Correct, that’s us – one of the best social media monitoring tools. Says who? Says Buffer!
Brand24 is a media monitoring and social listening tool with built-in analytics and reporting.
It tracks brand/keyword mentions across social media and the wider web (news sites, blogs, forums, and review platforms), helps analyze social media metrics, and much more.
Key note: With Brand24, you can measure mention volume, reach, engagement, sentiment, and spot trends and top influencers in real time.
Here’s what Brand24 can help you with:
- Monitoring brand mentions across multiple channels in one place
- Analyzing sentiment, reach, and engagement for any keyword or campaign
- Finding trending topics and influential authors driving conversations
- Comparing your brand vs competitors with share of voice and performance metrics
Pros:
- Real-time monitoring across social and web sources
- Strong AI insights and easy-to-share reports
- Useful influencer, trend, and competitor analysis
Cons:
- Doesn’t provide a social media management platform.
Brand24 is a social media analytics tool that analyzes social media metrics, saving you a ton of time!

02 Google Analytics
One, seemingly unrelated social media analytics tool is Google Analytics.
Even though Google Analytics has been mainly designed to analyze the web performance of your website, it also offers plenty of insights about social media channels, for example:
- Sources of social media traffic to your website: Discover what social media platforms bring the traffic
- Goals completions for your social media posts: Assign goals and analyze their completion
- Conversions from social media posts: Assign revenue to conversions in social media
- Assisted social media conversions: See if any of your social media platforms contributed to a conversion
Pros:
- Google Analytics is free.
- Provides valuable insights about your audience.
- One of the most popular analytics platforms – lots of free tutorials are available online.
Cons:
- It takes time and skills to set it up to track your performance properly.
- It’s not designed for managing social media, and requires some advanced knowledge about the tool.

03 BuzzSumo
Another, this time paid, social media analytics tool I personally really, really, really like is BuzzSumo.
What is BuzzSummo? It’s a content-focused analytics tool. Among many features such as brand monitoring, social listening or competitor research, it also provides social media analytics:
- Content discovery: This feature allows content writers to find the most shared content on social media networks. It’s a powerful feature!
- Content analysis: Find social media data about a particular topic of interest: content type, top shared domains, top social media platforms, etc.
- Influencer marketing: Find top influencers in a niche or industry based on social media reach or engagement.
Pros:
- Presents up-to-date popular content. Allows finding trending topics to share on social media.
- Easy to use.
Cons:
- Bit pricey if you want the full version.
- It’s not a management tool. You will need additional tools if you need that feature.

04 NapoleonCat
NapoleonCat is a social media analytics tool with built-in management and reporting features.
It is a great tool for managing and analyzing social media campaigns.
It allows you to track the performance of your social media campaigns across channels for multiple profiles and pages.
Interestingly, you can also track your competitors’ social media activity.
Equipped with data from NapoleonCat, you’ll easily spot tendencies and craft social media content that resonates with your company’s target audience and brings the best results.
Here’s what NapoleonCat can help you with:
- Viewing what content types work best and when or how often you should post to achieve the highest engagement
- Monitoring your team’s activity to keep your social customer service major league
- Comparing audience insights and post engagement of multiple social media profiles (including competitive analysis)
- Scheduling weekly, monthly, or quarterly social media analytics reports that will be automatically sent out to your boss, your client, or whoever else needs them
Pros:
- Allows you to benchmark your results against your competition
- Automatically generates customizable social media analytics reports
- Tracks social media key metrics in real-time

05 Sotrender
Sotrender is a social media analytics tool with a fantastic reporting solution. It makes marketers’ daily work much easier.
Why exactly can it become your go-to?
First, in Sotrender, you can analyze both your organic and paid performance. Since almost every brand is currently investing in social advertising, it’s crucial to have all the KPIs at your fingertips.
To monitor whether your ad costs are at an acceptable level, you can also sneak in the average ad costs (e.g., CPC, CPM) in your industry.
In addition, you can monitor competitors’ content performance, organic engagement, and more.
Last but not least, the above data can be exported to a report – a comparison report, a Facebook ads report, a recurring report… you name it!
Pros:
- Extensive analysis of your own social media accounts
- Possibility to track competitors’ organic and paid social media performance (including their CPC and CPM costs)
- Quick social media reporting – getting a report takes less than 60 seconds
- Offers unique data, like Interactivity Index counting the total engagement on a profile
- Social inbox is included in every package
Cons:
- Doesn’t provide LinkedIn analysis
- Custom reports are available only on request

06 Cyfe
One of the best social media analytics tools is Cyfe – a business dashboard tool.
It syncs up data from many, many, many marketing tools in one place.
The number of available integrations and dashboards is astonishing and makes Cyfe a powerful tool.
It covers social media analytics tools and advertising, email, monitoring, sales, SEO, and even web analytics tools!!!
However, let’s focus on the social media analysis part.
In Cyfe, you can build your social media analytics dashboard, including the following apps and data:
- AddThis
- Bitly
- Facebook Ads: Cost, impressions, clicks, actions
- Facebook Pages: Likes, clicks, active users, page views
- Flickr: Top photos, slideshows
- Google+: Plus ones, circled by
- Google+ Search: Posts
- Instagram: Photos, followers, following
- LinkedIn Ads: Cost, impressions, clicks, conversions
- LinkedIn Company: Followers, impressions, engagement
- Pinterest: Boards, pins, likes, followers, following
- Publisher: Schedule social media posts
- Reviews: Yelp, TripAdvisor, Facebook, Google, YP
- SlideShare: Views, favorites, comments, downloads
- Twitter: Tweets, followers, listed, mentions, influencers
- Twitter Ads: Cost, impression, engagement, follows
- Twitter Search: Tweets, mentions, hashtags
- Vimeo: My feed, top videos
- YouTube
Pros:
- Create reports with an in-depth social analytics tool
- Easy setup
- Pre-built widgets for services like Google or Salesforce
Cons:
- UI can be unintuitive
- No custom reports with social data
- Doesn’t provide audience demographics

07 CoSchedule
At Brand24, we use CoSchedule as our editorial calendar – it never let us down and we can surely recommend it to all small, medium and large businesses.
The cool thing about CoSchedule is that it helps to analyze social media metrics, the performance of your social media posts and, on this basis, suggests improvements and recommends particular actions across all your social media channels, for example:
- The best day to post
- The best time to post
- The best type of content to post
It can be super valuable for your social media marketing strategy.
What’s more, with CoSchedule, you can track social media analytics, including:
- Social engagement analytics: Analytics of interaction your social media posts receive
- Social campaign report: Tracking across multiple platforms the performance of a campaign
- Audience insights: In-depth reports about the performance of your social media channels
- Social message analytics: Tracking engagement for particular posts
- Social share analytics: How many times your link has been shared across social media
- Top projects report: Analysis of top 100 posts
Pros:
- Great for scheduling social media campaigns
- Creates social media reports
- Good for task tracking
Cons:
- Can be a bit pricey for smaller companies
- The UI can be difficult to use for some people

08 Social Status
Social Status is one of the most feature-rich social media analytics tools suited for both agencies and brands.
It offers multi-channel analytics and automates the reporting process to help you get quick insights into your performance, which you can use to improve your strategy.
It helps in managing and analyzing social media campaigns.
Here are some of its best features:
- Automated reports: It offers fully customizable, white-label social media reports that are automatically generated according to your specified schedule.
- Competitor analytics: You can use Social Status to spy on your competitors and track their performance metrics to see what is working for them.
- Multichannel profile analytics: It allows you to track your social media performance across multiple channels, such as Facebook, Instagram, etc.
- Influencer analytics: Social Status lets you track your influencers’ and campaign performance. You can see how your influencer campaign is performing and make improvements.
- Ads analytics: If you run social media ad campaigns, Social Status will help you motor your campaign performance and provide in-depth analytics for ads.
Pros
- Automated recurring reports for ongoing performance tracking
- In-depth profile, ads, and competitor analytics and reporting
- Integrated dashboard for analytics on multiple channels
- An intuitive user interface that is extremely easy to use
Cons
- Limited historical data with the starter plans
- The free plan offers limited functionality

09 Sprout Social
Another all-time best social media analytics tool is Sprout Social. It’s a comprehensive social media management tool you can use to track your performance on social media.
The platform offers plenty of features to analyze social media metrics, analyze social media performance and engagement, post social media messages, and listen to social media conversations about your company.
It’s great for managing and analyzing social media campaigns.
Sprout Social has plenty of features. To make users’ lives easier, they offer solutions:
By business type:
- For enterprise
- For Agencies
- For small businesses
By need:
- For social management
- For social marketing
- For customer care
- For employee advocacy
By network:
- Google+
But it has its limitations. Here’s a pros and cons breakdown.
Pros:
- Great social media reporting tool.
- A good solution for social media professionals – includes advanced social media management and analysis options.
- You can track social media campaigns inside the tool.
Cons:
- Can cause problems with Instagram posting.
- No integration with YouTube or TikTok.
- Expensive.

10 Keyhole
If you’re interested in the hashtag game, Keyhole is a nice tool for learning a bit about the hashtags you use. Keyhole also supports account, keyword, and URL tracking on the Web.
Moreover, you can use Keyhole to track mentions about social media profiles, keywords, and URLs.
Importantly, you can request historical data from Twitter and Instagram, including information about the number of posts, users, engagement, and influencers.
That’s unusual, huh?
It makes it a versatile social tool.
There are 5 pricing plans, and the highest one includes the following features:
- Historical data
- PDF reports
- Real-time data
- Twitter Analytics tools
- Instagram analytics tools
- Facebook Analytics tools
- YouTube analytics tools
- Social media sentiment analysis
- API Access
Pros:
- Ability to measure influencer impact & ROI.
- Tracking and analyzing competitors in social networks.
- Hashtag tracker.
Cons:
- Hidden pricing. Might be too expensive for some companies.
- Not easy for first-time users.

11 Brandwatch
Brandwatch is one of the best social media analytics tool out there.
It collects online mentions from all over the web:
- social media
- discussion forums
- blogs
- news sites
- other publicly available sources
Also, it has plenty of features that allow in-depth analytics of your online mentions.
Some of the features include:
- Demographics: Data about authors of mentions, including gender, interests, profession or location
- Image analysis: Detect images that contain your company logo
- Influencers: Find top influencers mentioning your keywords
- Locations: Discover where do your mentions come from
- Automated reports: Get your data directly to your inbox in HTML or PDF formats
- +more!
Pros:
- Provides valuable marketing data and custom reports.
- A great tool to collect brand mentions.
Cons:
- Pricey
- It offers a lot of advanced data, so it’d be wise to use it for more than just social media analysis.

12 Quintly
Quintly can help you with social media analytics, including:
- YouTube
- Google+
- blogs
There are plenty of features for each platform, but the most important features include:
- Competitive benchmarking: Find benchmarks for your social media channels and discover what content works best for you
- Centralized analytics: Discover over 250 social media metrics and track your performance on multiple social media accounts
- Smart reporting: Get reports based on your custom dashboards and pick any parameters you want
- Custom dashboards: Create custom dashboards including metrics of your choice
- Overall metrics: Track specific KPI’s and measure social media performance across all major networks
- Key influencers: Get data about the most influential profiles
- Data exporting: Export your data to CSV or Excel and download any metric as JPG, PNG, PDF, PPTX
- Customer care: Monitor Facebook and Twitter to track customer queries
- + more!
Pros:
- You can track your marketing efforts with automated reports and customized dashboards.
- Easy to track social analytics.
Cons:
- Too expensive for smaller brands, custom plans start from $300 a month.
- The gathered data is too general and not good for in-depth social analytics.

13 Audiense
Audiense is one of the best Twitter analytics tools. What’s cool is that it’s free if you have less than 5k followers.
It gives you insight into your followers’ basic metrics:
- Interests
- Location
- Languages
- Influence
- Best time to tweet
Pros:
- Dedicated to Twitter analytics – a great tool if your brand is focused on this social media channel.
- Allows identifying nano influencers and micro-influencers.
Cons:
- Very simple tool with limited possibilities.

14 HeyOrca
HeyOrca is a social media planner designed for quick and easy collaboration with clients. It offers publishing, managing and analyzing social media campaigns, collaboration, and analytics of social media content across various major social media platforms.
It’s a great choice for agencies that frequently cooperate with customers and present them with content for approval.
Some of the features HeyOrca offers include:
- Accounts organization
- Social media planning
- Internal collaboration
- Client approvals
- Direct publishing
- Monitoring Social Media Performance
Pros:
- It’s a social media analytics tool that allows advanced collaborations for agencies.
- Tracking campaigns is easy.
Cons:
- Doesn’t provide in-depth media analytics.
- Limited capabilities in terms of integration.

15 Buffer
Buffer is another must-mention to this list. It’s a useful social media analytics tool that allows users to schedule and publish content.
Social media managers admit that the best part is that you can manage a few channels at once.
Plus, it allows them to analyze the performance of their content.
On top of that, its simple dashboard is very user-friendly.
Buffer offers:
- Automated publishing
- Social media analytics
- The ability to engage with your social media audience within the app
- AI features
Pros:
- AI-powered ideas generator
- Affordable pricing and free plan for individuals
- Easy to use
Cons:
- Limited functionality compared to other social media management tools
- Limited reporting compared to other analytic tools
- Doesn’t include audience demographics

Why should I use social media analytics software?
I’m sure you know that algorithms change from time to time… or actually more often.
For example, lately, we have experienced a love for live and video format. People enjoy how direct the connection is and engage a lot with profiles that use it.
Videos dominate the internet!
Every social media marketer knows that following trends is just the tip of the iceberg. Some posts perform better than others, and it doesn’t necessarily depend on trends.
That’s why using social media analytics software is so important!
These tools are designed to gather, analyze, and interpret data from major social networks.
Understanding key performance indicators is also key to choosing the right direction for marketing teams.
Here’s the insight into Spotify’s social media analytics:

Most of the mentions come from Instagram, and videos have the broadest reach.
Now, let’s look closely at why these tools and the analytics they bring are so helpful.
Understanding your audience
Short answer: Social media is one of the best places to observe your target audience.
This is where they speak their mind, react in real-time, and freely express their emotions about something – a product, brand, or service.
People rarely say mean things to your face. As marketers, we can’t expect unhappy customers will complain on our social media profiles. They’re everywhere else, and it’s our job to find them. With media monitoring, it’s super easy.
Social media are a gold mine of audience insights. By tracking social media metrics and analyzing social platforms, you can get to know your audience and answer questions like:
- Who they are?
- What are their needs?
- What do they think about your business?
- What types of content resonate with them?
- What time do they hang out on social networks?
And much more!
Increasing brand awareness
Short answer: Social media analytics tools help track various rates connected to your social media presence.
These parameters illustrate your brand awareness, at least online. Based on this, you can track how your branded content’s online exposure changes.
Some of the crucial brand metrics in social media analytics include:
- Social media reach – shows how many social media profiles come across branded content
- Influence score of social media profiles – shows influential profiles that talk about your business
- Sentiment analysis – shows happy and unhappy customers and media talking about your business and products
- Topic analysis – delves into the discussions around your brand and categorizes it into topics
- The volume of mentions – shows how the number of online mentions of branded content changes
- Engagement – shows the engagement around your brand
What I love is that some tools have their own brand metrics.
For example, in Brand24, you get the Presence Score and Reputation Score. They help to measure the online popularity of branded content.
How? They combine your performance and present it in one general score.

Conducting competitor analysis
Short answer: Social media analytics allows you to track your channels’ and competitors’ social media performance.
With the data these tools collect, you can then conduct a detailed competitor analysis.
This way, you can track their activities, marketing campaigns, what their customers think about them, and much more.
And why should you conduct competitive analysis?
Here’s a list of competitive analysis benefits:
- Gain a better understanding of customer needs and preferences.
- Uncover potential market gaps, industry trends, and growth opportunities.
- Refine your social media strategies to better compete.
It’s a great source of business intelligence!
In Brand24 you can perform a detailed competitor analysis.
I personally really appreciate how simple it is!
Just go to “Comparison”, select the projects to compare, and this is what you get:

You also receive a breakdown of positive and negative sentiment (and how it changed over time):


Plus, the Share of Voice analysis:

See also: Best Competitor Analysis Tools
How to choose the right social media analytics tool?
Not sure which tool to pick?
Here’s a short, practical guide (based on the tools above) I prepared to help you choose what best fits your company.
| What to do | Quick check (question to ask) | If “yes”, look at |
|---|---|---|
| Start with your goal | Do you need listening/mentions beyond your own profiles? | Brand24, Brandwatch |
| Confirm channels | Do you need coverage across many networks (incl. newer ones)? | Brand24, Social Status, Quintly |
| Decide: analytics vs management | Pick the reporting level | NapoleonCat, Sprout Social, Buffer, HeyOrca, CoSchedule |
| Add conversions (optional) | Do you need to tie social to website traffic/conversions? | Google Analytics |
| Pick reporting level | Do you need automatic/recurring or white-label reports? | Recurring: NapoleonCat, Sotrender · White-label: Social Status |
| Competitors (optional) | Is competitor benchmarking a must-have? | Brand24, NapoleonCat, Sotrender, Quintly, Social Status |
| Narrow to 2–3 tools | Can they answer your top 3 questions in <10 min? | Keep the fastest one; drop the rest |
Conclusion
Be honest – what’s your screen time? Yep, your clients spend quite a lot of time on social media daily. Just like you!
It’s worth knowing where and when they are most active.
But with so many different social media platforms out there, it can be difficult to know which ones are worth your time and effort.
I know it might seem like too much hassle.
But that’s where social media analytics tools come in.
Key fact: By tracking social media activity and engagement, they can help you to identify which platforms are driving the most traffic to your website or blog.
Also, they can help you to see which posts are getting the most likes, shares, and comments.
In other words, social media AI analytics tools can help you to make the most of your social media marketing efforts.
Brand24 is one of those tools.
So, if you want to improve your social media strategy, try it and start monitoring conversations online. Sign up for a 14-day free trial!
See also: Media monitoring tools
FAQ
What Are Social Media Analytics Tools?
Social media analytics tools are software that collect and analyze data from social platforms to help you measure performance and improve your strategy. They help you understand what’s working, what isn’t, and what to do next.
Why Are Social Media Analytics Tools Important?
Let’s take a look at some stats, shall we?
- 1 5.24 billion people use social media worldwide (63.9% of the world).
- 2 The average person spends 2 hours 21 minutes per day on social media.
- 3 People use about 6.83 social platforms per month on average.
- 4 Worldwide ads investment will surpass 1 trillion USD in 2026.
Social media is bigger, faster, and spread across more platforms than ever, so it’s easy to miss what’s really driving results.
At the same time, brands are investing more money into digital and social, which raises the stakes for every campaign and post.
Key fact: A social media analytics tool helps you cut through the noise, spot patterns early, and make smarter decisions based on what actually works.
Are free social media analytics tools enough?
Sometimes, yes — if you’re just starting and you only need basics like reach, engagement, follower growth, and top posts inside one platform.
But free tools usually fall short when you need:
- Cross-platform reporting (one dashboard for everything)
- Longer data history
- Competitor benchmarks
- Brand mentions + sentiment (what people say about you)
- Nice reports you can share with a team or client
In my opinion, free tools are great for learning the basics, but the moment you’re making real decisions (or reporting to someone), a paid tool quickly saves time and nerves.
Do I need a “management tool” too, or is an analytics tool enough?
It depends on what you actually do every week.
- Choose an analytics tool if your main job is: measuring performance, spotting patterns, reporting, improving content.
- Choose a management tool if you also need: scheduling, publishing, approvals, team workflow, replying to comments/DMs.
- Choose a hybrid if you want both in one place (usually pricier).
A simple setup I often like: one tool for publishing/management + one tool for deeper analytics/listening (especially if brand reputation matters)
What features should a good social media analytics tool have?
Here’s what I’d consider “must-have” (so you don’t end up with pretty charts and zero insight):
- Cross-platform dashboard (or at least easy switching between channels)
- Clean reporting (exports, recurring reports, share links)
- Post-level insights (best posts, formats, topics, best time/day)
- Trend spotting (what’s rising, what’s falling)
- Audience insights (growth, demographics when available, active times)
- Campaign tracking (tags, naming, comparing campaigns)
- Competitor benchmarking (optional, but super useful)
- If you care about reputation: mentions + sentiment + influencers (that’s usually social listening)
Reporting is underrated. If a tool can’t produce a report you’d actually send, it’s not really helping.
What are the most important metrics to track?
Start simple. Most teams do best with a small set that leads to decisions:
| Information you need | Metrics to track | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Visibility | Reach, impressions | Shows how many people actually saw your content. |
| Content quality | Engagement rate (not just total likes), comments, shares, saves | Helps you understand what truly resonates (especially saves/shares). |
| Growth | Follower growth rate | Tracks momentum and whether your content attracts the right people. |
| Action | Clicks, CTR | Shows interest beyond likes — people took a step. |
| Business impact (optional) | Website traffic from social, conversions (leads/sign-ups/purchases) | Ties social media to real outcomes and ROI. |
| Brand conversation (for listening tools) | Mention volume, sentiment, share of voice | Shows what people say about your brand and how you compare to competitors. |
How often should I check social media analytics?
A schedule that works without turning analytics into a full-time hobby:
- Weekly (15–30 min): what worked, what didn’t, what to repeat next week
- Monthly (60–90 min): trends, best content themes, growth, channel strategy
- During campaigns: every 1–3 days (so you can adjust while it still matters)
My opinion: daily checking is tempting… but it often makes you overreact to normal fluctuations.
What are the most common mistakes people make with social media analytics tools?
The biggest ones I see way too often:
- Tracking too many metrics and getting stuck in dashboards
- Chasing vanity metrics (likes/followers) instead of actions (clicks, saves, conversions)
- Comparing different platforms the same way (TikTok ≠ LinkedIn)
- Looking at totals instead of rates (engagement rate tells the truth)
- No campaign tracking (no UTMs, no naming system → no clear conclusions)
- Reporting without decisions (analytics should lead to “do more of X, stop Y, test Z”)
What are the best tools to analyze social media metrics?
It depends on what “analyze” means for you:
- If you want mentions, sentiment, trends, influencers: Brand24
- If you want website + conversion insights from social: Google Analytics
- If you want content performance + trending topics: BuzzSumo
- If you want multi-channel analytics + automated reporting: Social Status
- If you want deep enterprise listening and advanced analysis: Brandwatch
- If you want multi-network metrics + dashboards + benchmarking: Quintly
- If you want a big suite (management + analytics + listening): Sprout Social
Can social media analytics tools help with competitor analysis?
Yes — and honestly, this is one of the best reasons to use them.
Competitor analysis can show you:
- What content formats work in your niche
- How often competitors post (and when)
- Engagement benchmarks (so you know what “good” looks like)
- Share of voice (who dominates the conversation)
- Sentiment trends (when their reputation dips and why)
Tools that support competitor-style insights: Brand24, NapoleonCat, Sotrender, Quintly, Social Status.
What are the best tools for managing and analyzing social media campaigns?
If you mean “campaigns” as in planning, publishing and tracking performance, these are strong options from your article:
- NapoleonCat — management + analytics + reporting, helpful for teams and benchmarks
- Sprout Social — powerful all-in-one suite (but expensive)
- Buffer — simple scheduling + lightweight analytics
- HeyOrca — great for collaboration, approvals, and agency workflows
- CoSchedule — strong for planning/editorial calendar + performance recommendations
- Social Status — great for reporting-heavy campaign analysis (especially for agencies)