Ideal for : Entrepreneurs managing their own social media, social media coordinators at small to medium-sized companies, and large marketing teams

Most impressive aspect : Tailored suggestions for the optimal posting times on individual social media accounts using the accounts’ data and past performance.

Price : Starting at $99/month

Skill level : Beginner to intermediate

Social media post metrics:

• Clicks
• Comments
• Reach
• Engagement rate
• Impressions
• Shares
• Saves
• Video views
• Video reach

Profile metrics:

• Follower growth over time
• Negative feedback rate
• Profile visits
• Reactions
• Overall engagement rate

Best time to post recommendations

One of the primary causes of social content not meeting expectations is sharing it when your intended audience is not online or not inclined to interact with you. That’s why Hootsuite’s Best Time to Publish tool is highly sought after in Hootsuite Analytics. It analyzes your individual social media data and suggests the best times to post based on three distinct objectives.

1. Engagement
2. Impressions
3. Link clicks

Most social media analytics tools only recommend posting times based on engagement. Or they’ll use data from universal benchmarks, instead of your unique performance history.

Other cool things you can do with Hootsuite Analytics:

• Create personalized report templates focusing on the metrics that are important to you
• Easily conduct competitive analysis and compare your performance against industry benchmarks
• Keep track of your social team’s productivity by monitoring response times and resolution time for assigned posts, mentions, and comments
• Stay vigilant by monitoring mentions, comments, and tags related to your business to prevent potential PR disasters

On top of all of that, Hootsuite won a 2024 TrustRadius Most Loved Award as well as 2023 Best Of Awards for Best Feature Set, Best Relationship, and Best Value for Price.

Competitive analysis

Hootsuite Analytics provides competitor analysis for Instagram, Facebook, and X (formerly Twitter) on your behalf. You have the ability to monitor up to 20 competitors per network and gain a comprehensive understanding of your strengths and weaknesses. Additionally, you will receive actionable insights on the top posts, hashtags, and content formats within your industry.

Follow these 4 simple steps to track competitors with Hootsuite:

1. Sign in to your Hootsuite account and pick Analytics from the main menu on the left side of the dashboard.
2. Then, click on Competitive analysis in the Benchmarking section.
3. At the top of the page, use the dropdown list of your social media profiles to select the one you want to compare to competitors.
4. Then, pick the competitors you want to measure your performance against. To do that, go into the second dropdown list and check the boxes next to the competitors you want to view. To add competitors, click Manage competitors at the bottom of the dropdown box.

Next, enter the name of a rival into the search bar and choose the accurate profile from the drop-down menu. The number of social accounts you can add to your watchlist per network (such as Facebook, Instagram, and X) depends on your Hootsuite plan, ranging from 2 to 20.

And that’s it! Now you can browse several competitive reports, including :

Overview : You can view the amount of posts you and your competitors have shared within the chosen time period (which can be modified in the top right corner of the dashboard). Additionally, you can see each account’s posting frequency, average engagement, number of followers, and audience growth rate.

Post performance : You can analyze your own and your competitors’ most popular posts and categorize the results by reactions, comments, shares, and engagement. This will help you quickly find inspiration for your next publication.

Performance by post type : where you can find out what types of posts — photos, link posts, videos, text-only posts, and so on — are most popular with each brand’s audience. Results can be sorted to show which post types get the most reactions, shares, comments, or engagement.

Overall post performance : You can easily view a graph showing your daily performance and that of your competitors within the chosen time period. You have the option to analyze results based on post type or view the overall performance. Additionally, you can track trending hashtags, which is self-explanatory.

Post length : where you can find out how many characters and hashtags, on average, your competitors use in their posts.

Industry benchmarking

Do you require assistance in establishing achievable objectives? Or perhaps you dislike the manual collection of data for audits and SWOT analyses? With Hootsuite’s social media benchmarking, you can easily discover how others in your industry are performing on social media and compare your outcomes with minimal effort.

To get industry benchmarks, follow these steps:

1. Sign in to your Hootsuite dashboard and head to Analytics.
2. In the menu on the left side of the screen, scroll to Benchmarking and click Industry.
3. Pick an industry that best describes your business.

Now you have the opportunity to compare your results with the average performance statistics in your industry. You have the ability to customize timeframes, switch between different networks such as Instagram, Facebook, X, LinkedIn, and TikTok, and access benchmarks for various metrics.

• Profile impressions
• Profile reach
• Followers
• Audience growth rate
• Engagement rate
• Video views
• Posting frequency
• Clicks
• Saves

You will also find tips and resources to improve your social media content performance right in the summary section :

And, if you need to present your results to your team, boss, or other stakeholders, you can easily download your comparison report as a PDF file.

Hootsuite Analytics is included in all Hootsuite plans. Try the best social media management tool for free for 30 days.