Benchmarking is an indispensable tool that provides insights into brand health by comparing your social performance against your top competitors. To get started, check out these top social media benchmarking tools.
If you’ve ever wondered whether your engagement rate is okay or how often you should post on social media, understand that there is no one answer to these questions. To determine what is normal for your brand, you must consider it within the context of your industry and direct competitors. Only then can you accurately assess your social media presence and look for concrete ways to improve. That’s where social benchmarking comes in.
We’ve compiled a list of top social media benchmarking tools to help you utilize competitive benchmarking to its fullest potential. These tools come in all shapes and sizes, price points, features, and more, so you can find the one that fits just right.
What is social media benchmarking?
Social media benchmarking refers to the process of measuring your social media performance against others using metrics such as engagement rates, post frequency, follower count, and more. It helps you define a baseline for industry norms and averages and understand where you stand next to your competitors. From here, you can determine specific things to improve in your social media strategy and see what has worked for others.
With the social media landscape constantly changing, it’s a good idea to get in the habit of regularly using a benchmarking tool. That way, you can quickly spot any evolving trends in your industry and shift your social strategy as needed.
How to use social media benchmarking to increase engagement
Social media benchmarking tools give you puzzle pieces that, when considered all together, tell a story about the best practices in your industry. You’ll see how often others post, what type of content is most successful, whether or not your competitors boost posts, the best times to post, the most popular hashtags and topics, and more. These insights can explain why your competitors have significantly larger followings or higher engagement rates than your brand.
You can also use social media benchmarking to craft a strategy specific to each social channel. Our latest Social Media Industry Benchmark Report found that for Beauty brands, Twitter and Facebook followers are most likely to engage with posts that include photos, while on Instagram, Reels are most effective. But for Nonprofits, photos are most popular on Facebook, Carousels on Instagram, and videos on Twitter. There is no one-size-fits-all content strategy, which is why it’s so important to use data to find the best practices for your unique target audience on all social media platforms.
How to choose the right social media benchmarking tool
Before we dive into the top social media benchmarking tools, there are a few things to consider to find the right tool for you. After all, no two social media benchmarking tools are the same. Beyond choosing a tool that fits within your financial means, you’ll also want to get clear about the most important features to you and your social media needs.
Here are a few points to consider:
- Types of tracked metrics (reach, engagement rates, audience demographics, follower growth, popular topics, hashtags, best times to post, etc.)
- Number of competitors to track
- Number of managed brands
- Number of internal team members
- Social media platforms covered
- Additional available tools (cross-channel analysis, customizable reports, social listening, publishing and planning, ad management, etc.)
Have an idea about what you’re looking for? Great. Now, let’s take a look at the top social media benchmarking tools.
Top social media benchmarking tools
Small and medium-sized businesses (SMB)
For social media managers and small businesses on tighter budgets, here are a handful of social media benchmarking tools that get the job done with a more modest price tag.
Google Analytics
If you want to test the waters with a free tool, check out Google Analytics. Their platform is like a Mary Poppins bag of helpful tools that collect data from your website and social accounts to provide insights on your performance. Very importantly, you can see how much web traffic comes from your social network accounts and compare that data against your competitors. To get started, open your Google Analytics account and follow these steps to enable benchmarking.
Useful features:
- Find similar competitors based on geographic location and traffic size.
- Compare key metrics like audience demographics, user acquisition from socials, web sessions, web engagement, and top conversion paths.
Price: Free
Keyhole
With Keyhole’s dashboard, you can get real-time insights into your social media activity alongside your competitors that help you establish industry baselines and define your goals. It also helps you predict up-and-coming voices in your industry. Their tiered plans offer options ideal for individual users and smaller businesses and go up to offers for large brands and agencies.
Useful features:
- The benchmarking tool tracks following sizes, engagement numbers, general sentiment, and influencers.
- Use the Quick Trends tool to search the latest trends or hashtags and get an analysis of your competitor’s social strategies up to 6 months back.
- Additional features include social listening, scheduling and planning, audience demographics, and influencer tracking.
Price: Starting at $79/mo
Hootsuite
Among its various analytics features, Hootsuite offers a customizable benchmarking tool in which you can track up to 20 competitors. It covers all the key metrics and shows users their top-performing posts, most popular post types, trending hashtags, and average post lengths. Hootsuite also provides helpful recommendations to improve your social media efforts.
Useful features:
- Competitor analysis reports on important metrics such as posting frequency, engagement rates, and audience growth rate. Easy to share with clients.
- Industry benchmarking tool that provides insights into overall industry trends.
- Social listening tool to track mentions and selected topics.
Price: Starting at $99/mo
Kompyte
Kompyte is an artificial intelligence-powered software from Semrush that focuses exclusively on competitive analysis. It tracks competitors in real-time and pulls information from their social media accounts, websites, ads, job postings, and more. Kompyte gives you a broad overview of your competitors’ online moves, from social media tactics to product pricing, so you can keep an eye on their overall strategies.
Useful features:
- Customizable reports and workflows.
- Research tools give insights into behavior analytics, win/loss analysis, and keywords.
- Battlecard Templates let you compare multiple competitors side by side or focus on one brand at a time.
Price: Pricing provided upon request
BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is a content research tool that helps brands understand their audiences by analyzing the most popular content in every niche. Brands can track competitors’ social performance to see what strategies are working best for them and get a breakdown of engagement analysis at the individual post level. BuzzSumo is a great option for those looking to benchmark on the web and different social channels.
Useful features:
- Track up to 10 competitors at a time.
- Create alerts for desired brand activity, topics, and keywords.
- Media Database connects you with creators and journalists.
- Content Ideas Generator tool gives insights into trending questions and ideas in your industry.
Price: Starting at $199/mo
Enterprise
Have multiple team members or need to manage several brands? Check out these social media benchmarking tools geared towards enterprising brands and larger social media marketing agencies.
Rival IQ
Rival IQ is a comprehensive analytics app that helps you see both the bigger picture of your social strategy and dive into the finer details. With our social media benchmarking tool, you can instantly generate analysis on your biggest competitors and compare engagement metrics, posting frequency, follower count, and more. Review the most popular posts on each social media platform to see what’s working where and when competitors paid to boost their content. (Bonus: You can always peep our parent company Quid, for even more consumer insights and competitor trends.)
Don’t forget to take advantage of Rival IQ’s live industry benchmarking tool to get an idea of industry averages and key trends, or run a free head-to-head report on your biggest competitor.
Useful features:
- Customizable dashboard shows how your brand compares to competitors on key metrics
- Automate reports with customizable graphics and charts to easily share with clients.
- Actionable Insights on the most popular hashtags and topics and recommendations for improved performance
- Additional key features include social listening, in-depth post analysis, custom alerts, full social media audits, and more.
Price: Starting at $239/mo
Sprout Social
Sprout Social is an all-in-one social media management tool and analytics platform. They offer a slew of features, like in-depth post-analysis and competitor reports, that give actionable insights to understand consumer and competitor behavior. If you want to utilize influencers to their highest potential and outdo your competitors, their platform lets you streamline the process from negotiations and contracts to collaboration and campaign analysis. This is a great option for those looking for a tool that does a bit of it all.
Useful features:
- Display benchmarking and performance results in customizable downloadable reports.
- Social listening allows you to monitor consumer sentiment and spot industry trends.
- AI recommendations for best posting times, engaging captions, and general content development.
Price: Starting at $249/mo
quintly
quintly by facelift offers a scalable pricing plan, meaning you pay by the number of social profiles and users on your account. Who doesn’t love paying only for what they need? With their platform, you can track over 350 metrics and use their social benchmarking tool to compare your performance across channels and against your biggest rivals. Then, download a customizable report to share with team members and clients.
Useful features:
- Get intuitive insights to optimize your social strategy
- Use pre-made dashboards or customize your own to assess desired metrics.
- API feature lets you integrate social media data with analytics tools and Data warehouses.
Price: Starting at $315/mo
Talkwalker
Talkwalker is a consumer intelligence platform that focuses, no surprise, on consumer behavior. They allow brands to tap into follower conversations to understand preferences and patterns and then compare the results next to those of their biggest competitors. They also provide insights on best industry performances so you can benchmark your stats against the greater landscape.
Useful features:
- Benchmarking feature analyzes consumer sentiment, audience demographics, industry best practices, and direct competitor performance on key social metrics.
- Monitor media coverage of selected topics.
- Available in 187 languages on over 30 social platforms.
Price: Pricing provided upon request
Brandwatch
For larger brands who want an all-inclusive social media management tool and benchmarking solution, check out Brandwatch. Their platform benchmarks valuable data across social channels, so you can see the social platforms where competitors are pulling ahead and occupying more of the conversation. Then, utilize Brandwatch’s AI-powered insights to strategize a plan forward. You can also research important industry topics to see what followers and competitors are talking about.
Useful features:
- Access historical data up to one year back.
- Benchmark metrics like audience size and growth, top post analytics, popular hashtags, share of voice, and more.
- Additional features include publishing, collaboration, direct engagement, analytics, ad management, and listening tools.
Price: Pricing provided upon request
Wrapping it up
Social media has made it easier than ever for brands to get their name out in the world. This also means that markets are more saturated than before. Cue social media benchmarking, a tool that helps you get a leg up on your competition by first understanding them.
The social media benchmarking tools we looked at today, with all their various features and offerings, can help you identify concrete areas for improvement by showing how you compare against industry leaders. It’s a tool for reflection that shows you how to take up more social share of voice in your industry and, ultimately, attract more customers.
Most of these tools offer a free trial, so be sure to take advantage of that and give a few of them a go. Be sure to let us know how it goes by dropping us a DM on Instagram or Twitter.
