Summary

  • Social media analytics are essential for monitoring and assessing the success of marketing efforts.
  • The key significance of tracking social analytics is to prove ROI, evaluate the success of social media campaigns and guide informed decisions for social media strategies.
  • The main areas of social media analytics include performance metrics, audience demographics, competitor insights, paid ad results, influencer impact and brand sentiment.

When creating your social media strategy, you’re choosing goals and objectives that you want your marketing efforts to hit. But if you’re not monitoring your social media analytics, metrics and performance, how will you know if you’re hitting those goals?

Social media analytics are key to proving return on investment (ROI) and making informed business decisions. Luckily, nearly every social platform offers its own form of native analytics. Plus, there are a number of social media analytics tools that can help you monitor your performance in even more depth.

Throughout this article, we’ll touch on why social media analysis is so important, and the types of analytics you need to pay close attention to. We’ll cover which social media analytics tools you can use to help measure your success. We also made a video covering which social media analytics will help you dive deeper, so you can uncover insights for your marketing—and overarching business—strategies.

What is social media analytics?

Social media analytics refers to the collection of data and metrics that help you measure your overall social media performance. This helps marketers understand which types of social media content best resonate with their audience, so they can shape and adapt their strategy accordingly. Reviewing social media analytics empowers teams to make data-informed decisions about how to transform their marketing efforts and grow their businesses.

Marketers can conduct social media analysis natively on platforms such as Instagram, TikTok and X (formerly known as Twitter). Marketers can also use social media management software like Sprout to dive deeper into the numbers.

What is the importance of social media analytics?

Tracking social media data isn’t just about collecting numbers. It’s turning those figures into actionable insights that power your marketing strategy.

But for many teams, flicking between native social media dashboards makes it tough to compare how different types of social media content perform, both individually and together. And if you can’t compare, you can’t understand what’s really working.

This drawback is why brands often switch to a social media management tool. Surface insights faster to support real-time decision-making with better visibility and team collaboration.

Whether you’re identifying your top-performing social channels, benchmarking your performance metrics or monitoring brand sentiment, Sprout helps unify your data into one analytics dashboard. This way, you can focus less on spreadsheets and more on impact.

Here are five key reasons why social media analytics matter—and how Sprout Social allows you to go deeper with your data.

1. Trendspotting

Trendspotting is the act of pinpointing upcoming trends before they’re mainstream.

According to The 2025 Sprout Social Index™, 93% of consumers agree it’s important for brands to keep up with online culture. Keeping a close eye on your social media analytics can help you do just that. Some of the trends your social media analytics can help you determine include:

  • Which platforms are gaining or losing traction and popularity
  • Topics of interest your audience is talking about (and brand mentions in conversations)
  • Types of ads that interest your audience
  • Rising influencers and products in your niche or industry
  • Types of content your audience engages with most

If analyzed properly, your social media analytics and reports can be a huge help in identifying what you should post more of, what types of content are trending and what your audience wants to hear more about in the next quarter or year.

This is where Sprout’s Listening tools (available in our free demo) really shine. They make it easy to surface emerging trends across your industry to see which conversations drive action.

By setting up Listening Topics, you can track keywords, hashtags and brand mentions across channels, even if you’re not tagged. These insights reveal shifts in audience language, competitor activity and broader cultural movements, allowing you to jump on trends before they lose momentum.

And with Sprout’s handy, free templates like the Social Insights Slide Deck, it’s easy to collate your data and turn it into decisions that stakeholders can act on.

Book a demo to try trendspotting with Listening

2. Brand sentiment

Brand sentiment illustrates how people feel about your brand. It includes all positive, neutral and negative feelings that are discussed online. By looking through your social media analytics, with help of sentiment analysis software, you can review and measure your brand sentiment.

This reveals whether customers are satisfied, surfaces issues that need fixing and highlights opportunities to improve the product or experience.

For instance, Sprout’s Listening dashboard (available as a paid add-on or via the demo) includes sentiment charts, top keywords and volume trends that help visualize changes in how people perceive your brand. These features show you which topics, emotions and shifts are driving conversation.

Using this information, you can understand how your audience is feeling and why they feel that way in real time. That clarity helps you make smart campaign pivots, prepare better launches or get ahead of potential crises before they escalate.

Plus, competitive analysis let you compare sentiment trends against rivals. When you view your brand’s sentiment alongside your competitors, you can see whether a downturn is unique to your messaging—or part of a broader industry shift. This knowledge helps you craft better response tactics grounded in the right context.

3. Value perception

Value perception (or perceived value) refers to the overall customer opinion of your brand’s product or service and whether or not it can meet their needs. Perceived value is key to determining demand and the price point of a product or service. For example, if your product has a low perceived value, customers won’t be willing to pay much for it.

You can measure value perception by using social listening tools and monitoring data from other digital marketing dashboards, such as Google Analytics. This can help guide the content you create to improve value perception and make sure you’re showcasing how your product or service can hit key pain points.

4. Setting social media goals

The 2025 Index found that almost half of individual contributors say their executives only somewhat understand the value of social media, and another 41% report their greatest fear is company leadership not trusting them to publish content that will perform best. The best way to build that trust? Show the numbers.

A graphic titled "What social teams say" featuring three green boxes, each containing a quote about the challenges social media teams face with executives, from the 2025 Sprout Social Index by Sprout Social.

Your social media analytics hold the key to proving impact and setting realistic, data-backed goals that align with business priorities. Instead of relying on assumptions, analytics help you identify which channels and content are driving engagement, so you can refine your strategy and set benchmarks for growth.

Standard and tag-based reports make this process easier. They allow you to:

  • Track KPIs across your social media accounts.
  • Filter performance by campaign or content type.
  • Set measurable goals tied directly to engagement, reach or conversions.

When paired with Sprout’s Social Media KPI Template, you can clearly map social performance to broader business outcomes. This will show you exactly where your strategy is moving the needle to set goals that are ambitious, but grounded in real data.

Because ultimately, your goals need to match your momentum. Accurate reporting helps you set targets that reflect where you are and what is realistically achievable.

For example, if your Instagram analytics show you’re growing by 10 followers per week, aiming to double your audience in one quarter doesn’t tally with the data. A more effective goal might be to increase your growth rate to 20 followers per week, then build from there.

5. Proving ROI

Proving the value of your social media efforts is key to securing executive support and increasing investment in your strategy. While social is a long-term play, leadership needs clear, measurable returns to justify spend—and your social analytics provide that proof of social media ROI to justify spend.

By effectively tracking your social media analytics, you can gather data and demonstrate social media statistics that further strengthen your case.

Sprout Social offers you that proof by connecting your content to real business outcomes using tools like the Tag Performance Report. These tools track how specific campaigns, posts or content themes drive engagement and conversions. Combine that with the Sent Messages Report and monitor performance at the individual post level, including clicks, reach and engagement. Together, this demonstrates exactly what’s working.

Want to dig in deeper and track revenue impact? Add UTM parameters to your links and monitor conversions through your site analytics to highlight the posts that drive web traffic, sign-ups and purchases. This backs up your strategy with real results.

And if your team needs to report to leadership, you can use Sprout’s Premium Analytics (available via a demo) to build custom dashboards. Add graphs, widgets and text-based notes that connect your results directly to your business goals.

Once you understand your social media ROI, you’re ready to share your wins with stakeholders. Sprout’s Executive Social Media Scorecard Template gives you a plug-and-play framework to summarize KPIs, visualize trends and present outcomes in a clear, digestible format.

How to build your first report in Sprout Social

Ready to turn your data into decisions?

With Sprout’s Report Builder, it’s straightforward. Create customized reports that showcase the metrics your team and stakeholders care about most—all on one platform.

Here’s how to build your first report inside Sprout Social.

1. Sign up for your free Sprout trial

Start by creating a Sprout Social account using your business email. This step ensures you’ll get access to the full trial experience. Unlock core analytics features like Report Builder, Sent Messages, and Tag Performance.

Once you’ve signed up, pick the social accounts you’d like to link to integrate Sprout with your social media.

2. Head to the Report Builder

Once you’re in the Sprout dashboard, navigate to the Reports tab in the left-hand sidebar.

From there, click on Report Builder to launch the customization view.

3. Choose a report type

Sprout offers a few starting points. You can:

  • Start with a blank report.
  • Use a template (like cross-network performance or Instagram overview).
  • Build from a pre-existing report you’ve created earlier.

Pick the option that fits your goals. Templates allow you to customize later, so they’re great if you’re just getting started.

4. Add your widgets

Next, add your widgets.

Widgets are drag-and-drop reporting blocks that help you visualize your performance data. They pull directly from your connected social profiles and are grouped by data source, like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Cross-Network and Listening (if enabled).

Each source comes with its own set of widget options. Tailor your report to focus on the platforms and metrics that matter most to your team.

Widgets grouped by data source in Sprout’s Report Builder

Popular widget types include:

  • Key metrics (like engagement, reach, clicks and impressions)
  • Top-performing posts per platform
  • Audience growth over time
  • Tag performance (to track specific campaigns or content themes)
  • Custom text blocks to add context or call out takeaways

Simply drag the widgets you need into your report layout. They’ll update in real time to reflect your most recent data.

5. Customize your layout and visuals

Customize your social media reports so their layout and visuals make sense to your team.

Change the report title, reorder sections, adjust formats and add text annotations to give stakeholders context. Customization also helps highlight performance wins, campaign milestones or areas for improvement.

Using Premium Analytics (or testing the demo)? Try adding advanced widgets and custom, branded visuals to your reports.

6. Share your report

Once your report looks the way you want it, you can:

  • Download it as a PDF.
  • Share it via a dynamic link with auto-updating metrics.
  • Schedule it to be delivered to your team weekly or monthly.

Sprout also makes it easy to plug these insights into leadership-ready formats. Use the Social Media Analytics Template to present your KPIs clearly.

What are the types of social media analytics?

To offer some clarity, here’s a side-by-side view of the different types of social media analytics, what they measure and how Sprout’s tools can support each type of analysis.

Type of Analytics What it Measures Sprout Tool or Report
Performance analysis Impressions, reach, clicks, likes, shares, views, sales Profile Performance Reports, Sent Messages Report
Audience analytics Age, gender, location, device, interest areas Audience Demographics in Profile Reports, Listening (demo)
Competitor analysis Follower counts, engagement rates, top posts, share of voice Competitive Reports, Listening Topics, Benchmarking Tools
Paid social analytics Ad clicks, conversions, CPC, CTR, spend, ROI Paid Performance Reporting, Tag Performance (campaign tags)
Influencer analysis Reach, interactions, hashtag usage, influencer performance Influencer Marketing by Sprout (demo), Listening Topics
Sentiment analysis Positive, neutral and negative mentions across social Listening Dashboard (add-on), Reviews Feed, Smart Inbox

Performance analysis

First and foremost, you need to measure the overall performance of your social media efforts. This includes social media metrics including:

  • Impressions
  • Reach
  • Likes
  • Comments
  • Shares
  • Views
  • Clicks
  • Sales

You can easily gauge all of this within your Sprout Social dashboard:

Sprout's Profile Performance report shows audience growth and key performance metrics including impressions, engagements and post link clicks.

You can use Sprout’s reports to showcase how your marketing content is performing and if you need to switch up the content you’re posting. You can also identify which types of posts resonate with your audience best.

Audience analytics

Next, you’ll want to take a look at your audience analytics. This will help you discover which demographics your content is reaching—and ensure they match up to your target audience. If not, you may need to adjust your content strategy to better attract your ideal customer profile.

Audience analytics will include data like:

  • Age
  • Gender
  • Location
  • Device

With Sprout Social, you can also gather audience analytics about specific topics related to your industry, which can help you build out your customer profiles. Here’s an example of what that could look like for one of your topics:

Device demographics within Sprout's Social Listening dashboard. There is a technology (mobile vs. web) and mobile breakdown (Android vs iOS). The dashboard also shows a profile overview for key metrics across specific accounts including followers, volume, likes, impressions and engagements.

Competitor analysis

Another key area to look into is how your competitors perform on social media. How many followers do they have? What is their engagement rate? How many people seem to engage with each of their posts?

You can then compare this data to your own to see how you stack up—as well as set more realistic growth goals. Using a tool like Sprout, you can gather all of this data in one place and measure it network by network.

A Facebook Competitors report within Sprout. The dashboard features a summary comparing profile performance to competitors and an audience growth chart. The chart shows net fan growth by day per competitor.

Pay attention to how your benchmarks stand up to your competitors and consider adjusting your social media strategy to take advantage of opportunity gaps.

Understanding your performance within the broader landscape is key, and our insights into social media benchmarks by industry can help frame your data.

Paid social analytics

When you’re putting money behind specific social media posts, you want to make sure they’re driving results. This is why you absolutely need to pay close attention to your paid social analytics.

Some of the most important ad analytics to measure include:

  • Total number of active ads
  • Clicks
  • Click-through rate
  • Cost-per-click
  • Cost-per-engagement
  • Cost-per-action
  • Conversion rate
  • Total ad spend

Each social media platform that you run ads through will have its own dashboard to provide you with all of this information, but you may want to create your own spreadsheet as well to track total ads and ad spend.

Influencer analysis

If you’re running influencer marketing campaigns, tracking the success of these partnerships is essential to proving ROI. We recommend using the five W’s + H of influencer marketing to inform your strategy and measure ROI at each stage of the buyer journey.

Some of the data you’ll want to keep track of includes:

  • Number of posts created per influencer
  • Total number of interactions per post
  • Audience size of each influencer
  • Hashtag usage and engagement

This can help you gauge overall engagement from your influencer campaigns. If you have an affiliate marketing program, you can designate promo codes for each individual influencer to use so your team can track how many sales each partner drives as well.

Sentiment analysis

The last major segment of social media analysis you’ll want to track is brand sentiment. Earlier, we talked about how social media analytics tools can help you determine and measure sentiment analysis. But if you want to dig even deeper, use social listening to gauge specific connotations around your brand.

Sprout’s Social Listening dashboard helps measure your brand sentiment, showcasing how users feel about your brand or relevant keywords and topics. You can also use sentiment analysis in Sprout’s Inbox and Reviews Feed.

Sprout's Social Listening dashboard for the topic of mobile phones. The dashboard features a graph illustrating sentiment trends for competitors over time. The dashboard also features a network overview.

What are the best social media analytics tools?

There are a heap of social media analytics tools to choose from, but it’s all about finding the platform that fits the unique needs of your organization. Take a look at our top three suggestions:

1. Sprout Social

Sprout Social gives you the power to go beyond surface-level metrics and prove the impact of your social strategy.

With cross-network analytics, you can track performance on individual network or view them side-by-side in one unified analytics dashboard. No more flicking between Facebook analytics and TikTok analytics, you can see them clearly in one place.

Ideal for fast-growing teams managing multiple accounts, see how each channel contributes to your broader strategy. And with everything in one place, this solves the problem of jumping between siloed dashboards, each with its own metrics and formats. It’s far easier to compare performance, spot patterns and act fast with confidence.

An area chart showcasing impression growth over time across a number of social networks like X, Facebook and Instagram

And when it comes to reporting, flexibility and speed are built in. Sprout’s Report Builder lets you build custom dashboards using drag-and-drop widgets for key metrics, tags and campaign views. Adapt the format to match your audience, whether you’re reporting weekly wins or executive KPIs.

Need deeper insights? Premium Analytics unlocks advanced tools like:

  • Create custom, shareable dashboards with stakeholder-specific views.
  • Add text annotations to highlight goals, insights and campaign outcomes.
  • Use AI Assist to generate real-time summaries of what’s working and why.

Book a demo now

Sprout is also made to scale with your team. Assign different reporting permissions, collaborate across profiles and monitor live trends, solving bottlenecks from limited access or disjointed workflows.

And performance tracking is just the beginning.

Dig beneath the surface of performance metrics to understand why people engage with Sprout’s Advanced Listening add-on. Listening helps you analyze brand sentiment, track your share of voice and uncover the topics and trends your audience actually interacts with. Filter conversations by emotion, keyword or competitor mentions to give you a clear picture of how your brand fits into the broader landscape.

Now pair that with Sprout Social Influencer Marketing. Measure ROI on creator partnerships and identify which influencers align with the conversations your audience is already having. See which partnerships perform best, discover new creators who match upcoming trends and strengthen your content strategy with data-led decisions.

2. Google Analytics

Google Analytics isn’t solely for social analytics, but it’s a staple for social media practitioners and leaders. You can create reports to monitor:

  • How your social media efforts drive web traffic and lead generation
  • Which social networks fuel the most traffic
  • Audience demographics
  • ROI of your social media campaigns
A screenshot of Google Analytics' tracking tool.

3. Rival IQ

Rival IQ is another tool for customized social media analytics reports. The platform can help brands track their success across multiple social networks including YouTube. Rival IQ also provides competitor analysis, social listening, influencer tracking, hashtag analytics and social media audits. Rival IQ is a great option for businesses with multiple social media channels or agencies working with multiple clients.

A screenshot of social media analytics tool Rival IQ.

Start measuring your social media analytics

Don’t go into your social media strategy blind. Start monitoring and measuring your social media analytics so you know how your audience feels about your product or industry, what types of content resonate best, the business impact of your social efforts and so much more.

Try Sprout Social for free with a 30-day trial

Get started with a free Sprout Social trial to discover how we can help you measure all of this and more through our comprehensive dashboard.

Social Media Analytics FAQs

How do I track my social media analytics?

There are tools built for social media tracking. You can read more about them in our post on the best social analytics tools, or you could try out Sprout Social’s Analytics tools for free today!

How do I report on social media analytics?

There is a slight nuance between social media analytics and social media reporting. While analytics refers to the data that you collect and analyze, reports are the documents you might put together to share internally.

Which social media metrics matter the most?

Not only is it important to have access to your social analytics, but you also need to know which metrics you should be tracking. That’s why we’ve written an article on the most important social media metrics. Start capturing data on your metrics and sharing them internally to show the work you’ve accomplished!