Maybe it’s because it’s tax season, but we’ve got auditing on the brain. But auditing isn’t just for your bank accounts. It’s also for your social media accounts.
What exactly does it mean to audit your social media channels? When we talk about social media auditing, we’re talking about analyzing our online performances and creating reports that address how our posts, campaigns, and overall strategy is doing.
You may run an audit for a different reason depending on your company size. If you’re a one-person social media team for a small business, you may want to do a social media audit so that you can better plan your strategy moving forward and uncover trends to propel you forward in your industry. If you’re working for a mid-tier company, a social media audit may help you see where you are in your market and find gaps to fill to allow you to stand out against the top brands in the same industry. And if you’re working at an enterprise brand, you can run a social media audit to create reports to show your hirer-ups and demonstrate the effectiveness of your strategy.
But collecting all that data and organizing it in an easy-to-understand way can be tedious and time-consuming. No matter what size the company is, a social media manager tends to wear multiple hats and have a lot on their plate. Investing in a social media audit tool can make keeping track of and reporting on your analytics much easier and faster.
How can you choose the right social media auditing tool for your company’s needs? We broke down some of the top tools and who they’re best for.
Best Social Media Audit Tools for Enterprise Companies
Rival IQ
How It Works: Rival IQ focuses on keeping you ahead of your competitors with not only in-depth analytics on your social performance but also the top performers in your industry. Create custom dashboards to keep track of your and your competitors’ campaigns with access to up-to-date metrics for social media accounts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and TikTok. Rival IQ also includes a social listening tool so you can keep up with your and your competitors’ mentions on Instagram and Twitter.
Pros: Rival IQ allows you to create highly customizable reports. In these reports, you can compare your and your competitors’ data, with Rival IQ giving you benchmarks to see where you stand in your industry. If you’re working as a social media manager for an enterprise company, the ability to benchmark your industry can help you stay ahead of the rest and keep your social channels the top ones to follow. If you’re new to running social media audits, Rival IQ offers a free social media audit course to show you how to get the most out of your analytics.
Ready to start auditing your social media?
Cons: Due to restrictions on the social media platforms’ end, Rival IQ does not track Pinterest or Snapchat analytics.
Pricing: Plans are $239 per month, $329 per month, and $519 per month, depending on the number of companies tracked, the number of users, the amount of historical data tracked, and access to additional features.
Sprout Social
How It Works: Sprout Social is an all-in-one social media solutions tool. Schedule content right through Sprout Social, engage with your audience through one unified inbox, keep track of your and your competitors’ share of voice through social listening, and stay up to date on your top social media metrics to measure your online performance. Sprout Social collects and reports data from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and TikTok.
Pros: Sprout Social’s reporting feature is easy to use and customize. The tool also provides competitive analysis, allowing you to keep track of your top competitors and other up-and-coming brands.
Cons: Users report that Sprout Social can sometimes be tedious to use as certain aspects of the tool, like tagging posts, must be done manually. Users also say that the customer support network for Sprout Social can be disorganized, resulting in repetitive conversations.
Pricing: Plans are $249 per month, $399 per month, $499 per month, and custom priced, depending on the number of social profiles linked and access to additional features.
Talkwalker
How It Works: Talkwalker uses proprietary AI technology to track billions of pieces of data in real time and present it to you in an easy-to-understand interface. The tool’s social listening aspect keeps track of your industry and presents you with emerging themes. The analytics feature helps you uncover your fans’ and customers’ data to capture business trends and give you insight into what your next move in your social media strategy should be.
Pros: With Talkwalker’s AI-enabled tools, you can keep up with market trends and implement changes to your campaigns quickly and efficiently based on real-time customer data. If you’re working at an enterprise brand, you’re likely managing multiple campaigns at once and handling a lot of data. Talkwalker prevents you from being bogged down with time-consuming tasks. Talkwalker also goes beyond social media. Although it works with most major social media channels, including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, it also collects data from millions of websites. This additional data gives you a more complete picture of your brand’s online presence.
Cons: Talkwalker can sometimes pull irrelevant mentions, resulting in incorrect data. According to users, the platform is highly robust and can take a long time to update. Users also report that the interface is not very intuitive.
Pricing: Talkwalker has multiple plan options depending on your needs. You must set up a call with the Talkwalker team to receive a quote for your service.
Best Social Media Audit Tools for Mid-Tier Companies
Hootsuite
How It Works: Hootsuite is designed to keep you ahead of the pack. You can plan and publish content through this tool and track how you’re performing in real time. You can promote organic content, run ads, and stay up to date on market trends. You can even engage with your customers and fans directly through Hootsuite. And when it’s time to audit your social media channels, you can track metrics and create reports for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and YouTube. Hootsuite will then help you turn those reports into actionable insights to help you boost your social media presence.
Pros: When you’re working at a mid-tier company as a social media manager, you’re in a position where you have to demonstrate that your social media strategy is given a powerful return for its budget. With Hootsuite Impact, you can calculate the real return on investment (ROI) for your social media campaigns, an integral part of an audit, especially if you intend to share this audit with your higher-ups.
Cons: With so many features, some users say Hootsuite’s interface can be overwhelming. Some also report that the analytic reports aren’t as customizable as desired.
Pricing: Plans are $99 per month, $249 per month, $739 per month, or custom priced, depending on the number of users, the number of social accounts linked, and additional features.
Agorapulse
How It Works: Agorapulse focuses on keeping you up to date on all things social. From one Agorapulse inbox, you can manage all incoming social media comments, messages, and reviews. You can schedule all content for your social media channels directly through the tool. Beyond social media management, Agorapulse also offers a listening tool to help you stay on top of your and your competitors’ mentions. When it’s time to run a social media audit, you can use Agorapulse to track your accounts, calculate your ROI, and see what is and isn’t working. Agorapulse currently supports tracking for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and TikTok.
Pros: Agorapulse tracks user behavior data to give you recommendations on what to do with your social media accounts next. The social media auditing tool is also built with collaboration in mind, so you’ll be able to stay up to date with what your team members are working on to prevent overlap and redundancy.
Cons: Users report that Agorapulse is slow to adopt new social networks, with TikTok being a very new offering despite the app having been exceedingly popular for several years now.
Pricing: Plans are free, $49 per month, $79 per month, $119 per month, or custom priced, depending on the number of social accounts linked and access to additional features.
Keyhole
How It Works: Keyhole is about all things analytics. With this social media audit tool, you’ll be able to analyze your growth and engagement, keep tabs on your competitors, and get real-time insights into your brand’s performance on social media. You’ll also be able to keep track of how your influencer marketing strategy is working and analyze your influencers’ ROI. Keyhole also has social listening options to help you keep an eye on your mentions and follow growing trends. You can also schedule posts through Keyhole on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. However, analytics are available for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and YouTube.
Pros: Keyhole gives you recommendations to help you optimize your social media strategy. The tool will tell you when to post, what kind of content to post, and how your posts stack up against your competitors. It also will help you find the most influential voices out of your followers to ensure that the influencers you work with truly are engaged with your brand. As a mid-tier brand, you’re striving to compete against the top companies in your industry. With these recommendations, you can stand up and stand out.
Cons: Unless you pay custom pricing, you can only get one month or three months of history on new trackers. Some users report that this aspect is very limiting when trying to get a full picture of an account or hashtag’s performance. Also, unless you pay custom pricing, you can only receive analytics on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Pricing: For analytics alone, plans are $49 per month, $199 per month, or custom priced, depending on the number of accounts, the number of users, which platforms you intend to use, and access to additional features. If you’d like to add on social listening tools, those plans are $99 per month, $199 per month, $399 per month, and custom priced, depending on the number of brand trackers you intend to use, the number of users, the number of posts made per month, and access to additional features. You’ll have to go with a custom-priced plan if you want social listening, social analytics, and influencer tracking.
Best Social Media Audit Tools for Small Businesses
Zoho Social
How It Works: Zoho Social is a social media management tool that includes listening and analytics features. You can schedule your posts right on Zoho Social and then track how you’re performing. You can create customized dashboards based on the data that’s most vital to you, from overall engagement rate to the rate at which you receive positive versus negative feedback from your followers. Zoho Social can help you run performance reports on your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Google Business Profile.
Pros: An all-in-one social media management tool that also functions as a social media listening tool and a social media auditing tool is especially beneficial to small businesses as it allows your small but growing team to work together on one system. Users report that Zoho Social is easy and convenient to use.
Cons: Although Zoho Social does offer a free version, most of its top features are behind a paywall. This social media audit tool may be a pricey investment for a business that’s just starting out. Users also say that features that are not working properly can often take a while to be fixed.
Pricing: For businesses, plans are free, $10 per month, $30 per month, or $40 per month, depending on access to features. For agencies, plans are $230 per month or $330 per month.
Buffer
How It Works: Buffer works as both a social media management tool and a social media auditing tool. You can publish posts from Buffer. It will not only analyze your posts and create interactive reports but also give you actionable insights based on those analytics, like what hashtags to use and how often to post. You can track your performance and run reports for your social media profiles on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Pros: When you audit your social media accounts with Buffer, Buffer will help you implement the learnings from the analytics into ways to boost your brand awareness and online presence. Buffer’s ultimate goal is to help you boost your engagement.
Cons: Users says that Buffer’s analytics can be somewhat limited and don’t show as many metrics for each post as they would like. They also report that frequent glitches can be a hassle.
Pricing: Plans are free, $6 per month, $12 per month, and $120 per month, depending on the number of social media channels and access to features.
Crowdfire
How It Works: Crowdfire handles all of your social media needs. You can create a content calendar and publish from Crowdfire, analyze your posts’ performances, and track your mentions by your fans and followers. You can run reports for how you’re doing on social media accounts for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and YouTube. Crowdfire also functions to help you boost your online presence by sharing content that it believes your audience will be interested in. With this suggested content, you’ll never run out of ideas to publish.
Pros: Users report that the analytics are highly detailed. Crowdfire also offers competitive analysis. In addition to auditing your own social media profiles, you can get an overview of your top competitors and see their top posts. As a small business, it’s essential to understand what your competitors are doing so that you can find gaps in your industry to stand out in.
Cons: Some users suggest that the interface isn’t very user-friendly and can be overwhelming.
Pricing: Plans are free, $9.99 per month, $49.99 per month, or $99.99 per month, depending on access to features, number of social media accounts linked, and number of team members.
Wrapping It Up
Running frequent social media audits can help your social strategy stay on track and allow you to achieve your marketing goals. No matter what size your business is, these audits should be a standard part of your social media marketing tasks. And a social media audit tool can help you complete the task more quickly and efficiently.
An audit with your own data can help you keep an eye on how you’re growing and how much engagement you’re receiving. But it’s also beneficial to track your competitors’ data to understand where you stand in your market, get ideas for how you can continue to grow, and be sure you don’t fall behind the pack. For more information on running competitive audits, check out our free Social Media Competitive Audit Course.
