Social media is essential for your business, but how do you know if your efforts are paying off? Vanity metrics like followers or likes only tell part of the story. To truly understand your audience's engagement with your brand, a comprehensive social media audit is necessary. Thankfully, there are free tools available that can analyze your social accounts and provide valuable insights to optimize your social media strategy.
Here are five must-have free social media audit tools to supercharge your performance.
1. Hootsuite
Hootsuite lets you swiftly identify top posts across all platforms, track conversions, and enhance social strategy with valuable insights. It includes an ROI calculator for evaluating social media marketing investment and outcomes like sales, followers, and conversions. Additionally, Hootsuite provides audience reporting and a social media audit template in Hootsuite Insights. Key features encompass managing multiple social media accounts with one password, custom analytics, and Hootsuite Impact for measuring ROI from both paid and organic social media efforts.
Pricing starts at $99/month following a 30-day trial, and there's also a limited free plan available.
Google Analytics is a free tool that gives you insights into your social media performance and audience. Once you connect your social accounts, it tracks key metrics like page views, unique visitors, and engagement.
GA lets you see how people find and interact with your social media profiles. You can view traffic sources to see if people are finding you organically or through social media referrals. You'll also get demographic info about your followers like age, gender, and location.
The reports provide an overview of how your audience engages with your posts. See which posts get the most likes, comments, and shares so you can make more of that type of content. You can even compare metrics across platforms to see where your audience is most active.
GA also offers real-time data about who's on your profile right now. See live page views, locations, devices, and more. This can help you figure out the best times to post and engage with your followers.
In July 2023, Google Analytics reported a 1.4% rise in market share among websites utilizing traffic analysis tools. Optimize your content, improve engagement, and build your audience with this free, user-friendly tool. Your social media marketing will be better for it!
Sprout Social offers a free audit template with tabs for main social networks and customizable tabs for additional platforms. It's a comprehensive social media analytics tool that consolidates metrics, including recommended ones, in one place. Notably, it highlights top-performing posts and measures hashtag success across profiles, aiding content planning. Moreover, it bridges social followers with web traffic, aligning with the goal of enhancing site visits. Key features encompass profile, keyword, and location monitoring, varied reporting, response analysis, and trend insights.
Pricing initiates at $249/month after a 30-day trial.
4. Socialbakers
Socialbakers simplifies social network management through user-friendly profile tracking and comprehensive campaign assessment, enhancing performance optimization. Key features encompass customized PDF reports with daily updates, unified analytics across major platforms, AI-driven solutions for resource allocation, and audience-driven content personalization. As far as functionality is concerned, it includes real-time analytics, competition comparison, streamlined publishing, and brand monitoring. The platform introduces new features like a cross-network dashboard and a comparative dashboard for competitor benchmarking and content strategy enhancement.
Socialbakers transforms social media management, providing an integrated solution for efficient analysis, tailored content creation, and enhanced engagement tactics.
5. Buffer
When it comes to comprehensive social media auditing, especially within teams or client management, Buffer is at the top. It allows tailored PDF reports for sharing, which receive daily updates. Beyond reporting, Buffer offers a unified dashboard encompassing Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, providing both an overview and detailed insights. Notably, the tool suggests optimal posting times for refining strategies. While a free plan is available, Buffer Analytics unlocks advanced insights. Key features encompass custom reports, audience demographics, boosted post insights, account and stories analytics.
Pricing: $6 per social channel monthly for in-depth analytics.
Final Words
In conclusion, these five free social media audit tools offer valuable insights and functionality to enhance your social media performance. Regularly auditing your profiles with these tools will keep you ahead of trends, optimize your content, and improve audience engagement. Considering there are over 4.74 billion social platform users across the globe, you would not want to lag behind the competition. Incorporate these tools into your social media toolkit, and you'll be well on your way to achieving your goals and becoming a social media all-star.