If there’s one question I hear over and over again from marketing leaders, it’s this: “How do you actually measure the value of social media?” For a long time, I struggled with the same challenge. I knew organic social media was building my brand, nurturing relationships, and driving business—but translating all those efforts into clear, quantifiable value was another story.

That’s why I set out to find a practical way to bridge the gap between daily activity and real business impact. In this article, I’ll walk through how I define, track, and prove the true organic social media value of my work—from understanding what is earned media value and running earned media analysis, to reporting the kind of earned media results that even the toughest CFO can appreciate.

If you’re ready to move beyond vanity metrics and finally show the full, strategic value of your organic social media, you’re in exactly the right place.

Why it’s important to calculate your social media value?

As someone responsible for building a brand through social, I know firsthand how tough it can be to prove the ROI of organic activity.

Every CMO I talk to wants to see more than content calendars and surface metrics—they want clear proof that my work is moving the business needle. That’s where understanding my social media value comes in.

For me, organic social media value is the missing link between the hours I spend creating, planning, and posting—and the bigger business impact I’m expected to deliver.

Here’s why calculating my social media value matters so much:

• Budget justification and stakeholder buy-in: When I can clearly connect my organic results to real business goals, I make a much stronger case when I’m fighting for budget and resources.
• Resource allocation and channel prioritization: Knowing the true value of my efforts helps me decide where to invest my time and which social channels deserve the most focus.
• Campaign optimization and strategic planning: Measuring social media value means I’m not just reporting on activity—I’m tuning my strategies to maximize business impact with every campaign.

For me, calculating social media value transforms my role from executor to growth partner—and that’s the shift every modern marketer needs.

What are the main analysis pillars for evaluating social media organic value?

When I’m trying to understand the real impact of my organic work, I know it’s not just about posting consistently or watching my follower count grow.

For me, it’s about measuring my organic social media value in a way that actually matters for the business. That’s also why I pay close attention to earned media value as well—because when someone shares, talks about, or promotes my brand without being paid for it, that’s proof my organic content is genuinely resonating.

Here’s how I break down my analysis:

Brand awareness

First, I look at how effectively my own organic posts are putting my brand in front of new people—paying close attention to the size and growth of my audience, and how often my content appears across feeds.

Reach and impressions/views:

I track how many unique people see my posts and how often my content appears in their feeds. This gives me a clear view of my organic footprint and how effectively I’m growing my brand presence on social media.

Engagement

Other signals I pay close attention to is how people interact with my posts—whether that’s through likes, meaningful comments, shares, or saves—because these organic actions show me just how much my content resonates and sparks real conversation and interest.

• Engagement rate by platform over time: Comparing my engagement metrics over time helps me see how effective my organic strategy becomes after different changes.

• Comments, shares, saves: These actions show that people find my content valuable enough to interact with and even promote it themselves. That’s a direct path to more earned media value, because each organic interaction can turn my audience into advocates.

Traffic & conversions

For me, it’s critical to connect my organic social activity to real actions—like website visits, signups, or purchases.

Here’s how I track the journey from a post to a conversion:

• I use UTM tracking on every social link to identify exactly how much of my website traffic comes from my organic social posts, separating it from other traffic sources.

• I choose the right conversion attribution models: Strategically, I know it’s important to credit the right touchpoints along the journey. Sometimes a single post is the trigger, other times it’s a series of interactions, so I tailor my attribution model to match how my audience really engages with my brand.
• I map out customer journey touchpoints: On a broader level, I look at where and when people interact with my social content as they move toward becoming customers. By understanding the full journey, I can see how organic social media contributes not just at the beginning, but at every stage.

At Socialinsider, we ask our customers how they heard about us, and social media ranks among the top five channels for sales and leads.

Customer relationships

For me, social is about building trust and long-term loyalty. That's why with every reporting session, I don't miss out on checking the following metrics:

• Customer satisfaction: I follow up on reviews, comments, and DMs to see how people feel after engaging with me.
• Customer lifetime value (CLV) correlation: If I notice my highly engaged social followers are also becoming my best customers, that signals I’m creating relationships that drive lasting value.

Direct sales and revenue

While engagement and awareness matter, I also want to understand exactly how my organic efforts contribute to the financial goals of the business., of course. That’s why I look at revenue from two angles:

• Direct sales and revenue attribution: I track every instance when an organic post leads directly to a sale or revenue-generating action, so I can clearly show the financial results from my social content.
• Influenced revenue: I also monitor when my organic posts play a supporting role—building trust, sparking interest, or keeping my brand top-of-mind—which eventually contributes to conversions, even if they happen later in the customer journey.

How to calculate your social media value?

Over time, I’ve found that calculating my organic social media value isn’t something I can just “eyeball.” It takes structure and clarity. Here’s the step-by-step framework I follow to make sure my social reporting truly reflects my impact.

Step 1: Define the main business objectives

Before I crunch any numbers, I always take time to get clear on my purpose. I ask myself: What does success look like for my business? Which company goals am I expected to support with social? For me, linking my social initiatives to the company’s bigger-picture OKRs (Objectives & Key Results) is absolutely critical.

Once I know the business outcomes I need to drive—whether that’s brand awareness, lead generation, sales, or customer loyalty—I set social goals that directly align with them. That alignment helps me move away from generic reporting and focus on what actually matters to my team, my leadership, and myself.

Step 2: Set up your tracking infrastructure

To calculate my organic social media value in a way that truly helps my business, I can’t rely on “best guesses” or scattered reports. I need solid infrastructure that connects all the dots from my social posts to real results. Here’s how I make sure I’m set up for success:

• I use Socialinsider to centralize my reporting: With Socialinsider, I can pull all my platform analytics—engagement, reach, impressions, audience insights—into one place. This gives me a unified view and helps me avoid the hassle (and blind spots) of bouncing between different native dashboards.
• I integrate Google Analytics 4: By connecting my Google Analytics 4 account to my reporting stack, I see what happens after someone clicks a link from social—all the way through to conversions, signups, and key website actions. This helps me tie my organic social content directly to business outcomes.
• I connect my CRM for revenue attribution: For a complete business picture, I connect my CRM so I can track leads, opportunities, and sales that originate from my organic social channels. This link is essential for reporting true social ROI—not just clicks and visits.
• I apply a clear UTM parameter strategy: By tagging every social link with UTM parameters, I ensure that every campaign and post is tracked with precision. This lets me measure which content, channels, and campaigns truly move the needle for my business.

Building this kind of connected tracking infrastructure means I don’t just have numbers—I have real, actionable insights into how my organic social content is driving business impact.

Step 3: Establish your baseline & benchmarks

Before I can measure real progress, I need to know exactly where I’m starting from—and what “good” actually looks like in my industry. Establishing clear benchmarks gives me a foundation for realistic, data-driven goal setting.

• I review my internal historical performance: The first thing I do is look back at my past results. What have been my strongest campaigns? Where have I struggled? By analyzing my own historical data, I can spot trends, set a realistic baseline, and avoid chasing vanity metrics that have no real context for my specific business.
• I run competitive benchmarking: Next, I compare my performance against industry leaders and direct competitors. Using Socialinsider, I get access to detailed, up-to-date benchmarking data that shows me exactly how my organic social metrics stack up across key platforms. Am I ahead of the pack in engagement? Do others in my field get more reach or see higher conversion rates? This external perspective keeps my targets ambitious (and my strategy sharp).

• I use industry-specific benchmarks by platform: I know “good” on Instagram looks different than “good” on TikTok. That’s why I break down benchmarks platform by platform, making sure that my goals reflect the unique landscape and audience of each channel.

Building my strategy on solid benchmarks keeps me honest about where I stand—and gives everyone on my team (and in leadership) a clear, objective standard for real success.

Step 4: Choose your attribution model

A big part of showing the true value of my organic social media comes down to attribution—figuring out which touchpoints and posts deserve credit for the results I see. I know that not every conversion or sale happens because of a single post, so I need to make thoughtful choices about attribution models.

• I consider first-touch, last-touch, and multi-touch attribution.
  Sometimes the first social impression is what brings someone into my world; other times, it’s the final piece of content that pushes them to act. Most often, though, I find that multiple organic touchpoints work together—so I explore multi-touch attribution to better reflect reality.
• I pay attention to platform-specific attribution windows.
  Each social platform has its own default setting for how long a click or engagement counts toward a conversion. I stay aware of these windows so my reports fairly connect organic activity to real results.
• I weigh the pros and cons of each model.
  First-touch gives me insight into what creates awareness. Last-touch highlights what closes the deal. But multi-touch attribution paints the clearest picture of how my ongoing organic efforts shape the entire customer journey. I make sure my chosen model fits my goals, my industry, and the way my audience naturally interacts with my brand.

By getting intentional about attribution, I ensure I’m measuring and communicating my organic social media value in a way that’s honest, credible, and relevant to the business—not just convenient.

Step 5: Calculate your core value metrics

With my objectives set, infrastructure built, and benchmarks established, I’m ready to put real numbers to my organic social media value. This is the moment where all my planning turns into action—and where I can confidently show just how much impact I’m creating.

• Earned media value (EMV): To calculate earned media value, I use industry-standard formulas that multiply organic results (impressions, shares, mentions) by cost-per-thousand (CPM) benchmarks. Not only does this earned media measurement help me translate organic wins into business language, but it also makes earned media analysis a key part of my reporting routine. When I share my earned media results, it turns engagement and reach into numbers everyone can understand.
• Customer acquisition cost (CAC):I always keep an eye on how much it actually costs to bring in a new customer through organic social. By dividing my organic spend and resources by the number of customers acquired, I know if my efforts are becoming more efficient over time—or if I need to make changes.
• Socialinsider’s Organic Value metric:For true clarity, I rely on Socialinsider’s proprietary Organic Value feature. This allows me to measure the value of social media using data-driven scoring tailored to my industry and content mix. With this tool, I can show leadership how my organic posts stack up in terms of real business impact—not just vanity metrics.

By calculating these core metrics, I translate all my organic effort into genuine business value. This is where I move from reporting activity to proving my contribution—and where social finally gets the credit it deserves.

Final thoughts

In the end, the better I get at showing that value, the easier it becomes to elevate my work, support my team, and lead social strategy with confidence.

By setting clear objectives, building out solid tracking, benchmarking against the best, choosing the right attribution model, and calculating core value metrics like earned media value, I make my role as a social media marketer truly indispensable.

The value of social media isn’t just about being present online—it’s about driving growth, building trust, and contributing to revenue, every single day.

When I take the time to measure my organic social media value in a structured, business-oriented way, everything changes. Suddenly, I’m not just building campaigns and posting content—I’m proving impact, justifying budgets, and winning buy-in at every level.

FAQs on social media organic value

What is organic value in social media?

Organic value in social media refers to the real business impact generated by unpaid social efforts—measuring not just likes or comments, but the actual brand awareness, engagement, and revenue driven by my organic content, often quantified using advanced analytics tools like Socialinsider’s Organic Value metric.

Looking for a social media analytics tool that gives you the coverage, benchmarks, and reporting capabilities your current setup doesn’t provide?

Sprout Social is a well-known option and is often used by teams for publishing, engagement, and day-to-day social media management. However, when it comes to competitive analytics, cross-platform benchmarking, and presentation-ready reporting, many teams find that Sprout works best alongside a specialized analytics tool rather than as a standalone solution.

If this sounds familiar, you likely already use tools like Sprout Social for execution but need more complete competitive data, broader platform coverage, and streamlined reporting to support analysis, benchmarking, and stakeholder reporting.

To help you find the right fit, we’ve rounded up tools that either complement Sprout Social or replace it entirely, depending on whether your priority is execution, analytics, or competitive intelligence.

Why consider using a Sprout Social alternative?

There are a number of reasons users look for a Sprout Social alternative. For many teams, it’s not about starting from scratch. It’s about addressing specific requirements that existing tools or combinations of tools don’t meet.

Here are the most common reasons:

Cost

Sprout Social’s cheapest plan is $199/month per user, with competitive reports locked behind the $399/month tier—again, per user.

For teams already using other marketing tools or native analytics, paying for a large management suite can be difficult to justify when what they need is stronger competitive reporting, broader platform insights, or more efficient exports.

I mean, there’s an entire Reddit thread in r/digital_marketing dedicated to looking for alternatives to Sprout Social just because it was raising its prices.

One review of the platform also shared, “This platform is so expensive for what you get. As a content creator with over 250,000 followers, there are much better products that don't cost $8,000 per year.”

Onboarding

Sprout Social is a comprehensive platform with a lot of different features, but that also means there’s a lot to learn. This can make onboarding a challenge, especially when some dislike of Sprout Social is specific to the fact that onboarding support isn’t provided for users in certain payment tiers.

When users aren’t able to properly learn how to use a platform, they can easily miss potentially useful features. This, in turn, makes the product lose value in the eyes of its users. Why would they pay top tier pricing for something that they only know half the functionality of?

Glitches

Every software is going to have bugs and issues sometimes, but users complain of recurring issues with Sprout Social that can make some of the product’s features virtually unusable. One reviewer complained of profiles continuously disconnecting, issues merging accounts, and stats sometimes being unavailable when creating reports.

Again, every tool has its occasional glitches. But when teams rely on monthly, quarterly, or board-level reports, unstable access to competitive analytics creates operational risk and delays.

1. Socialinsider - the best Sprout Social analytics alternative

Socialinsider is a social media analytics and competitive benchmarking tool that works exceptionally well alongside Sprout Social, especially for organizations that already use Sprout for publishing or engagement but need deeper competitive insights, stronger benchmarking, and more flexible reporting. Socialinsider offers features like:

• Social media analytics
• Benchmarking
• AI content analysis

One clear advantage is that Socialinsider’s competitive reporting goes far deeper than what Sprout offers on its own, making it a strong analytics companion for teams that want to keep Sprout for management, while upgrading their benchmarking and reporting capabilities.

Many teams use Socialinsider to power competitor analysis, industry benchmarks, and leadership-ready reports while continuing to rely on Sprout Social for publishing, inbox management, and community engagement.

Socialinsider is often selected because it provides:

• Consistent competitive data
• Broader platform support
• Clear cross-platform benchmarks
• Flexible reporting formats (including PPT and Looker Studio)
• Pricing that fits within existing analytics budgets

We’ll dig into each of the features to share why Socialinsider is one of the best Sprout Social alternatives shortly, but first, check out this quick comparison chart to get a basic idea of why Socialinsider might be the perfect option for your company:

Competitive data

Socialinsider’s competitive analytics go deeper than Sprout’s, and are particularly valuable for teams transitioning from that tool or even manual processes.

Organizations commonly choose Socialinsider to:

• Access competitive analytics across more platforms
• Compare performance across multiple competitors at once
• Use visualized, board-ready benchmarking data
• Consolidate competitor insights without manual exports

This allows teams to deliver more complete comparative reporting for internal stakeholders or clients, without relying on screenshots or fragmented sources.

Not only that, but Socialinsider’s competitive analysis feature is extremely comprehensive and easy to use. It’s easy to add social accounts that you want to compare to your own presence, and you can pull platform-by-platform benchmarking data within seconds.

Socialinsider provides you with competitive data like:

• Follower growth
• Reach
• Impressions
• In-depth post-analytics
• Engagement metrics
• Top posts
• Average posts/day
• Follower growth
• Distribution of engagement
• Distribution of posts

Each of these KPIs are presented in a digestible graph that makes it easy to see where your brand stands amongst the competition.

Tagging and grouping social media posts

Sprout Social only allows manual tagging, one post at a time; this can quickly become labor-intensive.

Socialinsider provides:

• Manual tagging
• Automatic tagging by keywords or hashtags
• Filters for themes, campaigns, or content pillars
• Reporting based on tagged categories

This gives teams a more consistent way to structure recurring reports and analyze performance across strategic content types, without adding manual steps.

You can set up an “auto tagging” rule by inputting a set hashtag or keyword that you want to track. This feature allows you to create campaign reports within minutes. Whereas with Sprout Social, users complain that the tagging process is tedious as they can only tag one post at a time.

Social media reports

Next, let’s dig into social media reports—a key feature of any good social media analytics tool. You want your reports to be easy to pull, visually appealing, and easy to understand.

With Socialinsider, you can easily compile reports and then download them in CSV, XLS, PDF, or PPT format, giving you a range of options to choose from for presenting or making your own additions later.

Sprout Social only provides two different export formats: CSV and PDF, limiting how many ways you can save and share your results.

Furthermore, Socialinsider gives you the ability to create auto-reports. Simply choose the type of report you want, the platform you want it for, a campaign to focus on (if any), a file extension, and how often you want to receive the report.

Due to these comprehensive reports, Victor Mukubvu, Digital Marketing Analyst at Mitsubishi Electric, shares,

“We have managed to gather key insights based on how content has been received. We implemented changes based on the insights and have seen significant improvement.”

Price

Socialinsider’s social media analytics and competitive benchmarking tool starts at $99/month for up to 20 social media accounts (both your brand and competitors) and provides access for one team member.

For teams who already maintain internal analytics or use other tools, Socialinsider is often selected because it provides the exact benchmarking and reporting capabilities they’re missing, without requiring an investment in a full suite.

Socialinsider vs Sprout Social final takeaway

Socialinsider offers more comprehensive competitive analytics, broader export options, and reporting workflows that complement tools like Sprout Social, especially for teams that rely on Sprout for execution but need stronger analytics, benchmarking, and reporting for decision-making.

For organizations that already use Sprout Social and want to extend its capabilities with accurate competitive data, cross-platform benchmarks, and presentation-ready reports, Socialinsider delivers a focused and budget-appropriate analytics layer, without duplicating management features they already have.

2. Sprout Social alternative #2: Hootsuite

Hootsuite is an all-in-one social media management platform very similar to Sprout Social, making it another great alternative. Some of Hootsuite’s top features include social media scheduling, employee advocacy, social listening, and community management.

Of course, Hootsuite also offers its own version of competitive benchmarking and social media analytics tools. Let’s dive into how these compare to Sprout Social.

Competitive data

Hootsuite offers the ability to track 20 competitors per social media network, allowing you to dig deep into competitive data across your online presence.

Competitive data you get access to includes:

• Top posts (filtered by different parameters like comments, likes, or engagement)
• Performance by post type
• Trending hashtags
• Average post length
• Average hashtags per post
• Audience growth
• Total followers

One big downside of Hootsuite’s competitive analysis tool is that you can only compare your brand to a single competitor at a time, making the process of comparing across the board tedious and inefficient.

However, you can use the tool’s industry benchmarking dashboard that provides you with industry averages for social media performance, letting you see how you compare to your industry as a whole.

Tagging and grouping social media posts

Hootsuite allows users to create both tags and campaigns. Tags can keep your content organized, while campaigns actually allow you to measure and compare performance across similar posts within your Hootsuite dashboard.

However, you can’t retroactively add posts to a campaign. You need to plan ahead and set a time frame for your content campaigns so you can monitor all related posts within a single dashboard.

For tags, though, you can create a tag and then filter reports based on your tags to see posts that specifically mention the account, keyword, or hashtag you’ve included in your tag.

Social media reports

Speaking of social media reports, Hootsuite has a number of options available, plus the ability to create a custom report filled with specific metrics and KPIs that support your strategy.

Hootsuite also provides its users with the ability to download reports in PDF, PPT, XLS, and CSV formats, offering more options than they get at Sprout.

Reports with Hootsuite are fully customizable. Even if someone chooses a specific report, they can still access a dropdown to add more metrics that may not be automatically available with the preset report.

Users can also pin reports to a certain category or their favorite reports so that they’re easily accessible each time the social media team needs to check them out or export them to share with team leaders.

Price

Pricing is another place where Hootsuite wins out as a Sprout Social competitor. Plans start at $99/month (billed annually—you’ll have to contact the team for month-to-month pricing) for one user and up to 10 social networks. Interested users can get access to a 30-day free trial to test drive the software.

Hootsuite vs Sprout Social - final takeaway

Hootsuite is comparable to Sprout Social both in features and in analytics and competitive data.

In fact, some of its social media reporting is actually superior to Sprout. However, the ability to compare multiple competitors at once within Sprout can make certain reporting a lot more efficient.

3. Sprout Social alternative #3: Sociality

Sociality.io is an all-in-one social media management platform built for agencies and enterprise teams that want strong analytics, deep competitor insights, and no per-user fees—unlike Sprout Social.

Competitive data

Sociality.io’s competitor analytics provide a wide view of the landscape across Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Teams can compare up to 15 competitor pages per report, track historical trends, analyze engagement distribution, and filter top-performing competitor content. This makes it easy to benchmark performance or prepare client- and leadership-ready insights without manual data gathering.

For brands that lean heavily on comparative metrics, Sociality.io’s competitor reporting often goes deeper and is easier to scale than Sprout’s per-user model.

Tagging and grouping social media posts

Sociality.io offers granular post-level insights, including engagement breakdowns, content distribution, optimal posting times, and content performance trends. While it doesn’t use traditional “tagging” the same way some tools do, the depth of its analytics makes it simple to compare content types, themes, or campaigns over time—especially for teams managing multiple accounts or large content volumes.

Social media reports

Reporting is where Sociality.io stands out. Users can generate automated, export-ready reports in PDF, PPT, XLSX, or CSV formats with no limit on export volume. Reports can be scheduled daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly and sent directly to stakeholders’ inboxes. Compared to Sprout Social—which limits export formats—Sociality.io supports more flexible presentation-ready options.

Price

Plans start at $99/month with a 14-day free trial. Business and Enterprise tiers include unlimited users, making Sociality.io significantly more cost-effective than Sprout Social for multi-user teams.

Sociality.io vs. Sprout Social — final takeaway

Sociality.io is an excellent Sprout Social alternative for agencies, enterprise teams, and brands that need deep analytics, strong competitor benchmarking, flexible reporting, and predictable pricing without per-seat costs. If your team collaborates across departments or manages multiple brands, this platform offers scalability Sprout Social can’t match.

4. Sprout Social alternative #4: Sprinklr Social

Sprinklr is an AI-powered customer experience management platform. This means its main focus is helping brands understand their customers—both through marketing and customer service tactics—so they can create a better experience with their business.

Sprinklr has four main facets of its software: Sprinklr Service, Sprinklr Social, Sprinklr Insights, and Sprinklr Marketing. Its social media-related features include publishing, employee advocacy, and social listening.

However, it offers a full competitive insights and benchmarking dashboard as a part of its Sprinklr Insights offering. Let’s take a look at how well it compares to Sprout Social and the other tools on our list.

Competitive data

Sprinklr Insights offers a number of customizable reports, one of which is of course its competitor insights report that lets users compare their online presence to that of their closest competitors.

With Sprinklr, users can add competitors to a benchmarking report and get access to metrics like:

• Mentions
• Engagement
• Engagement by post type
• Influencer performance
• Reach
• Unique users
• Follower count

One of the most unique aspects of Sprinklr’s offering is the ability to monitor influencer performance across competitors, making this a great option for businesses who often work with influencer partners.

Tagging and grouping social media posts

Sprinklr’s post grouping feature is called “Topics,” and it allows users to categorize posts both that they’ve posted and that others across social media have posted around a certain topic.

It’s one of the tool’s social listening features and it’s a great way to monitor your own performance around a topic while also measuring it against other brands and users around the web.

With Sprinklr, you can set up a new topic to use for filtering posts in your dashboard by giving it a title and then setting up a time frame you want to view posts from, providing keywords to track, and even setting geographical parameters.

Social media reports

Sprinklr’s self-service social media features offer incredible social media reporting tools. However, the Sprinklr Marketing sector also offers some marketing analytics features.

With Sprinklr, users can measure results across 30+ different channels, customize reports by adding and removing different widgets, and even set automatic report exports every week or month so they’re ready to present to the team.

Price

We’ve mentioned that Sprinklr has four different service types, right? Well, each different service option (Service, Social, Insights, and Marketing) also comes with its own price tag, though the prices are not publicly revealed on the website.

The biggest drawback of Sprinklr’s pricing strategy is that you don’t get access to its in-depth competitor benchmarking unless you subscribe to Sprinklr Insights, on top of Sprinklr Social that enables you to publish content.

Sprinklr vs Sprout Social - final takeaway

It’s undeniable that Sprinklr offers more robust features than Sprout Social. But the pricing can be even more astronomical due to the way Sprinklr has broken up its service offerings.

While you can chat with their sales team to find a plan that works for you, Sprinklr is best for large, enterprise companies that don’t have to worry about a shoestring budget.

5. Sprout Social alternative #5: Status Brew

Status Brew is a social media marketing and management solution that offers features like publishing, engagement, a link-in-bio page creator, and social media reports. As we can see right on its home page, it offers its features up as comparable to Sprout Social, so let’s see if they’re right.

Competitive data

Status Brew has a number of report options, one of which is a competitor analysis. Brands can add competitor profiles to their analysis report to get a birds eye comparison of metrics like:

• Likes
• Shares
• Clicks
• Comments
• Impressions
• Reach
• Follower count

Stick to their competitor analysis report template or customize it to add even more metrics you want to compare across profiles.

Tagging and grouping social media posts

With Status Brew, you can tag social media posts as you publish them so they remain in an internal category. If you’ve forgotten to tag a post or you’re just getting started with tags, you can go back to old posts and add your tag. Keep in mind that this has to be done manually, which can be a bit of a time suck.

You can then use these tags to filter your posts in your social media reports, helping you monitor how certain topics are performing.

Social media reports

Status Brew shines when it comes to social media reporting. It offers a number of pre-made templates to get you started, but you can add and remove widgets and KPIs from each one to fully customize your social media reports across different platforms with the exact metrics you want to track.

You can pull data from 20+ social media platforms and other online channels to get the full picture of your online presence’s performance. Get a public, shareable link of your report, or export in a CSV or PDF file format.

Price

Status Brew remains one of the more affordable tools on our list with plans starting at just $69/month. That also gets you access to the tool for two users, whereas most platforms only start with single user access.

However, this only gets you access to management and analytics tools for five social media platforms, so brands with a larger presence will have to invest in one of the bigger plans.

Status Brew vs Sprout Social - final takeaway

Status Brew is a great alternative to Sprout Social in that it offers comparable features at a fraction of the cost. However, this is also because the tool is less robust, making it a great option for small businesses, but not as functional for large enterprises.

6. Sprout Social alternative #6: Metricool

Metricool is a social media management tool that offers features like social media calendar planning, a social inbox, client approval, hashtag tracking, and social media analytics/reporting. In fact, Metricool offers even more features than you can find with Sprout Social.

Let’s dig in to see if those features are as robust as Sprout’s, though, making them a viable alternative.

Competitive data

With Metricool, you can compare your social presence to competitors on a platform-by-platform basis, getting access to basic competitive data like:

• Follower count
• Post count
• Likes
• Comments
• Engagement

You can also dig deeper into each competitor’s profile to make sure you’re stacking up.

Tagging and grouping social media posts

Metricool doesn’t offer a way to tag your own social media posts so that you can filter them in your reporting, but it does have a hashtag tracker that lets you track hashtags and keywords across certain social media platforms to see how they’re performing.

This is helpful for branded campaigns and live events so that you can see how many other people are using your hashtag and if it’s spreading and reaching a wider audience like it was intended.

However, Metricool’s hashtag feature works only on a credit basis, meaning brands interested in tracking hashtags have to purchase credits for each day of tracking they want to have access to, and each credit only gives them access to tracking for that day.

While this can be useful for single-day events, it becomes a problem when hashtag or keyword tracking is a large part of your social media analytics strategy.

Social media reports

Metricool offers a number of basic social media reports across nearly any social media platform you’d like to use. You can also get access to a summary report that provides you with a birds eye view of your entire online presence’s performance.

One great feature of Metricool’s reporting is that you can also set an automatic export so that your report is delivered to your inbox just in time for any recurring meetings and presentations you might have.

Metricool supports exporting files in CSV, PPT, or PDF. It also has a Google Looker Studio connector so that brands can connect their data to Looker Studio for further data visualization.

Price

Metricool offers a completely free account that allows brands to connect one of each social media platform to the tool in order to get basic management and analytics tools. This also includes the analysis of five competitors. However, the free plan excludes X/Twitter and LinkedIn analytics.

This makes Metricool a perfect starting option for new and small businesses who want to be strategic about their online presence but simply don’t have the budget for these big name tools.

Metricool’s premium plans start at $22/month for up to 10 social media accounts per platform, analysis of 100 competitor profiles, and the inclusion of LinkedIn and X/Twitter analytics.

Metricool vs Sprout Social - final takeaway

Yes, Metricool is affordable. However, its tool is basic at best. To us, this makes it the perfect option for businesses that are just starting out with a social media strategy and don’t want to invest in a platform before they know all of the different ways they can use it.

7. Sprout Social alternative #7: NapoleonCat

NapoleonCat is another social media management platform with features like a social inbox, publishing capabilities, a social CRM, and analytics and reporting tools. The platform also offers social automation features, setting it apart slightly from some of the other tools on this list.

Let’s dig into its analytics and reporting capabilities to see how it stacks up against Sprout and some of the other competitors.

Competitive data

NapoleonCat’s social media analytics dashboard allows users to add competitors to a monthly competitive analysis report—however, users aren’t able to access the data until they’ve had the competitor accounts connected for at least 24 hours.

Once the report has fully synced up, users get access to competitive data like:

• Follower count
• Total posts
• Average engagement rate per post
• Average reactions per post
• Average comments per post
• Average shares per post

Users can also dig deeper into individual posts to see their performance.

Tagging and grouping social media posts

NapoleonCat doesn’t offer the ability to tag or group social media posts, then filter by said tag in order to check post performance around a certain topic, campaign, or category.

What NapoleonCat does offer is the ability to create data sets that consist of different profiles as yet another way to categorize your competitor insights.

Social media reports

NapoleonCat’s social media analytics may leave some to be desired, but they do have a few great features. First of all, users can generate reports for multiple social media accounts from the same platform (up to 8), schedule reports to auto-generate and be sent at certain time frames, and even whitelabel your reports to make them immediately on-brand for your presentations.

However, they can only be exported into PDF or XLSX format, giving users a limited number of options for sharing and editing their reports.

Price

NapoleonCat’s pricing is extremely flexible, letting users build plans based on the number of social media platforms they need to connect and the number of users they need to give access to the tool.

Their cheapest plan, giving access to one user for three social media platforms, starts at just $32/month. However, while this plan does provide full competitive data access, there’s no ability to use the reporting features unless users move to the next tier plan, which starts at $79/month.

NapolenCat vs Sprout Social - final takeaway

NapoleonCat doesn’t have nearly as many of the features as Sprout Social does, only coming in first with some of its automation tools. And with the price point being what it is for how little users can get access to, we certainly don’t think it’s one of the better options on this list.

8. Sprout Social alternative #8: Buffer

Buffer promotes itself as the all-in-one social media toolkit that businesses need. It’s a good Sprout Social alternative in that the two tools offer nearly the same set of features as part of their own separate “toolkits.”

Let’s dig deeper into Buffer’s features and see how it measures up.

Competitive data

While Buffer does have a number of features that make it comparable to Sprout Social, competitive analysis simply isn’t one of them. Instead, its analytics features focus solely on a brand’s own performance.

Tagging and grouping social media posts

Buffer does offer the option to tag like social media posts inside your dashboard, a feature that was just released in Q4 of 2023. In Buffer, this feature can be used to organize content ideas within your “Create” dashboard as well as to filter analytics based on content type.

One great characteristic about this feature is that your tags will stay assigned to the content, no matter where it lives—from idea, to the content queue, to your past published posts for analytics.

However, the tagging process in Buffer is still a manual one. There’s no way to automatically tag posts at bulk in order to pull a large amount of past content into a single category.

Social media reports

Buffer offers a number of social media reports for users to access performance for each of their social media networks. Metrics include:

• Follower count
• Page views
• Impressions
• Reach
• Engagement
• Follower growth

Users can create custom reports that get updated daily. White label them so they match your brand, then export as PDF or image files to add to a presentation. Unfortunately, Buffer doesn’t offer any other export options.

Price

Buffer has a completely free plan that gives access to publishing features for up to three social media accounts. But if you’re looking for analytics features, you’ll need to upgrade to their premium plan that starts at $5/month per social media account.

Buffer vs Sprout Social - final takeaway

Buffer is comparable in a lot of ways when you look at some of Sprout’s social media management features. However, without any built-in competitor analysis capabilities, it certainly isn’t a great fit for brands looking to use benchmarking alongside their reporting.

9. Sprout Social alternative #9: Iconosquare

Iconosquare is a social media management and marketing tool that offers features such as social media publishing, team collaboration, social inbox, social listening, and of course, analytics and reporting. Iconosquare also offers AI-powered marketing tools like content idea generation.

Competitive data

Iconosquare offers a basic competitive analysis as part of its social listening and monitoring toolkit. It also only offers competitive data for Facebook and Instagram, making this an option mainly for brands who heavily rely on those two platforms as part of their strategy.

The data users get access to includes:

• Follower count
• Post count
• Average engagement rate per post
• Follower growth
• Post type
• Post reach
• Posting times

Users can also track relevant hashtags to see how they’re being used by competitors and other online users.

Tagging and grouping social media posts

Iconosquare’s post tagging capabilities work a little strangely compared to other tools on our list. Users can tag media from their media library rather than specific posts or topics. This means that only media posts can be filtered using these tags/labels.

However, you can still keep an eye on their performance by filtering for your tags within your social media reports.

Social media reports

Iconosquare’s social media analytics and reporting tools are probably one of its best features. Users can create fully custom reports by compiling metrics from a list of 100+ KPIs. Pre-built widgets can be dragged and dropped onto your reports to create visually appealing and easy-to-understand dashboards.

You can also set custom time frames for pulling different reports that will be automatically available whenever you need them, like a mini weekly report or a full-fledged quarterly report. You can pull these reports in either XLS or PDF format.

Price

Iconosquare is one of the more affordable options on our list, especially given how useful its reporting features are. Plans start at $33/month for a single user and up to five social media profiles. All plans get unlimited access to every feature—the main limitation is around data retention. The lowest plan only keeps your data for up to 12 months.

Iconosquare vs Sprout Social - final takeaway

Iconosquare can be a good alternative to Sprout Social for brands looking for similar features on a small scale—and for a smaller price point. However, brands who want robust tagging capabilities are better off looking for a different option.

Find the right Sprout Social alternative for your brand

Make sure you choose a Sprout Social alternative that gives you the platform coverage, competitive benchmarks, and reporting formats your organization relies on. Every team’s requirements differ, but if your priority is accurate comparative data, efficient reporting, and support for platforms not covered in your current setup, tools like Socialinsider are designed for that type of workflow.

If you need consistent competitive insights, export-ready reports for leadership or clients, or cross-platform benchmarks you can trust, we’d love for you to try Socialinsider and explore its full analytics and reporting capabilities.

FAQs about Sprout Social alternatives

How do I add competitors and compare their data with my own company’s data on the same dashboard in Socialinsider?

You can add competitor accounts in Socialinsider by navigating to your project and using the “Add Profile” option to search and select public profiles you wish to track. Once added, competitor profiles appear alongside your owned accounts in your project dashboard, enabling direct comparison of analytics and metrics within the same workspace.

What are the differences in analytics depth, especially for competitor tracking and content pillars, compared to Sprout? How much historical data is available in the trial and paid plans?

Socialinsider provides in-depth analytics for both owned and competitor accounts, covering key metrics such as engagement, reach, impressions, audience growth, and content performance. For competitor tracking, data is limited to publicly available information. Content is automatically categorized into pillars to help analyze your strategy.

The amount of historical data available depends on the profile, platform, and your subscription plan:

• For owned profiles: Historical data is available from the time the profile is connected and, in some cases, for up to one year prior, depending on the platform’s API.
• For competitor profiles: Data collection starts from when the profile is added, with no access to past data. During trial, you have access to the same historical limits as paid plans, subject to platform-specific restrictions.

Are there differences in data refresh rates or access to private metrics versus public data?

Yes. For owned (authenticated) profiles, Socialinsider accesses private metrics—including reach, impressions, and detailed engagement—directly via platform APIs, with regular data refreshes (typically daily or as allowed by the platform API). For competitor (public) profiles, only public metrics are available, and refresh rates are also subject to platform limitations.

What integrations are available? Are there extra fees for these?

Socialinsider supports integrations with its API and Looker Studio (formerly Google Data Studio) as add-ons, allowing for advanced reporting and data exports. For details about the extra fees, please refer to our Pricing page.

How do I manage or swap profiles and competitors within the dashboard in Socialinsider?

You can add or remove profiles and competitor accounts from your project dashboard at any time. The number of profiles you can track, and the frequency of swaps (removals/replacements), depend on your subscription plan. To manage profiles, use the profile management options in your project workspace. For specific swap allowances or limits, refer to your plan details or contact your account manager.

What onboarding and training support is available for teams transitioning to Socialinsider from Sprout Social?

You can request onboarding support and personalized demo sessions for your team when transitioning to Socialinsider. These sessions help familiarize your team with platform features and workflows, ensuring a smooth migration and adoption process.

How does the Socialinsider customer support work?

Socialinsider provides support via live chat and email during business hours. If needed, you can schedule a demo call for assistance with onboarding, account issues, and platform guidance. For questions outside business hours, you can submit a request, and the team will respond during their next available shift.

What is the process for authorizing profiles to access private data?

To access private metrics for your company’s profiles in Socialinsider, you must authorize each profile individually. This involves logging in with the account credentials and granting Socialinsider the required permissions through the platform’s official API. Once authorized, Socialinsider can collect private data (such as reach, impressions, and follower demographics). For competitor accounts, only public metrics are accessible, and no authorization is required.

How does your pricing structure work, especially for multiple profiles or brands?

Socialinsider’s pricing is based on the number of profiles (accounts) and brands you wish to track. Plans scale according to volume, with the option to select or adjust profile limits as your needs change. For those with large numbers of profiles or brands, custom plans and pricing are available. The Enterprise price calculator on our Pricing page provides estimates for higher volumes.

If you’ve been using Dash Social but aren’t quite satisfied with the enterprise-level price tag, you may be evaluating more efficient alternatives.

To help you find the right tool for your team’s needs, we’ve put together a list of the top 10 Dash Social competitors and how they line up, especially for teams prioritizing efficient reporting, reliable coverage, and meaningful benchmarks.

Let’s get started.

Why consider using a Dash Social alternative?

While Dash Social can be a great tool for some businesses, there are several reasons you might be considering an alternative:

• the pricing structure becomes difficult to justify to the CFO (especially when some features are underused)
• custom content segmentation is a must
• acquisitions or policy changes force a tech-stack reassessment

Whether you’re looking to replace Dash Social or find something more affordable with stronger analytics coverage, here are the key considerations to keep in mind.

Cost

First things first, Dash Social is an enterprise-level tool with an enterprise-level price to match. While you can take advantage of a 14-day free trial to see if the software is all it’s cracked up to be, your budgeting has to be substantial enough to justify its $999+/month starting point.

The lowest package starts at $999/month for features like:

• Unlimited users
• Link-in-bio landing page
• Analytics
• Social media scheduling/publishing
• Content calendar

However, brands looking for features like content segmentation have to move to the next tier at $899/month, and advanced analytics or social listening require a $1,599+/month plan.

One review of the software shares:

“Most of the brands I work with could not afford something like this. I also wish more things came with certain packages rather than them being $1,000+ add-ons.”

This pricing stress aligns with what many teams told us during tool migrations: they needed to “find the best data for something that fits the budget”. For teams whose CFOs demand both efficiency and affordability, Dash Social can feel inaccessible, driving them to search for alternatives that don’t sacrifice coverage.

Content segmentation

More than just the price point, certain features simply aren’t up to snuff. Dash Social’s content tagging and segmentation—available only on the ~$1k/month tier—are reported as being difficult to use and limited to AI assistance, with no manual tagging option.

This is a major blocker for teams who rely on tagging workflows to produce board-ready or client-ready analyses. Several users told us missing manual tagging options created unnecessary friction: segmentation became something that required workarounds, not something that improved efficiency.

In fact, another review claimed that the predictive AI ended up being less accurate than expected, making segmentation a slow learning curve rather than a plug-and-play experience, especially for teams who need fast, reliable insights week over week.

Social media analytics and reporting

While Dash Social offers multi-channel analytics in its basic plan, accessing competitive analytics or more advanced reporting requires a higher-tier subscription.

This is particularly difficult for teams who need aggregated benchmarks or multi-platform data for board decks, quarterly reviews, or pitches. Many social media leaders shared that their previous setups involved screenshots, Excel workarounds, or manual checks, all of which break down at scale.

With the cost of Dash Social’s Advanced plan sitting at $1,599+/month, many teams shift toward alternatives that offer:

• competitive insights at lower tiers
• reporting exports (PDF, PPT, XLS)
• and coverage across TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, and more.

As one user summarized:

“We needed full coverage for TikTok and YouTube, especially in our region, and our previous vendor didn’t support it.”

Yet another reviewer also mentioned that they wish some analytics features were more advanced and that there were more robust reporting options. With the Dash Social price tag, you’d think its capabilities would be a lot more comprehensive.

Top Dash Social alternatives

Socialinsider - the #1 alternative for Dash Social

If you’re looking for comprehensive social media analytics and competitive data that help you gauge performance and improve your social media strategy, Socialinsider is going to be the best Dash Social alternative for your needs.

Some of Socialinsider’s comparable features include:

• Competitive insights and benchmarking
• Content tagging and segmentation
• Social media analytics and reporting

However, and this is particularly important for teams who prioritize efficiency over feature bloat, Socialinsider’s capabilities are far more accessible at lower pricing tiers and offer broader platform coverage where most vendor gaps appear (TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn).

Many users who switched from other tools validated Socialinsider during the free trial specifically because it covered the platforms their previous vendors didn’t.

Before I do a deeper dive, let’s look at a comparison chart showcasing why Socialinsider is among the top Dash Social alternatives:

Competitive data

First things first, let’s look at how Socialinsider and Dash Social compare when it comes to competitive data and insights. As I’ve mentioned previously, Dash Social only provides competitor insights with its Advance plan that starts at $1,599/month.

Alternatively, Socialinsider’s competitive benchmarking tools are available within its first-tier, $99/month plan, making this feature dramatically more accessible for teams who need to monitor competitors across multiple platforms. Not only that, but as you can see in our comparison chart above, Socialinsider’s tools are also much more robust.

Socialinsider’s competitive analysis tools are also extremely easy to use. Simply add social accounts you want to compare your own brand’s performance to and start navigating through benchmarks and competitor reports.

Socialinsider’s competitive analysis tools are also extremely easy to use. Simply add the brands you want to compare and explore benchmarks, insights, and automated comparisons that reduce manual reporting time, an essential efficiency gain for teams replacing manual screenshots or Excel workflows.

Victor Mukubvu, Digital Marketing Analyst at Mitsubishi Electric, summed it up well:

“It saved me time gathering data and allowed me to be more proactive in using the information gathered.”

Content tagging and segmentation

Aside from competitive analysis, Socialinsider offers powerful tools for segmenting your content, analyzing campaign performance, and finding patterns in audience behavior.

This is especially valuable for social media leaders who rely on tagging workflows for:

• client deliverables
• quarterly insights
• reporting consistency across analysts
• Looker Studio pipelines
• period-wide performance reviews

With Socialinsider, you can create manual tags and auto-tags using keywords or hashtags to segment out different social media content pillars. This hybrid approach gives teams total control, something Dash Social lacks, as it restricts segmentation to AI-only tagging in higher-priced tiers.

Compared to Dash Social, this combination of flexibility + affordability is a major reason teams switch. For data-driven analysts, manual tagging is fundamental, not optional.

Social media reports

Social media analytics and reporting is another key feature you should be looking for in a marketing tool. With Socialinsider, you can easily pull platform-specific or cross-platform reports that are automated, board-ready, and exportable in multiple formats (CSV, XLS, PPT, PDF).

This is a major time saver for teams who previously relied on:

• screenshots
• Excel formatting
• manual tracking
• multiple vendor exports

Many teams told us they needed to produce period-wide and multi-platform reports for leadership and clients, and Socialinsider’s automation eliminated hours of repetitive reporting work.

Yana Bushmeleva, COO and Partner at Fashionbi, is a big fan of this feature, saying:

“Our team became more efficient. We do not need to spend time on data gathering. Instead, we can focus on insights and analysis.”

Pricing

As we’ve mentioned, the price difference between Socialinsiders and Dash Social is astronomical. Easily get started with a top tier social media analytics and benchmarking tool for just $99/month with Socialinsider.

Dash Social, on the other hand, starts at $999/month and goes up exponentially from there, making it inaccessible to small and medium businesses who need to stretch their marketing budgets.

Alternative to Dash Social #2: Later

Later is a social media and influencer management platform that’s a top competitor of Dash Social. The two tools offer comparable features made for ecommerce businesses that tend to have a heavier emphasis on visual content.

Later was initially created to focus on Instagram, so many of its tools (i.e., its social listening capabilities) are only usable on that platform. However, it does offer social media analytics across five different platforms, bringing it closer to Dash Social’s seven platform capabilities.

The biggest difference between Later and Dash Social is that the former has plans made for individuals and small businesses. While they may not get access to Later’s full suite of tools, their lowest plan starts at just $25/month. Its agency plan even starts at $200/month, more than 50% lower than Dash Social’s smallest tiered plan.

Later’s comparable features include:

• Social media scheduling and publication
• Social media analytics and reporting
• Social listening
• Link-in-bio
• Influencer marketing management

So why should you choose Later?

Ecommerce brands on a budget will get many of the same features as Dash Social, but at a fraction of the cost. Plus, Later has more features for brands that heavily use Instagram as a part of their strategy, including a visual planner, AI caption writer, hashtag suggestions, and more.

Alternative to Dash Social #3: Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a tool that offers a number of social media management solutions, making it a great alternative to Dash Social.

Sprout’s arsenal of features are also catered to agencies or enterprise businesses, and while it has a price point to match, it’s still much cheaper than Dash Social. In fact, Sprout Social’s lowest plan starts at $249/month per user, compared to $999.

Sprout Social’s interface comes with visually appealing charts and graphs, perfect for sharing with your team. Easily connect your social media platforms and even add competitors so you can compare online performance across networks like Facebook, X/Twitter, and Instagram.

Sprout Social and Dash Social have a number of comparable features, including:

• Social media scheduling and publication
• Social media analytics
• Advanced analytics with competitive benchmarking
• Social listening
• Community engagement
• Link-in-bio
• Influencer marketing management
• AI tools

Why choose Sprout Social?

Sprout Social and Dash Social have a lot of similar features, making the two extremely comparable tools with vastly different price points. So for many brands, Sprout Social makes a lot more sense from a financial standpoint.

Sprout Social also provides a lot more tools for B2B companies, whereas Dash Social focuses more on B2C industries. Sprout also includes employee advocacy features, making this the perfect platform for companies looking for that capability.

Alternative to Dash Social #4: Sprinklr

Sprinklr is a customer experience platform with four different enterprise offerings:

• Sprinklr Service: A suite of tools that help with customer service teams
• Sprinklr Social: Basic social media marketing tools like publishing and engagement
• Sprinklr Insights: Analytics tools like social listening and competitive benchmarking
• Sprinklr Marketing: Additional marketing tools like social advertising and campaign planning

The biggest difference between Sprinklr and Dash Social is that while Sprinklr offers more overall features, each of its suites is priced separately instead of offering tiered plans. Brands looking to access features across suites can contact the platform for custom pricing.

However, the Sprinklr Social package—the most similar to Dash Social—starts at $249/month per user. That’s half the price of Dash Social’s starter plan. Although this may change if you’re only interested in Insights or Marketing tools.

Comparable features between the two tools include:

• Social media scheduling and publication
• Community engagement
• Social listening
• Competitive insights and benchmarking
• Social media analytics and reporting
• Campaign planning and monitoring

Why choose Sprinklr?

Sprinklr, like Dash Social, is an enterprise-level tool. However, it also offers customer service capabilities, something that Dash Social doesn’t have as a part of its service offerings. In fact, companies looking to access both Social and Service features can take advantage of a Sprinklr plan that starts at $359/month per user, making Sprinklr a much more appealing software.

Alternative to Dash Social #5: Bazaarvoice

Bazaarvoice is a UGC platform, offering a Dash Social competitor for a different set of features. Dash Social and Bazaarvoice both pair well with ecommerce companies as many of their capabilities are meant to help improve the overall social shopping experience.

However, while the two do still offer some social media management tools as well, their main focus is for social commerce. Bazaarvoice, though, offers a lot more in the way of social selling.

From gathering product reviews to optimizing social media shopping experiences, Bazaarvoice has a lot more to offer ecommerce businesses.

Keep in mind, though, that Bazaarvoice appears to have a more premium pricing structure—brands have to contact its sales team, though, to find out specific pricing information.

Comparable features between Dash Social and Bazaarvoice include:

• Social media scheduling and publication
• Community engagement
• Content library
• Social media analytics and reporting
• Link-in-bio
• Influencer marketing management

Why choose Bazaarvoice?

Bazaarvoice is the perfect choice for medium to large ecommerce businesses looking to sell more on social media.

With features that optimize the social shopping experience and help you get authentic product reviews and opinions, Bazaarvoice can provide a positive ROI.

While Dash Social is a great mixture of features from some of the social media management tools on our list and Bazaarvoice, it only has a handful of features from each. Bazaarvoice, on the other hand, incorporates some basic social media management tools while also mastering capabilities that any online store would need.

Alternative to Dash Social #6: Loomly

Loomly is another social media management tool with features such as post planning, publishing, and analyzing capabilities. When comparing alternatives, Loomly comes out as a great option for brands that need a one-stop-shop for their social media marketing.

Plus, Loomly is a much more affordable option. Plans start at $42/month for up to two users. While Dash Social does allow unlimited users, brands would need more than 20 users to make the pricing comparable.

Dash Social, as we’ve mentioned, offers more in the way of social shopping tools, but brands with small teams and budgets—and who don’t need a wide arsenal of social commerce features—can perfectly take advantage of Loomly’s capabilities.

Lining the two up side by side, their comparable features include:

• Social media scheduling and publication
• Campaign management
• Social media analytics and reporting
• Community engagement

Why should you choose Loomly?

If you’re looking for a tool that specializes in social media management, Loomly is going to be a much better option than Dash Social. While some of their features align, Loomly offers a lot more in the way of social media marketing.

For example, Loomly has AI-powered post optimization tips that help marketers publish optimized content at the best times for their audience. Plus, Loomly offers useful collaboration and approval workflow features, perfect for agencies and larger social media teams.

Loomly also offers its own link shortening tool, helping brands track clicks and ROI of their social media efforts, regardless of whether they’re B2C, ecommerce, or B2B.

Alternative to Dash Social #7: Social Champ

Social Champ is another social media management tool that fits our list of top Dash Social alternatives. This tool specializes in AI assistance and automation, helping to make social media marketing as streamlined as possible.

Use Social Champ’s AI capabilities to auto-schedule content while also brainstorming new ideas that your target audience will love.

While Dash Social offers a predictive AI tool to help brands get content performance predictions, Social Champ’s AI features are more all-encompassing.

More than that, Social Champ is also available at a fraction of the cost of Dash Social. Monthly plans start at just $29/month for two users.

Comparable features between the two tools include:

• Social media scheduling and publication
• Community engagement
• Social media analytics and reporting
• Social listening
• AI assistance

So why choose Social Champ over Dash Social?

If you have a small social media team that’s looking for AI help in managing a strategy, Social Champ is going to be the perfect option for you. It makes planning and scheduling a breeze so that your team can focus on more important things like ad campaigns and strategy improvement.

Social Champ also supports more social media platforms than Dash Social. With Dash Social, you get access to the most popular platforms, like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. But Social Champ lets brands access more niche platforms, like Bluesky, Threads, and Mastodon.

Alternative to Dash Social #8: Facelift

Facelift is a social media orchestration platform that helps brands create and implement their social media strategy with ease. It’s one of the most closely aligned tools on our list to Dash Social—and it has the price point to match.

Pretty much any feature you’d be looking for with Dash Social is available through Facelift—and then some. Which makes its €1,199/month (~$1,311 USD at the time of this writing) price tag make a little more sense.

The tools’ comparable features include:

• Social media scheduling and publication
• Community engagement
• Social media analytics and reporting
• Competitive benchmarking
• Content segmentation
• Content library
• Social listening

So why should you choose Facelift?

While Dash Social has content performance prediction and link-in-bio tools, Facelift has a number of other tools that make it the quintessential social media management platform for enterprise businesses.

Most of Dash Social’s features can be found at Facelift, and then some. Facelift offers capabilities like image editing, content inspiration, approval workflows, review management, a WhatsApp business platform, and more.

Alternative to Dash Social #9: DrumUp

DrumUp is a content marketing and social media management tool that helps brands create and share top-tier content across their online presences.

With DrumUp, your social media team can easily automate content curation by putting together workflows for finding and approving content using DrumUp’s algorithm.

DrumUp’s entire toolset is built to make a social media manager’s job as easy as possible, providing hashtag recommendations, repeat schedules, high-quality content to share, and more. Dash Social does also offer automation capabilities, but at a much higher cost. DrumUp has a completely free limited plan, and its premium plans start at just $19/month.

Comparable features between the two include:

• Social media analytics
• Content ideation

Why choose DrumUp?

If your brand needs to share a lot of content on social media, DrumUp can be a great tool to help find that content online. Its algorithm searches across the web to find high-quality, relevant content that your audience will engage with.

Dash Social offers certain automation features, but doesn’t have as much in the way of content curation. DrumUp is going to be the perfect tool to incorporate into your tech stack for finding and sharing content.

Alternative to Dash Social #10: Meltwater

Meltwater is a consumer intelligence platform that offers comparable features to Dash Social. Meltwater is another enterprise-level tool that interested users must contact the company in order to get pricing information.

Meltwater, however, offers a number of base features that Dash Social does while also including even more options that help brands with public relations and market research.

Comparable features between the two platforms are:

• Social media analytics
• Social listening
• Social media management
• Influencer marketing

So why should you choose Meltwater?

Meltwater offers a number of the same tools that Dash Social does, and then some. If you’re looking for an enterprise-level tool that can help with your social media and influencer marketing, Meltwater’s tools can do just as much as Dash Social’s.

However, Meltwater also has the capability to assist with your public relations strategy and consumer intelligence providing you with insights that can tailor your marketing messaging to the right segment of people.

Final thoughts

If you’re actively seeking alternatives to Dash Social, start by clarifying your must-have coverage and reporting needs.

For many teams, efficient workflows > bloated feature sets, so coverage gaps, benchmark needs, pricing pressure, and deliverable demands often drive the final decision for the users that choose Socialinsider. However, if your needs go beyond social media analytics, and you also require feature like social listening or content scheduling, then Dash Social will be better suited for you as an all-in-one platform.

When comparing alternatives, we’d love it if you gave Socialinsider a try.

FAQs about Dash Social alternatives

What is the onboarding process like, and can you train my whole team?

Socialinsider offers onboarding support and personalized demo sessions for new users. You can request onboarding assistance for your entire team, ensuring everyone is familiar with the platform’s features and workflows.

Will I lose any data or need to reauthorize accounts if I reorganize my projects?

No, reorganizing your projects in Socialinsider does not result in data loss or require account reauthorization. The data displayed in Socialinsider is based on the data received through the official platform API, so if you want to track the same profile in two or more different projects, the data displayed will be the same.

Does Socialinsider support all the platforms and features I used in Dash Social?

Socialinsider supports analytics and benchmarking for Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Twitter (now X). For an up-to-date list of features and supported platforms, please refer to our Pricing page.

Can I export my old reports and continue my current reporting workflows?

No, you cannot export reports from Dash Social and import them into Socialinsider. Socialinsider allows you to generate and export new reports for tracked profiles within the platform only.

How does your pricing compare, and can I scale my plan up or down as my needs change?

Socialinsider offers flexible pricing plans designed to fit different business needs. You can scale your plan up or down according to your requirements. For specific pricing details or to discuss plan adjustments, please contact Socialinsider sales or your account manager. For more information on features and supported platforms, you can also check out our Pricing page.

Is there data available to view the post engagement of influencer posts?

Yes, if the influencer’s account is public. You can add it as a profile to your project and analyze engagement on their posts, just as you would with any competitor profile. For posts made on your own account in collaboration with an influencer, you can use campaign tagging to track and analyze engagement as part of a campaign.

Can I swap accounts in and out of the dashboard?

Yes, Socialinsider allows you to add or remove profiles from your project dashboard at any time. The number of active profiles and the frequency of swaps (removals/replacements) are subject to your subscription plan’s limits. For specific swap allowances, please refer to your plan details or contact your account manager.

Does Socialinsider also analyze boosted posts?

Socialinsider can identify and analyze boosted (promoted) posts for Facebook only, providing insights into their performance compared to organic posts.

For Instagram business accounts, the Instagram API only allows retrieving data for organic posts, so this distinction is not possible at the moment.

Is Socialinsider support available 24/7?

No, Socialinsider support is available during business days only. For assistance outside these hours, you can submit your request, and the support team will respond during business hours. The average response time during business days is 2 hours.

Is there a certification program or training available for using Socialinsider?

No, there is currently no official certification program for Socialinsider. However, onboarding help and demo sessions are available to ensure you and your team are comfortable using the platform.

When it comes to measuring brand performance, I know firsthand how easy it is to get buried in endless streams of numbers and dashboards.

Over the years, I’ve learned that having a clear, expert-backed process for analyzing data is what truly makes the difference.

With the right framework, I can confidently track progress, spot issues early, and focus my team’s efforts where they’ll have the greatest impact.

Here’s the approach I rely on—refined through top industry advice and real-world experience—to keep performance measurement sharp and strategic.

What are brand performance indicators?

Brand performance indicators (BPIs) are metrics used to measure how a brand is performing across various channels, like its website, social media platforms, sales channels, and more.

From brand awareness, brand recollection, brand loyalty to more revenue-related business goals, measuring brand performance implies a lot of data points, each prioritized by what abusiness focuse on a particular moment. 

Here’s how Chelsea Frank, Social & Digital Marketing Manager at Mettlestate explained them:

Brand performance indicators are your brand’s pulse check.

They measure how your brand is doing, both in the market and in the minds of your audience. That includes everything from awareness, reach, and engagement to sentiment, trust, and customer loyalty.

And Jessica Mann, Brand Growth Strategist adds:

Brand performance indicators show how effectively a brand is growing both emotionally and commercially. I want to see how the brand is being perceived to our intended audience, if it’s being remembered, and if there there was enough motivation to take action.

So, what should you be focusing on? Let’s dive in!

What does brand performance measurement imply?

​​Shortly put, according to Renée Shaw, Brand & Social at tl;dv:

Brand performance implies a deeper understanding than just conversion / clicks. It speaks to cultural fit, resonance, reputation. Things that are more human and nuanced.

Brands that are measuring their overall performance are taking a strategic approach to their branding strategy that can help set them up for success in the future. 

When interviewing her, Chelsea told me that:

Measuring performance indicates that you are willing to change, evolve, and remain accountable to the story your brand is telling, as well as consciously creating something that is not only visible but also valuable.

Measuring your brand performance gives you insight into data like:

• How your audience perceives your brand
• Your brand's overall reputation
• Where you stand within your market
• Your brand’s health and equity
• How are your marketing efforts doing

And Jessica adds:

With info like that, you can look into if the messaging is actually landing and identify any spikes in purchase intent. At the core though, brand performance is going to dive into key checkpoints for brand health from a long game perspective.

Does brand performance differ from content performance?

Short answer: Yes.

Brand performance is a much higher-level analysis than content performance. With content performance measurement, you’re looking at each individual piece of content on its own, analyzing how your audience received it and if it hit the goals you were hoping to achieve.

Brand performance measurement looks at the overall health and state of your brand as a whole. Instead of analyzing a blog article, landing page, or social media post, or even all of your content together, it looks at the state of your brand.

Here’s how Chelsea explained it: 

Content performance looks at how individual pieces of content are doing. Are people clicking, watching, sharing, or converting? It’s very tactical and tied to specific outputs.

Brand performance zooms out. It’s about the overall perception and impact of your brand over time. Brand performance reflects how well your audience recognises your brand and trusts it. It’s less about one post and more about the emotional thread that connects every touchpoint.

That said, they’re connected. Strong content contributes to strong brand performance, but content is the vehicle, and brand is the journey. One helps build the other, but they’re not the same thing.

What does this mean?

It’s important to monitor how your audience perceives your brand, or how they feel about it.

Does your brand name come with good connotations? (Ideally, that’s the goal.)

Are people having conversations about your brand?

Are most conversations promoting your brand or talking about customer service issues they’ve had?

Below are some insights that Jessica offered about some do’s and dont’s when measuring both that I think will be useful.

Focusing on their needs and interests will help you build trust through honest communication, which, in turn, will encourage more meaningful engagement and long-term growth for your community.

Content performance is tactical while brand performance is strategic. If you want to learn how a specific asset is doing, content performance is going to tell you by looking at engagement rates, watch times, saves, audience retention, etc. It gives a very dialled in view point that can help you optimize your content.

On the other side, brand performance looks more broader at how all of the content, campaigns, experiences, and partnerships are shaping the overall perception and equity of your brand over time. Okay sure, you went viral but what use is a video that can go viral if it does nothing for your brand’s perception or attracts the wrong audience. 

What are some bust-track brand performance KPIs?

As you set out to track your brand performance, there are several KPIs you need to keep an eye on. Let’s walk through each category of brand performance metrics that you’ll want to add to your monthly or quarterly reporting.

Brand awareness metrics

Brand awareness refers to how well your target audience knows of or can recall your brand. The more people are aware of your brand, the bigger pool of potential customers you have, meaning the better your brand is performing.

To measure your brand awareness, you need to look at individual KPIs like:

• Share of voice
• Brand mention volume
• Reach

Share of voice

Share of voice (SoV) measures how much of the market is dominated by conversations around your brand versus your competitors. 

As an example, imagine that within the coffee shop industry, Starbucks and Dunkin’ likely have the largest share of voice, respectively. Keep in mind that this is also likely largely geographical, and areas in Canada may see Tim Hortons with a larger share of voice.

To measure SoV, use the following formula:

Your Brand Mentions / Total Number of Brand Mentions (Yours + Your Competitors') x 100

You’ll end up with a percentage that tells you how much of the industry is talking about your brand. 25-30% is considered a strong share of voice, but this range can wildly depend on things like your industry, the competitive landscape, and other factors.

Brand mention volume

Next, you want to look at brand mention volume. This is similar to measuring your share of voice, except you’re just looking at the total number of mentions your brand gets across all channels—social media, websites, publications, videos, and more.

You can use social listening tools or a tool as simple as Google Alerts to make sure you don’t miss any online mentions of your brand.

Make sure that your brand mention volume is consistently growing month over month, as that will be a clear indicator of a good brand performance.

Reach

Finally, you also want to examine your reach. Reach refers to the total number of people who have seen your content or your promotions within a given period of time. You can use website and social media analytics tools like Socialinsider to help you pinpoint how many people you’ve reached with your brand.

But with brand awareness, you want to look further than just the number of people you’ve reached. It’s important to look at the trends as well, to see if your efforts are consistently bringing more value over time.

Using Socialinsider’s reach analysis, you’re able to look at your total social media reach, plus how it fluctuates over time, so that you can make sure you’re consistently reaching more and more people within your target market.

Tracking your brand awareness metrics ensures you get an idea of how well known your brand is within your industry. This lets you know whether you need to be ramping up your promotional strategy to reach more people in your target market or if you’re on a solid growth trajectory.

As a takeaway on this, here’s Jessica’s insight:

The numbers matter, but so does the story behind them. It’s one thing to track clicks and mentions, but the real question is: Are we building something memorable? Something meaningful? That’s what strong brand indicators can reveal when you’re paying attention to both the data and the story it tells.

Brand engagement metrics:

Next, you need to look at performance metrics surrounding your brand engagement, or how many people are interacting with your brand online.

These KPIs include:

• Engagement rate
• Comments
• Shares
• Saves

Engagement rate

Your engagement rate measures how many people are interacting with your content. The formula for this metric is:

Number of Engagements / Number of People Reached x 100

Essentially, you’re calculating the percentage of people who interacted with your content after seeing it. You can also use the following formula:

Number of Engagements / Number of Followers x 100

Using that formula would let you know how many people are interacting with your content out of the total number of people who already follow your brand. 

This metric tells you how interesting your content is to your target audience. The higher your engagement rate, the better. However, each platform has its own benchmarks you at least want to aim for.

Keep these engagement rate by followers benchmarks in mind as you calculate your own results:

• TikTok: 2.50%
• Instagram: 0.50%
• Facebook: 0.15%
• X/Twitter: 0.15%

Socialinsider gives you an overview of your social media performance. Take a look at this example dashboard below to get an idea of the insights you can get access to:

This might seem like a lot of data to track, and yes, it’s still early on, but here’s why all this data is important, according to Chelsea:

When it comes to tracking brand performance, you want to focus on indicators that reveal both the breadth and depth of your brand’s influence.

Key metrics include how widely your brand is recognised (brand awareness), how positively it’s perceived (brand sentiment), and how much space it occupies in conversations compared to competitors (share of voice).

Engagement levels tell you how invested your audience is in your message, while loyalty and retention metrics show whether you’re building lasting relationships.

Comments, shares and saves

Your comments, shares, and saves are three different types of engagements that your audience can take with your brand. Likes are also a form of engagement, but that’s an extremely simple one that doesn’t really tell you much. Many users like posts mindlessly as they scroll through their feeds.

However, if your post resonated enough with a follower that they left a comment, shared it with their network, or saved it to go back to later, that tells you a lot more about the type(s) of content your audience wants to see from you.

You can also see this data within your Socialinsider dashboard by scrolling down in the Engagement tab:

Finally, Jessica adds:

We have to be able to go beyond likes and followers when measuring brand performance. I want to see how the brand is being perceived to our intended audience, is it being remembered, and of course was there enough motivation to take action. I believe this is one of the best ways to really see a brand’s relevance and reputation. 

Brand perception metrics

The next category of brand performance metrics is all about brand perception. This relates back to how the general public views your brand. How they feel about your company and its products or services.

The main KPIs you want to track here include:

• Sentiment analysis
• Brand association strength
• Customer advocacy signals

Sentiment analysis

Sentiment analysis looks at the overall sentiment surrounding your brand online and tells you whether it’s positive, negative, or neutral overall. Sentiment analysis tools look at the tone and context of online posts about your brand and put together an analysis based on their findings.

This is an important metric to track as it tells you whether your brand is being received positively within the market or if you need to make a major pivot because your target audience isn’t very receptive to your brand.

Brand association strength

Brand association strength refers to the feelings or ideas that consumers associate with any given brand—and how strong those associations are. For example, Geico has created a strong brand association with its gecko. People who think of the word “gecko” might also think of Geico alongside it due to this strong association.

Brand associations can be anything from feelings to celebrities, founders, slogans, characters, or any other type of idea or activity that reminds consumers of a specific brand. Nike’s “Just Do It” slogan is another example of a strong brand association.

You can use brand tracking tools to find brand associations as well as focus groups and other market research tactics that let you communicate directly with consumers to get their overall thoughts about your brand.

Customer advocacy signals

Customer advocacy signals tell you how willing your audience is to advocate for or promote your brand. This type of advocacy could come via:

• Online reviews
• Word-of-mouth referrals
• User-generated content
• Social media mentions

Customer advocacy is a powerful form of marketing and a sure sign that you have a positive brand perception amongst your audience. To track customer advocacy signals, look at how many reviews your brand is getting online and the number of UGC posts your customers are creating.

One final insight that Jessie gave me and I consider very important to keep in mind when analyzing your brand’s performance is this:

Qualitative metrics are trickier, but arguably more revealing because they’re rooted in perception and help decode how your audience feels. I like to look through the lens of audience sentiment, save to share ratios, brand associations and community depth.

When I see things like “I feel like this was made for me” or “this finally makes sense” or “this made me think of X” we know we’re onto something.

In short, quantitative data validates the impact but qualitative data explains the emotional drivers behind it. You need both to understand how your brand is performing and why it even matters.

Brand loyalty indicators

Next, you want to look at brand loyalty indicators. These tell you how likely your customers are to keep coming back, remaining loyal to your business and not heading off towards your competitors.

These indicators include:

• Community growth
• Repeated engagement patterns
• User-generated content volume

Community growth

With community growth, you’re looking at the size of your social media community (i.e., engaged followers, group members) and how it has fluctuated over time. You want to see consistent growth, showing that you’re adding more engaged customers to your audience.

Repeated engagement patterns

Repeated engagement patterns refer to people who consistently engage with your content and your business on social media. You want to see these repeat engagement patterns as it shows you that your brand and your online presence is resonating with your target audience, and that they’re regularly wanting to see and interact with your content.

When looking for repeat engagement patterns, you also want to analyze the different types of content that tend to see the most engagement. This can help you optimize your content with the top-performing formats or topics.

You can access this within your Socialinsider dashboard by scrolling through the Engagement tab until you find the graph showcasing post types sorted by engagement, like in the example below. 

You can also check out your content pillars—the topics you post most about—to see which of those outperform the rest. This can help inform your content calendar going forward, so you can continue to increase repeat engagement.

User-generated content volume

And finally, you can also look at user-generated content volume. User-generated content is content that your audience has created, but that you can cross-post and use as your own marketing content. It helps your strategy feel more authentic and showcases that you have a wide range of happy customers.

The more UGC you see your customers post, the more likely it is that you’re generating loyal and happy customers that will continue to buy from your business.

Brand authority metrics

Your brand authority refers to the level of trust and credibility you’ve built within your industry. Do your customers trust you? But more than that, are you considered a leader amongst your industry?

To gauge your overall brand authority, you want to monitor KPIs like:

• Industry mention share
• Expert citations

Industry mention share

Industry mention share is similar to share of voice (SoV), but is a bit more specific. Instead of looking at your overall visibility within your industry, it hones in on just your online mentions. This tells you how authoritative your brand’s voice has become across your industry.

To calculate this, use the following formula:

Your Brand Mentions / Total Mentions in Your Industry x 100

This lets you see how much of the industry conversation your brand is dominating. A high authority brand will obviously be talked about a lot. And a high authority brand is a key indicator of a successful brand performance.

Expert citations

Expert citations are online posts where experts mention your brand, either in a blog article or a social media post. The more expert citations your brand gets, the higher its authority, as well.

Here’s an example of what this can look like. The below LinkedIn post is from an industry expert citing Socialinsider’s founder Adina Jipa as the two of them talked through analytics and data. Getting mentions and opportunities like this is a clear sign of brand authority.

Competitive brand metrics

Finally, we need to look at competitive insights, or KPIs that showcase how your brand stands up against its competitors, to round out your brand performance analysis. 

The main metrics you’ll look at here are:

• Engagement rate comparisons
• Audience overlap analysis

Engagement rate comparisons

Engagement rate comparisons measure your own engagement rate up to your competitors’ engagement to see how you line up. You can easily access this information inside your Socialinsider dashboard by adding all of your major competitors to your account.

Take a look at the overall profile summary below—you get to see comparisons for follower count, overall engagement, number of posts published, and overall reach. Use these numbers to calculate engagement rate for both your brand and your competitors to see where you stand.

Audience overlap analysis

Audience overlap analysis shows you how much of your audience lines up with your competitors’ audiences and how much of your respective targeting overlaps. You can use audience overlap tools to measure this metric and discover your closest competitors.

Once you’ve found those competitors, you can more easily conduct competitive benchmarketing analysis, looking to see how you and your performance compare to your closest competitors.

As Aiden from LS Electric, one of our customers told us in a customer interview, when asked about why did he signed up for Socialinsider: "You need some platform to analyze how we are doing and where we are at and what should we do to overcome or to follow our competitors."

Brand performance measurement techniques

Aside from tracking the aforementioned metrics and KPIs, there are a few additional techniques you can employ to measure your overall brand performance.

• Emotion analysis and brand sentiment measurement: Use social listening and sentiment analysis software to analyze the overall emotion surrounding your industry, and more specifically, your brand. Understanding your target audience’s emotions behind their motivations to buy can help you create better messaging and improve your performance.

• Competitive content gap identification: Pay attention to the types of content your competitors are using to ensure you aren’t missing any key promotional ideas. By using Socialinsider’s content pillars feature, you can see the most engaging content pillars for your competitors, and the results generated, offering insights for new content strategies approaches.

• Cross-platform brand journey mapping and optimization: Analyze how your audience is interacting with your brand across different channels by mapping out all of the touchpoints. Are there places where your audience members are falling off and not making it all the way to becoming customers? Optimize those touchpoints to improve overall performance and conversions.

Tips on how to optimize your brand's performance

As a marketing leader, optimizing brand performance means thinking beyond tactical fixes—it requires a holistic, strategic approach that aligns every brand effort with your organization’s big-picture goals. Here’s how you can orchestrate true brand excellence:

1. Unite your data across functions

Break down silos and connect the dots across every customer touchpoint. Integrate social, web, paid media, and offline data for a single source of truth. Use consolidated dashboards to monitor brand performance holistically—helping you spot trends, identify risks, and find new growth opportunities in real time.

#2. Benchmark relentlessly

Don’t just measure progress in a vacuum. Regularly benchmark your brand’s health, share of voice, and perception against key competitors and industry standards. Use these insights to identify gaps, highlight your strengths, and inform your next strategic move.

#3. Tap Into Predictive Analytics

Leverage advanced analytics to anticipate market shifts and audience behaviors before they happen. Machine learning and predictive tools can reveal leading indicators of brand health, helping you invest resources proactively and minimize surprises.

#4. Build a Data-Driven Brand Culture

Empower your teams to make decisions rooted in data. Encourage sharing of insights at every level of the organization, from marketing to sales to the boardroom. Transparency and education around brand metrics foster accountability and drive collective buy-in for your brand vision.

#5. Audit and Evolve Your Messaging

Consistency is key, but so is relevance. Regularly audit your messaging across channels to ensure alignment with your brand’s core values and audience expectations. Use social listening and feedback loops to adapt your messaging in real time, keeping your brand both authentic and agile.

#6. Embrace Agile Experimentation

Encourage your teams to test, iterate, and innovate. Frame brand campaigns as experiments with clear hypotheses and defined success metrics. Scale the initiatives that drive results, and swiftly evolve or discontinue those that don’t.

Tools and technologies for brand performance measurement

Lastly, to ensure you’re properly monitoring, measuring, and optimizing your brand performance, you need the right toolset. These four tools can be a huge help.

Cross-channel analysis tools - Socialinsider

Social media analysis tools are key for tracking data like:

• Reach
• Engagement
• Competitor performance
• Social media insights

With Socialinsider, you can get access to key competitive analysis features that let you in on how your social media marketing performance lines up with that of each of your main competitors.

You can also get access to data that helps you form an informed paid campaign budget by looking at the overall organic value of your results:

To access this on your own, we recommend configuring the values based on the benchmarks of your industry.

Start by clicking on Settings from your home dashboard, then click on Organic Value Configuration.

From there, choose the channels you want this metric calculated on. Next, you can assign different values based on what engagement, awareness, and other metrics are worth to your business.

Socialinsider can also help you track the overall performance of each of your social media channels, monitoring growth over time and ensuring your social media strategy is improving your brand performance.

And just in case you're not totally sure whether you should test out Socialinsider, just yet, here's how Chris from Axel Springer, one of our customers, reviewed our platform: The user interface and just the general UX with it is quite straightforward, which compared to the complexity of other ones is much appreciated."

Social media monitoring and listening tools - Mention.com

Social media monitoring and listening tools can help you track metrics like:

• Brand mentions
• Share of voice
• Sentiment analysis
• Brand association

Mention.com is a great tool to check out for online monitoring and analysis.

You can get access to features like real-time monitoring of online data across the last two years, sentiment analysis, share of voice, competitive intelligence, and more.

SEO tools - Ahrefs

SEO tools play a major role in your content strategy. They can help you find the right keywords and topics to create content around, while also helping you analyze your audience overlap and content gaps.

Ahrefs is a go-to SEO tool for brands looking to use their content strategy as part of their brand performance optimization.

Get access to features that help you explore competitor websites, find gaps in your content topics, track content performance, and more.

CRM - HubSpot

A CRM is essential for tracking data about your customers. You can use your CRM to monitor metrics like:

• Sales
• Repeat purchases
• Customer interactions

HubSpot has a free CRM that houses all of your customer data in one easy-to-access place. You can use the CRM to gather customer information like contact info to then market directly to them via email and text.

You can also get access to features that let you track your customer relationships, sales, and other activities.

Final thoughts

For me, a strong data analysis framework isn’t just about staying on top of results—it’s about leading with clarity.

By sticking to proven expert tips and always adapting my process to new business challenges, I make sure performance insights drive every big decision.

My advice? Trust your framework, revisit it often, and let it be the tool that helps you stay agile and ahead.

FAQs on brand performance

How to set a data performance analysis framework?

• Define your business objectives: Clarify what you want to achieve (e.g., brand awareness, sales growth).
• Choose relevant KPIs: Select metrics that directly measure progress toward your goals.
• Integrate key data sources: Combine data from social, web, CRM, and sales for a holistic view.
• Set benchmarks and targets: Compare your performance to past results and industry standards.
• Build clear dashboards: Visualize your KPIs for fast, easy monitoring across the team.
• Analyze trends and drivers: Identify what’s impacting your metrics—positively or negatively.
• Turn insights into actions: Use findings to guide strategic decisions and improvements.
• Review and refine regularly: Update your framework as your business and data evolve.

Creating a strong brand is powerful. Think about how certain brand names have become synonymous with their product, like Kleenex, Band-Aid, and Tupperware. Those companies have incredible brand strength, and it’s all down to paying attention to the right brand metrics.

By tracking your brand metrics, you can understand how people feel about your brand, your position in the market, and so much more. Therefore, tracking your brand’s marketing metrics is key to building a solid customer base—and retaining it.

Read on to learn more about what brand metrics are, why they’re important, plus the essential brand metrics to track.

What are brand metrics?

Brand metrics are quantifiable data sets that give you insights into how your brand is performing. The metrics data provides details on things like brand perception, campaign performance, and how effective your marketing strategy is.

The brand metrics you pay the most attention to will correlate with your specific business objectives. For example, newer companies looking to grow their initial customer base might look more closely at brand KPIs like brand awareness, while a larger business looking to make more sales might pay attention to brand equity.

And a company resolving a recent PR crisis would be more interested in brand perception than anything else.

It’s important to track the right brand metrics so that you know where you stand with your target audience. Having this knowledge is key to growing your business.

Brand metrics vs KPIs

Before I go further, it’s important to highlight the difference between brand metrics and brand KPIs. Brand metrics are quantitative data points that track how your brand performs in the market, covering aspects like awareness, sentiment, loyalty, engagement, satisfaction, and retention. 

Brand KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), on the other hand, are specific, measurable metrics chosen to track progress towards your brand goals, such as improving awareness, increasing retention, or growing advocacy. KPIs should be relevant, actionable, and consistently trackable.

Why are brand metrics important to track?

Before we dive into the brand metrics you might want to add to your monthly reports, let’s talk about why tracking this data is so important. There are five key reasons why.

• Know how people feel about your brand. Having the inside look into your audience’s feelings towards your brand can help you improve your positioning and run the right campaigns.

• Retain customers. Strong branding improves customer loyalty, so tracking your brand metrics can help you keep customers coming back.

• Understand your brand’s position in the market compared with competitors. Get a clear idea of how your brand is faring against competitors so you know if you need to improve your standing.

• Increase revenue. Better branding means more visibility. More visibility inevitably leads to more customers and more revenue.

• Catch problems early. Monitoring your brand and its key metrics will give you a quick heads-up if you’re facing some kind of brand reputation crisis, so you can easily handle it.

The bottom line is this: tracking your brand metrics gives you important insights that can help you make better business decisions.

Brand awareness metrics: measuring your brand’s visibility

Question to answer: “Are people discovering and recognizing my brand?”

Brand awareness refers to how familiar your target audience is with your brand. Can they recognize your logo or brand name? Can they recall your brand when thinking of your industry or product?

The more aware your target market is about your brand, the more likely they are to lean on your products when the need for them arises. But more than that, the more brand awareness you build, the more trust your customers will have in you.

Plus, as you become more and more recognizable in your industry, it becomes harder for your competitors to keep up with you.

But how do you measure brand awareness? There are a few ways to keep track of how well people know about your brand.

1. Reach: measuring your brand’s total audience

Social media reach refers to the total number of unique users who have seen your content. It’s a foundational metric because it directly reflects your brand’s ability to cover your total addressable market (TAM) — the larger the reach, the more people are aware of your brand, products, or services.

When your content consistently reaches a wide audience, it drives brand visibility, fuels top-of-funnel growth, and lays the groundwork for engagement, conversions, and loyalty. Whether you’re launching a new product or scaling an established one, your ability to grow hinges on how effectively you can reach more of the right people — ahead of your competitors.

To calculate reach, you typically use native analytics from each platform, or third-party social media analytics platforms such as Socialinsider.

But knowing your own reach is only the beginning. What matters more is understanding how your reach stacks up against your competitors and industry peers. That’s where competitive benchmarking comes in.

With tools like Socialinsider, you can:

• Compare your brand’s reach against direct competitors on key platforms.
• Measure share of reach: Are they reaching a larger percentage of your shared audience (total addressable market)?
• Identify which content types or formats drive the highest reach across industries.
• Track how your reach evolves over time — and whether competitors are outpacing your growth.

This competitive lens helps you identify opportunities to optimize, target new segments of your TAM, and ultimately, capture more market share through smarter social strategies.

2. Impressions: understanding brand exposure frequency

Although often used interchangeably, reach and impressions are distinct metrics:

• Reach = the number of unique users who saw your content.
• Impressions = the total number of times your content was displayed — including repeat views by the same user.

Example:
If 1,000 people each see your post twice, your reach is 1,000, but your impressions are 2,000.

Impressions reveal how often your audience is exposed to your brand content. Reach tells you how far your content is spreading. Because people may see your content more than once, impressions tend to be higher than reach.

Why impression frequency impacts brand recall

Impression frequency refers to how many times, on average, a single user sees your content. This is critical for brand awareness and recall.

Psychologically, we’re more likely to remember a message when we see it repeatedly. In marketing, this is known as the “effective frequency” — the number of exposures required before a message sticks.

• If your frequency is too low (e.g., 1–2 impressions per user), your brand may be easily forgotten.
• If it’s too high, it can lead to fatigue or even annoyance — especially if the content isn’t engaging.

The sweet spot varies by platform and audience, but many marketers aim for 3–7 impressions per user to maximize recall without oversaturation.

3. Share of Voice (SOV): your competitive visibility position

Share of Voice (SOV) measures how much visibility your brand has in the market compared to competitors — across channels like social media, digital ads, PR, and even traditional media.

It’s often expressed as a percentage of total industry conversations or impressions. For example, if your brand accounts for 25% of all social mentions in your industry, your SOV is 25%.

A high SOV indicates brand dominance. The greater your SOV relative to your market share, the more you’re punching above your weight — and the more likely you are to capture future market share.

Why positive share matters more than total mentions

Not all mentions are created equal, though. A brand could dominate in total mentions but be negatively perceived — due to backlash, PR crises, or negative reviews.

That’s why it’s important to distinguish between:

• Total SOV = All brand mentions
• Positive SOV = Mentions with favorable sentiment

Positive SOV reflects brand health and trust, which influence consumer decisions more than raw volume. It tells you not only how loud your brand is, but whether people like what they hear.

Sentiment analysis platforms can help filter mentions by tone — so you can focus on quality over quantity.

Personally, I use quantitative and qualitative data to measure the SOV, awareness, sentiment, etc. It’s not enough to just ask if people see us at this point in our industry; we need to instead look deeper at the metrics to understand if people are remembering our brand.” - Jessica Mann, Brand Growth Strategist

Calculating SOV across digital and traditional channels

To calculate SOV, you need to define your scope (e.g., social media, paid ads, PR) and track all brand mentions — yours and your competitors’ — over a set period.

Basic formula: SOV (%) = (Your brand’s mentions or impressions / Total mentions or impressions in your industry) x 100

Apply this to:

• Social media: track branded mentions, hashtags, tags
• Paid search/display: compare ad impressions or spend
• PR coverage: analyze how often your brand is featured in the media
• Traditional media: use media monitoring services to track mentions on TV, radio, or print

Cross-channel SOV gives you a holistic view of brand visibility across the full customer journey.

Using SOV to identify growth gaps

Analyzing SOV alongside market share reveals growth opportunities. If your SOV is higher than your current market share, you’re positioned to gain traction. If it’s lower, you may be losing mindshare to competitors.

Tracking SOV over time helps you:

• Spot underperforming channels where competitors dominate
• Find untapped audiences or topics you should own
• Set realistic goals for content, ad campaigns, or influencer activations

In short, SOV is a strategic compass for identifying where to show up louder, smarter, and more meaningfully.

4. Search Volume: capturing digital brand interest

Search volume reflects how often a keyword or phrase is searched within a specific timeframe and location, typically measured monthly. When applied to your brand name, it becomes a direct indicator of brand demand.

Rising branded search volume means more people are actively looking for your business, suggesting:

• Increased awareness from campaigns, social content, or word-of-mouth
• A stronger position in consumers’ minds
• Higher intent to engage, purchase, or learn more

Think of branded search as a real-time pulse of your brand’s visibility and desirability in the market.

To fully understand your brand’s performance in search, it’s crucial to separate branded keywords (terms that include your brand name, e.g., “Socialinsider analytics tool”) from non-branded keywords (general industry or product terms, e.g., “best social media analytics tool”).

Why this matters:

• Branded searches = indicators of brand strength and loyalty
• Non-branded searches = opportunities to capture new users who haven’t yet chosen a brand

Tracking both helps you:

• Assess the impact of brand awareness campaigns (look for branded search spikes)
• Optimize for SEO and content strategy to grow discoverability in broader, non-branded categories

Tools like Google Search Console, Ahrefs, and SEMRush can help you differentiate and monitor both keyword types.

Seasonal and trend analysis for search metrics

Keep in mind that search volume isn’t static; it often follows seasonal cycles and broader market trends.

By analyzing historical search data, you can:

• Predict peak periods of demand (e.g., health supplements spike in January, B2B tools in Q4)
• Plan marketing and content calendars accordingly
• Capitalize on emerging trends before competitors (e.g., rising interest in “AI social analytics”)

Use tools like Google Trends or Keyword Planner to spot:

• Search spikes tied to events, product launches, or news cycles
• Declining interest in outdated terms or features
• Regional differences in search behavior

Tracking search volume trends helps you stay ahead of the curve and align your strategy with what your audience actually wants — when they want it.

5. Website Traffic: converting awareness to action

Website traffic isn’t just about numbers — it’s a signal of how effectively your brand is capturing attention.

When awareness campaigns (like social media pushes, PR features, influencer posts, or digital ads) work, you’ll see:

• Spikes in traffic volume, often aligned with campaign launches or media coverage
• Increases in direct traffic, showing more people remember your brand URL
• Growth in branded search traffic, meaning more users are searching specifically for your brand or products

Monitoring traffic patterns over time helps you assess whether your brand-building efforts are translating into action — not just impressions, but actual visits to your site.

To understand which awareness activities are driving traffic, you should segment traffic sources by campaign and platform. Segmenting traffic this way allows you to:

• Attribute results to specific awareness efforts
• Identify top-performing content types or messaging
• Optimize budget and effort toward the most effective channels

Use attribution models (like first-click or linear) to understand how brand campaigns contribute to visits — even if they don’t lead to immediate conversions. This shows the real value of top-of-funnel efforts and helps justify investment in brand awareness over time.

Brand health metrics: measuring relationship strength

Question to answer: “How strong is our relationship with our customers?”

6. Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): the main brand health metric

Brand strength has a direct influence on Customer Lifetime Value — the total revenue a customer generates throughout their relationship with your brand.

A strong brand leads to:

• Higher customer retention (people stay loyal longer)
• More frequent purchases (greater trust = more engagement)
• Increased willingness to pay (premium perception = higher margins)
• Stronger emotional connection (leading to advocacy and referrals)

In short, the more trusted and recognized your brand is, the more valuable each customer becomes over time.

CLV can be calculated using a simple formula: CLV = (Average Purchase Value) × (Purchase Frequency) × (Customer Lifespan)

For example, if a customer spends $100 per order, buys 4 times a year, and stays with your brand for 5 years, their CLV = $100 × 4 × 5 = $2,000.

You can also use advanced CLV models that incorporate:

• Gross margin (to focus on profit, not revenue)
• Discount rates (to account for time value of money)
• Segmentation (e.g., CLV by channel, cohort, or persona)

Tracking CLV over time helps you measure how brand-building efforts improve long-term customer value, not just short-term conversions.

Using CLV to prioritize brand investments

When CLV increases, it means your brand is building deeper, more profitable customer relationships — and that’s exactly where you should invest.

Use CLV data to:

• Identify high-value segments most influenced by brand loyalty
• Allocate more budget to channels and campaigns that drive long-term value, not just clicks
• Justify branding spend in executive conversations with numbers that prove impact

Instead of focusing purely on short-term ROI, CLV shifts your strategy toward sustainable growth — where brand equity becomes your biggest asset.

7. Net Promoter Score (NPS): loyalty indicator

NPS is a powerful metric because it measures customer loyalty and sentiment with a single question: “How likely are you to recommend our brand to a friend or colleague?”

Customers respond on a scale from 0–10 and are grouped into:

• Promoters (9–10): Loyal fans who fuel word-of-mouth and repeat business
• Passives (7–8): Satisfied but not enthusiastic — vulnerable to competitors
• Detractors (0–6): Unhappy customers who may churn or damage your brand reputation

A high NPS indicates strong brand advocacy, which correlates with:

• Higher retention
• Lower acquisition costs (via referrals)
• Faster, more organic growth

In fact, research shows that companies with higher NPS tend to grow faster than competitors with lower scores.

To calculate NPS: NPS = % of Promoters − % of Detractors

The score ranges from -100 to +100.

• A positive score means you have more promoters than detractors.
• A score above +50 is considered excellent in most industries.

To get deeper insights, segment your NPS by:

• Customer type (e.g., new vs. long-term)
• Product line or service type
• Region or market
• Channel (e.g., online vs. in-person)

Segmenting helps you identify where loyalty is strong and where you’re at risk of churn, enabling more targeted improvements.

Turning detractors into promoters starts with quick, personalized responses and digging into the root causes of dissatisfaction. By actively listening, addressing issues, and following up, brands can not only recover unhappy customers but often build stronger loyalty than before, thanks to the service recovery paradox.

8. Customer Satisfaction (CSAT): measuring experience quality

While both CSAT and NPS measure customer sentiment, they serve different purposes. CSAT focuses on specific interactions or experiences, like a purchase, support call, or product use and captures short-term satisfaction, while NPS measures overall loyalty and long-term brand perception, asking if customers would recommend you.

CSAT isn’t just a feel-good metric; it’s a leading indicator of business performance. Higher satisfaction scores often correlate with:

• Lower churn
• Higher repeat purchase rates
• More positive reviews and referrals
• Better support efficiency (fewer follow-ups or escalations)

To make CSAT actionable:

• Track it alongside retention, revenue, and CLV
• Segment by channel, product line, or agent/team
• Use score trends to identify areas for UX, product, or service improvement

A strong CSAT survey is:

• Timely: Triggered immediately after a key interaction (checkout, support, onboarding, etc.)
• Optional but encouraged: Include an open-text field for deeper feedback (qualitative data is just as valuable)
• Short: Avoid overloading with questions; aim for completion within 30 seconds
• Simple: Ask a clear, single question like “How satisfied were you with your experience today?”, usually rated on a scale from 1 to 5.

Quantitative metrics are your hard numbers and they show brand momentum and behavioural patterns. Yes, they include your typical vanity metrics like SOV, CSAT, customer retention, and more but there are two metrics I believe will have the highest ROI in the next two years which are watch time and audience retention. While often labeled as content metrics, I see them as trust metrics. If people are sticking around, it’s a clear signal your brand is resonating and not just grabbing attention but earning it. - Jessica Mann, Brand Growth Strategist

9. Retention Rate: measuring brand loyalty

Retention rate measures the percentage of customers who continue doing business with you over time, making it one of the purest indicators of brand health.

High retention means your brand delivers consistent value, builds trust, and fosters loyalty, all signs of a strong brand. Unlike vanity metrics like impressions or even one-time conversions, retention reflects how well your brand keeps promises and maintains relevance after the first interaction.

Strong retention also leads to:

• Lower customer acquisition costs (since loyal customers stay longer)
• Higher customer lifetime value (CLV)
• Organic growth via referrals and word-of-mouth

When analysing retention, it’s important to do so in cohorts. Cohort analysis groups users based on when they first interacted with your brand (e.g., by signup month, campaign, or channel), then tracks how long they stay active or engaged.

This allows you to:

• Spot patterns in retention over time
• Compare how different campaigns or acquisition channels perform
• Identify drop-off points in the customer journey

For example, if users acquired through a referral program have higher retention than those from paid ads, that tells you where your stickiest audience comes from, and where to invest more.

Retention doesn’t just depend on product performance, though; it’s driven by the overall brand experience.

To boost retention:

• Onboard with value: Help new customers see success quickly
• Stay relevant: Deliver personalized, timely content and offers
• Be consistent: Reinforce your brand’s identity and promise across all touchpoints
• Listen and respond: Use feedback loops (like NPS) to fix pain points before customers churn
• Create emotional connection: Make customers feel seen, heard, and appreciated

Great brands don’t just sell — they build relationships, and retention is the clearest sign those relationships are working.

Brand tracking metrics: monitoring performance over time

Question to answer: “How is my brand performance trending?”

Brand tracking is the ongoing process of measuring and analyzing how your brand is performing over time, in terms of awareness, perception, engagement, and competitive standing.

To spot patterns, trends, and opportunities, you can use the following toolkit:

• Brand awareness over time
• Engagement rate trends
• Competitive benchmarks

This is where social media analytics platforms such as Socialinsider truly shine because not only can you see metrics such as reach, impressions, and engagement rate, but you can also see how they’ve evolved over time (Socialinsider offers up to 12 months of historical data, so you can spot seasonality) and compare them against competitors and industry leaders.

By monitoring brand awareness over time, you can measure how effectively your campaigns, partnerships, and PR efforts are increasing recognition. The insights you can gain are:

• Whether your audience reach is growing
• How well people remember or search for your brand (e.g., branded search volume, social mentions)
• How awareness correlates with traffic spikes, conversions, or campaign activity

The engagement rate measures how actively your audience interacts with your social media content, and it’s typically calculated as the ratio of total engagements (likes, comments, shares, saves, etc.) to total followers or impressions, depending on each social media platform. In Socialinsider, we calculate engagement based on reach, impressions, and followers separately, so you can pick the metric you prefer and compare it with the performance on the other platforms.

By analyzing engagement, you can spot:

• Which types of content (or topics) resonate with your audience
• Shifts in sentiment or tone around your brand
• Early signals of brand advocacy or dissatisfaction

While engagement isn’t always positive—after all, negative engagement can lead to a negative brand sentiment, like we just mentioned—the more engagement your brand builds, the more awareness typically grows alongside it.

However, you can’t measure brand success in a vacuum, so comparing how you fare against your competitors is a key part of understanding how you fit within the market. Competitive insights let you know what your competitors are doing with their messaging, how much success they’re having, and how you can more effectively compete in your market.

Together, these three data streams give you a 360° view of brand health:

• Awareness shows your visibility
• Engagement shows your connection
• Benchmarking shows your position

Brand perception metrics: understanding how you’re seen

Question to answer: “What do people really think about my brand?”

Brand perception is, as you can imagine, how a customer perceives a brand—how they judge, think, and feel about a brand and its products. Does your target customer have a favorable opinion of your brand?

When you have a clear understanding of your brand perception, you know how you need to position yourself in the market. This helps direct your strategy and your overall content to better grab your target audience.

10. Social Mentions: monitoring organic brand conversations

Social mentions occur when users reference your brand — by name, tag, or hashtag — in their posts, comments, or replies on social platforms. Unlike paid ads or branded posts, these mentions are organic signals of public interest.

They often represent:

• Real-time reactions to your products or services
• Unfiltered customer opinions, reviews, or feedback
• Earned media generated by users, creators, or media outlets

Because they come from your audience, not your brand, social mentions are a strong indicator of authentic engagement. Whether it’s praise, questions, or criticism, these mentions show what people really think — making them a powerful source of consumer insight.

When analyzing social mentions, it’s important to look at both quantity and quality:

• Mention volume tells you how often your brand is being talked about. A spike might signal a successful campaign — or a brewing crisis.
• Mention quality goes deeper, analyzing:
  • Sentiment (positive, neutral, negative)
  • Source credibility (is the mention from a top influencer or a spam account?)
  • Context and intent (product praise, complaint, question, or joke?)

Relying on volume alone can be misleading. For example, 10,000 negative mentions after a product failure isn’t a success — but 500 positive mentions from respected voices in your niche can be incredibly valuable.

Social listening tools can help you monitor both how much and how well your brand is being talked about.

I always say you can’t manage what you don’t measure but just looking at numbers won’t tell the full story of how your brand is landing. I break brand performance down into two lanes in what I call my Q squared analysis which is using quantitative signals (the what) and qualitative signals (the why). - Jessica Mann, Brand Growth Strategist

11. Brand Sentiment: measuring the emotional health of your brand

Brand sentiment is a metric that tells you how your target audience feels about your brand. Sentiment can be considered positive, negative, or simply neutral.

While you should always aim for positive brand sentiment, there’s usually nothing wrong with a neutral brand attitude. However, as I’m sure you understand, you want to avoid a negative brand sentiment.

On social, we're looking at engagement rate, shares, reposts and sentiment in comments. - Renée Shaw, Brand & Social Strategist

Measuring brand sentiment helps you get a better idea of whether your customers have a positive experience with your brand. If you’re discovering a more negative sentiment, you want to get hold of it early so that you can respond to the issues and create a better experience and attitude towards your brand.

Basic sentiment analysis classifies mentions as positive, neutral, or negative, but advanced sentiment tracking goes deeper:

• Emotion analysis: Identifies specific emotions like trust, frustration, admiration, or confusion
• Intent detection: Analyzes whether users are complimenting, complaining, asking for help, or considering a purchase
• Topic-level sentiment: Breaks down sentiment by product features, service experience, pricing, etc.

These insights help you understand why people feel the way they do, and what to fix or amplify in your brand strategy.

Customer reviews are powerful sentiment indicators and a goldmine for insights. Actively managing reviews across platforms like Google, G2, Yelp, or Trustpilot helps shift public sentiment over time and signals credibility to future buyers.

Final thoughts

Keeping track of your brand metrics ensures you always have a thumb on your brand’s overall health. If sentiment dips or perception isn’t high enough, you can create a campaign to change that. But you need the right tools to help, and Socialinsider is the perfect social media analysis tool for your needs. Get started today.

FAQS about brand metrics

1. What kind of metrics can help with brand performance measurement?

Metrics that can give you a better understanding of your brand performance include brand awareness, brand health, and brand perception.

2. How do you choose which brand metrics to track?

You can use the SMART framework to choose the best brand metrics for your team to track. This framework is outlined below:

• Strategic: Your metrics align with your marketing strategy and the business goals you’ve laid out.
• Market-driven: You look towards external metrics that let you know how your business is performing with your customers and against your competitors.
• Actionable: The metrics can be directly impacted by your actions.
• Repeatable: The metrics can be repeated in order to create patterns and trends to measure against.
• Touchpoints: Your metrics look towards customer touchpoints that give you an understanding of the customer experience.

If the metric hits each of those points from the SMART framework, it’s a good indicator that you should add it to your overall report.

3. How do you measure brand value?

Metrics like brand awareness, brand perception, and brand loyalty can give you a clear picture of your brand value.

4. What are the brand health metrics?

To gauge your brand health, look at metrics like:

• Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
• Net Promoter Score (NPS)
• Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)
• Retention rate

5. What are the brand affinity metrics?

Brand affinity refers to how people feel about your brand. Essentially, brand affinity and brand sentiment are the same thing, so you’ll want to look towards your sentiment analysis and customer feedback.

If you want to stay relevant and ahead of the curve in your industry, you need to implement a competitive monitoring strategy.

Knowing what your competitors are up to, what kinds of content they’re posting, how their online strategy is performing, and what their audience likes to see from them should be an essential part of your process.

Read along with us as we introduce you to what competitive monitoring means, how it will give you an advantage, plus eight essential strategies you can put in place to keep an eye on the competition.

Competitive monitoring is the practice of monitoring your competitors and their activity. This includes things like their social media posts, digital ad campaigns, product launches, price changes, and more.

To get a better understanding of what exactly competitive monitoring looks like—as well as what it doesn’t entail—read through the table below.

How does monitoring fit into your broader competitive intelligence ecosystem?

Having an overarching competitive intelligence strategy means you’re putting competitive monitoring, analysis, and benchmarking altogether in a single comprehensive plan or process. Monitoring is often one of the first steps in competitive intelligence, as it’s where you start to collect your information.

From there, you can analyze what you’ve found through your monitoring strategy and discover benchmarks you should be meeting. All in all, not much competitive intelligence can be gained if you’re not properly monitoring the landscape.

How does competitive monitoring help businesses gain a competitive advantage?

Competitive monitoring is an ongoing process that helps businesses keep an eye on what’s going on across their industry. There are a number of benefits to monitoring your competitors that can give you an advantage.

Early warning system

Detect competitive threats before they fully materialize, giving you time to prepare strategic responses rather than reacting after the fact. For example, you can get a heads up when your competitors are launching a new product, service, or feature so you’re aware of changes across the landscape.

Strategic opportunity identification

Spot gaps in competitor offerings, messaging shifts, or market positioning changes that create openings for your business. If you can solve customer problems that your competitors aren’t or if you can find a target market that your competitors are neglecting, it opens a huge opportunity for your business.

Informed decision-making

Base strategic decisions on real-time competitive intelligence rather than outdated assumptions or guesswork. Monitoring gives you real, tangible data and insights on your competitors. This helps you make better decisions because you have actual information to go off of.

Proactive messaging adaptation

Adjust your messaging and positioning in response to competitor communication shifts before they gain traction. Being able to stay one step ahead of the competition is a superpower that can really boost your business.

Faster market response

Reduce the time between competitor actions and your strategic responses through systematic monitoring and established protocols. Always have your thumb on competitor movement so you can swiftly pivot, adjust, and respond.

Essential competitive monitoring strategies to stay ahead of the curve

Ready to start monitoring your competitors and industry so you can stay in-the-know? These eight strategies can help.

Digital presence and content monitoring

First things first, let’s talk about monitoring your competitors’ digital presences and online content across their website and other channels. This provides you with insights like:

• What types of content they’re publishing.
• How their website is performing.

There are four main tactics you can employ to help you track your competition’s digital presence, website, and content.

Setting up effective Google Alerts to track competitor mentions

To make sure you don’t miss a single mention, set up alerts for things like:

Each competitor’s business name

Relevant products to your industry

Proprietary product, service, or feature names your competitors use

Other key terms or phrases that people use when talking about your competitors or industry

You can then set how often you want to be alerted, whether you want alerts as they’re published, a daily digest, or a weekly digest.

Tools and techniques for tracking website changes and content updates

SEO tools like Ahrefs and Semrush are imperative for tracking your competition’s website performance. You can look at keyword and backlink data (which we talk more about next) as well as track website changes and content updates.

Keep an eye out for major website changes like design updates, new webpages, or changes in content topics that might alert you to upcoming company updates.

Monitoring backlink acquisition to identify partnership strategies

Your SEO tools can also help you monitor your competitors’ backlinks (the websites that link to your competitor websites) and find opportunities for your business to boost its backlinks as well.

Ahrefs specifically has a “Link Intersect” tool that lets you see all of the websites that link to your competitors but don’t link to you. Pull that list of websites and start reaching out to them to see if there are any opportunities to partner up.

Tracking keyword rankings to detect SEO strategy shifts

SEO tools can also provide you with data like:

• The keywords your competitors are currently ranking for.
• New keywords they’ve started ranking for.
• Keywords they’ve lost rankings for.

Pay attention to keyword movement as it can let you know if your competitors are adjusting their SEO strategies, targeting new markets, or widening the net of topics they cover. This can give you insight into upcoming movements in their overall product strategy.

Social media intelligence gathering

Monitoring your competitors’ social media platforms can also provide you with amazing insights into their marketing messaging, target audiences, positioning, and more. Use these tactics to help you gain competitive intelligence through their social media presence.

Observing brand identity, engagement tactics, and audience growth

Start by observing each competitor’s visual brand identity, the way(s) they engage with their audience, and how, in turn, their audience seems to grow.

Let’s walk through each one while using a real-life example. Odd Muse is a luxury womenswear brand. One of their competitors is online women’s fashion brand Oh Polly. Let’s look at how Odd Muse would handle social media intelligence gathering across Oh Polly’s presence.

Visual style

Odd Muse has a minimalist, elegant, and luxury-inspired style that seamlessly comes through across its social media channels.

In contrast, we can see that Oh Polly veers towards a bolder, more glamorous and trend-driven style.

Engagement tactics

Next, you want to look at engagement tactics and see how your competitors tend to interact with their followers.

At Odd Muse, their founder is the face of their brand, appearing frequently in videos and hosting the brand’s new podcast, which adds authenticity and relatability to the brand. When their founder is the center of their content, it makes their audience feel like they’re connecting with an actual person rather than a brand.

With this in mind, Odd Muse takes a more storytelling approach to their content, using a “luxury for less” narrative that their followers love. The brand also partners with micro-influencers and organic community creators to further boost engagement across their target audience.

On the other hand, Oh Polly relies more on models and influencers than using someone from their team as the brand’s representative. Instead of slower engagement tactics like storytelling, Oh Polly leans on trend hijacking, TikTok challenges, and shock-value cuts.

The brand also uses much larger influencers than Odd Muse, especially in beauty/fashion, as well as professional models, creating a stark contrast between the two brands’ approaches.

It can be reassuring to see competitors take a starkly different approach than you. However, it can also be a great way to monitor and see which type of approach your mutual audience tends to gravitate towards.

Audience growth

Finally, take a look at how your respective audiences are growing. Socialinsider can help you quickly run that part.

For example, this is how Oh Polly’s audience has been spread across TikTok and Instagram over the last six months.

When Odd Muse compares their audiences, they can see the two brands have had similar results.

However, platform focus matters. For example, if Odd Muse’s main focus is increasing its follower base on Instagram, they’ve got a higher percentage increase than Oh Polly, meaning they have a better strategy for that specific purpose.

My competitive monitoring process has become significantly more efficient since I started using Socialinsider. One of the things I appreciate most is how convenient it is to have all the key social media platforms—LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok—available in one place. I don’t need to switch between multiple tools or manually collect data from different sources. Everything I need is in one dashboard.

This centralized access allows me to easily compare competitors’ performance across platforms, spot trends, and identify content strategies that are working well for them. I particularly value the level of detail the platform provides—it goes beyond basic metrics and gives deeper insights into engagement, content types, posting frequency, and audience behavior. Elene Fanchulidze

Analyzing content themes and messaging evolution

It’s also important to pay attention to competitor content pillars, analyzing what they tend to post about and how they put out their messaging.

With Socialinsider, for example, Odd Muse can easily monitor the content pillars spread across Instagram and TikTok for both brands, alongside the impact generated.

Below, we can dive into Odd Muse’s top content pillars across both channels, the number of posts they share from each pillar, engagement data, and which channel each pillar performs best on.

And below, we see the same dashboard for Oh Polly’s content.

Looking at content themes can help you make sure you’re posting the right types of content for your audience, while also gaining inspiration for topics to post about from your competitors.

Tracking paid social campaigns and audience targeting

You also want to keep tabs on your competitors and their social media advertising strategies. You can use ad spy tools like BigSpy that give you insights into the platforms your competitors use for digital advertising, who their target audience is, and what their ads look like.

Some platforms, like TikTok and LinkedIn, also have ads libraries you can browse through to see the ads that have run on their platforms.

Monitoring engagement metrics and community management approaches

Finally, you want to make sure that you’re keeping an eye on your competitors’ social media performance, and that includes monitoring their engagement metrics and looking at how they manage their communities.

Going back to our brand examples, we can use Socialinsider to monitor engagement metrics across channels so that Odd Muse can compare how Oh Polly’s content is performing compared to their own.

The dashboard below shows us Oh Polly’s Instagram and TikTok engagement data.

But you can also look at the brand overview to see key metrics for each competitor, like in the example below.

Customer perception monitoring

The next strategy you want to implement is monitoring your competitors’ customer perception and overall brand sentiment from your mutual target audience. How do your competitors’ customers feel about their company? And how can you use that sentiment analysis to your advantage?

Systematically tracking online reviews across platforms

Start by tracking your competitors’ online reviews on platforms like Google, G2, Yelp, and the like. Competitive intelligence tools like Klue can help you easily gather insights from customer reviews without having to manually navigate through hundreds of reviews to understand customer perception.

Monitoring forum discussions and community feedback

Check forums like Quora, Reddit, and industry-specific platforms that can give you further insight into how industry people and customers feel about each competitor. Platforms like Reddit might even have subforums specific to your industry or your competitor so that you can easily get insights from users.

Sentiment analysis techniques for customer opinion tracking

Sentiment analysis tools like Mention can help you gather customer opinions about your own brand, your competitors, as well as your industry as a whole. Track insights and look for trends amongst customer opinions to see if you need to address potential unrest in your audience.

Identifying emerging customer pain points in competitor experiences

Pay attention to online conversations and reviews that mention products or features that your competitors may be missing or other major pain points your competitors’ customers may be mentioning. If you can solve pain points that your competitors are causing, you’ll be able to shift their customers over towards your business.

Brand messaging and positioning monitoring

Monitoring your competitors’ brand messaging and positioning can give you a heads up when they appear to be making a pivot, teasing a new feature, or adding another facet to their target audience.

When you consistently monitor positioning, you’ve got the upper hand as you can quickly respond with your own positioning adjustments to make sure you stand out.

Tracking messaging evolution and positioning shifts

Watch as your competitors start evolving or shifting their positioning in the market. They could be getting ready to launch a new product or feature, and you want to be aware of that fact as quickly as you can.

Identifying new value propositions and target audiences

When you monitor your competitors’ overall messaging, you can start to pinpoint value propositions and target audiences that they’re hitting that your strategy might be missing. This can be a great way to expand your own messaging and start reaching new potential customers.

Monitoring communication channels and preferred platforms

Part of this is also looking at the different channels the other brands in your industry use to promote themselves. Discover new platforms your audience prefers so you can add yet another way to reach them to your own strategy.

Promotional and pricing strategy monitoring

Competitive monitoring can also include tracking the different promotional and pricing strategies across your industry. Look at how different brands are using sales and discounts to sell their products, as well as what their overall pricing looks like so that you can stay competitive.

Techniques for tracking pricing changes

Tools like Visualping can make it easy to monitor pricing changes across your industry. Tracking these changes can let you know where your prices sit on the spectrum, as well as if you need to consider lowering or raising your prices based on competitor costs.

Identifying patterns in promotional timing

This tracking strategy can also help you discover when other brands in your industry tend to run promotions. Once you start identifying patterns, consider putting together a plan so you can take advantage of certain industry promotional events while also setting up your own.

Monitoring discount strategies and loyalty program adjustments

Pay attention to the different discounts that brands in your industry offer and consider if you can offer similar sales while still making a profit. You can also use this time to monitor your competitors’ loyalty programs, figuring out how they work, tracking changes over time, and putting together your own program that your target customers will enjoy.

Product and feature development monitoring

Implementing a strategy that helps you monitor competitor product and feature updates can help you get new product and feature ideas and start development more quickly. Use these tactics to help build out that strategy.

Tracking product launches and updates

Set alerts so you can track product launches and updates across their website, social media, press releases, and more. You want to be instantly alerted anytime a competitor launches a new product or feature so that you can respond accordingly.

Monitoring release schedules and development priorities

As you continue to monitor product and feature releases, you may start to notice a pattern or schedule. You can then track updates more easily and start creating your own schedule of launches.

Analyzing customer feedback on new competitor features

Look at reviews and online conversations to monitor sentiment around new competitor launches. This can be a great way to determine whether their new product or feature release is something your business should consider as well.

Market expansion and channel strategy monitoring

You also want to know when your competitors are looking to expand into new markets. This can be a great way to discover new opportunities for your own business.

Tracking new market entry signals

New market entry is when a business introduces a product to a new vertical, like a new geographic area or demographic of people. Tracking these market entries can help you find new opportunities after first scoping out how your competitors do.

Monitoring distribution channel development

A distribution channel is a channel where companies sell goods or services to their customers. Keeping an eye on your competitors’ distribution channels can help you get an early alert if they’re introducing a new sales channel, which is a signal for you to investigate if you should test new channels as well.

Identifying partnership and alliance formations

Partnering with complementary businesses can be a great way to cross-promote products to wider audiences. Track your competitors’ partnership formations to get inspiration for building your own partnerships and collaborations.

Organizational change monitoring

Lastly, it’s also important to monitor organizational changes like new C-Suite members, acquisitions, and the like as these can have major impacts on your competitors and the industry as a whole.

Tracking key leadership changes

Start by tracking key leadership updates, like a new CEO or other C-Suite executive. This can let you know if your competitors may be going through major changes, but it can also alert you to potential new hires within your own organization.

Identifying structural reorganizations and strategic pivots

You also want to monitor for any structural reorganizations in your competitor companies as it may suggest a shift to an entirely different market or a major expansion within your own market. This can let you know if you don’t need to consider a company a competitor anymore or if a company appears to be aligning itself even closer to your business.

Final thoughts

Staying ahead in a competitive market means keeping a close eye on every move your competitors make. From website updates to social media shifts and product launches, continuous monitoring helps you react faster, plan smarter, and uncover opportunities your competitors haven’t yet seen.

FAQs on competitive monitoring

How to present monitoring findings to different stakeholders?

These eight strategies can help you find key competitor updates that you can then respond to in your own way, whether that’s by emulating their releases or strategic shifts, or by making your own pivots.

Put together reports so you can share your findings with the stakeholders who need to make those decisions. Take advantage of Socialinsider to compile your social media intelligence into a visually appealing and easy-to-understand report.

Good branding can increase both brand awareness and loyalty without customers even realizing it. When people recognize a brand, they inherently trust that company more—which is why putting a major emphasis on your branding is key to success.

That also includes your social media marketing. While many people think of branding as a company’s logo, website, and print marketing materials, their social media strategy and online presence are just as important.

Throughout this article, we’re going to talk more about what social media branding is, why it’s important, plus 12 essential social media branding tips for creating a cohesive brand online.

What is social media branding?

Social media branding is the process of building a strong brand through the use of social media. This includes showcasing your brand visuals while also ensuring your brand’s mission comes across.

The main components of social media branding include:

• Visual branding: Ensuring your visuals, like your logo and colors, are prominent across all of your social media profiles.

• Brand voice: Using a voice and personality in your social media content that matches your voice on your website, sales collateral, and anything else your business puts out.

• Positioning: Your positioning or marketing messaging is also a big part of your brand, both online and offline. This should remain consistent across the board.

• Brand mission: Finally, make sure your brand’s mission, also known as your vision or purpose, is incorporated into your social media branding.

Branding on social media should be a major part of your overall branding strategy, ensuring all of your marketing, visuals, and more are aligned across all channels.

Why is it important to have a consistent brand identity on social media?

When it comes to branding, consistency is key. In fact, one study found that brand consistency increases revenue by 10-20%. And this translates to your social media branding efforts as well.

By keeping your social media branding aligned with your traditional branding, you immediately make your social media platforms recognizable and trustworthy.

People who already know your brand will be more likely to follow you. And people who are being introduced to your brand on social media will be more likely to buy from you when they see that your website and other branding also match.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg, too. Brand consistency is an essential part of running your business. So, let’s talk about how to ensure your social media branding plan goes off without a hitch.

12 strategies to create consistent social media branding

#1. Have a uniform brand identity across all social media channels

Step one to cohesion is ensuring consistent branding across your social media channels. This includes things like:

• Your profile photo
• Your cover photo
• Your username/handle
• Your bio

Let’s look at an example. Take a look at vitamin company Ritual’s Facebook page below:

We see a solid yellow profile photo and a branded cover photo to boot. The brand’s Facebook URL is facebook.com/ritual.

Now let’s look at Instagram:

Not only do we have the same solid yellow profile photo matching Ritual’s brand color, we also can see that yellow pulled into its Instagram story highlight covers. And its Instagram handle is @ritual, perfectly matching its Facebook URL to make it as easy to find their online presence as possible.

While you’re restricted to a social media platform’s overall design, there are still areas in which you can—and should—inject your brand. Pay attention to the correct image sizes for each platform so that your graphics are high-quality and represent your brand well.

Branding your social media presence is key before you get started with any of these other tactics for branding through social media marketing. It sets the tone for the rest of your digital branding strategy.

#2. Understand your target audience

Your target audience should be a major consideration as you put together your brand identity. After all, their opinion of it—and whether it matches their tastes—will have a big impact on whether they want to follow you on social media and purchase your products.

If you haven’t already, put together a customer persona to outline who exactly your target customer is. This is great for putting together an audience profile to guide your overall marketing messaging, but can also be helpful for creating and promoting a brand identity that will resonate.

Your persona should include basic information, like demographics and purchasing patterns, but you can also include details like:

• Interests
• Favorite social media platforms
• Aesthetic(s)
• Favorite content type
• Personality traits

Find this information via market research, customer interviews, survey data, and the details you might already know about your target audience.

#3. Establish the tone of voice for your brand on social media

Your brand voice is another important part of your overall brand identity. This is the tone and personality you use in your messaging—your captions and other written content across your online presence.

Establishing your brand voice makes it easier to create consistent content and also helps your business resonate better with customers.

Let’s look at a couple of brand voice examples so you can see what we mean.

For example, there's Duolingo—the language learning app with an absolutely chaotic online presence. Duolingo’s mascot, Duo the Owl, makes an appearance in a good bit of the brand’s online photos and videos—but regardless, the captions are always humorous and engaging.

And there's always Wendy’s—a fast food restaurant that also leans towards a more humorous presence while still remaining relevant to its core offerings. Here’s an example of the brand roasting McDonald’s for their limited “free fries” offer.

Decide how you want to sound online in a way that makes sense for your brand.

Put together a few adjectives that define the tone of voice you’re going for, alongside some examples you’ve found online to help structure your copy going forward.

#4. Choose the right social media platforms for your brand

You don’t have to have a presence on every single social media platform. That sounds exhausting—and absolutely impossible for a small team. Instead, you need to choose the right social media platforms for your brand.

Visual brands should consider platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest. Brands with a fun voice or personality, like some of the ones we covered in the last point, might lean towards platforms like X/Twitter or TikTok.

Brands that want to use their social media platforms as an educational tool might choose to focus on platforms like YouTube and LinkedIn. And brands targeting younger audiences might put their efforts in platforms like TikTok and Instagram.

Consider your target audience, the types of content you want to share, and your business industry before you decide. Then, go all in on those select platforms.

#5. Create engaging, on-brand content

Your social media feeds should be filled with content that looks like it came from a cohesive strategy. An Instagram filled with a mixture of random memes, different colored graphics, and a handful of high-quality product images probably won’t look very cohesive.

Instead, consider the types of content your brand wants to create. Do you want to offer tutorials for how to get the most out of your product? Do you want to create fun memes for your audience to engage with?

More than that, what types of content make sense for your brand to share? For example, fast casual restaurant Chipotle fills its Instagram feed with memes and funny videos.

B2B software company Typeform focuses on branded graphics that incorporate its brand colors and also help inform users about its product and industry.

Put together a list of the types of content that would make sense for your brand to create and share. Then, make sure it’s on brand by:

• Using your brand voice
• Aligning with your branding guidelines
• Incorporating your brand fonts and colors
• Keeping your target audience in mind

#6. Develop social media employer branding programs

Beyond just creating content that entices your target customer, you should also be putting some tactics for enticing potential employees in your social media branding strategy.

Consider this: How do you want your company to appear to job candidates? What kind of company culture do you want to show off? A social media employer branding program is the perfect way to put that kind of information in front of someone who may be interested in applying for a job in the future.

Some ways to implement this include:

• Showcasing your team in your social media content
• Highlighting your company culture
• Promoting and standing behind your mission and values
• Being transparent about the perks and benefits you offer

Here’s a great example of this from Grammarly, as they showcase their newest cohort of interns in a LinkedIn post:

#7. Involve your C-level suite in talking about your brand on social media

One of the biggest challenges that companies face in their social media endeavors is pushback from the C-suite due to misgivings or misunderstandings about what social media can do for a brand.

A general lack of understanding within upper management about the tasks and value of social media teams can lead to undervaluation and underinvestment in social media efforts. - Kassandra Quinn, Social Media Strategist at ModSquad

To combat this, aim to get your company’s C-suite involved. When they see things like:

• The work put into a successful social media post
• The number of social media posts a single video or photo session can create
• The results said work can provide

They’re more likely to grasp why it’s so important to invest in social media and ensure the social media team has an appropriate budget to work with.

Start by interviewing members of the C-suite to gather video content to share on social media. Not only does it make them more human for customers to see their faces, but it also helps your company feel more tangible and relatable.

In addition, get your C-suite members active on social media platforms like LinkedIn, sharing company updates and participating in marketing endeavors.

Here’s a great example from graphic design software Visme, where the CEO is promoting a webinar that he himself is participating in.

#8. Position yourself as a brand authority in your niche

Use social media and your other content offerings to position your brand as an authority within your niche. This helps build trust and credibility when people see your brand online.

There are several ways to do this. First, consider conducting original research that other companies can use as a direct source for their data and statistics. At Socialinsider, we release an annual Social Media Benchmarks report and leverage top platforms like LinkedIn to establish expertise in social media data

Sharing thought leadership content and valuable tips and tricks of the trade is another way to cement your position as an authority voice within your niche.

Content marketing agency Optimist regularly hosts different voices in the industry for actionable webinars, helping create a name for themselves in the process:

Be sure to add authoritative content ideas like these to your posting strategy. Ensure that any graphics you post in conjunction with this content match your brand so that anyone re-sharing them is further spreading your branding to new audiences.

One great way to gather some of these ideas is through a competitor analysis. What types of content are your competitors sharing that are getting people talking? How can you better emulate some of that original thought content and get your own audience interacting with it?

Take advantage of Socialinsider’s tools to keep an eye on your competitors and some of their top posts. For example, a project management tool might create a project using some of the following competitors to keep an eye on for content ideas.

You can then go check out the Posts dashboard and get a bird’s eye view of their most popular content to help inform your own strategy.

#9. Promote your brand impact on social media

As a part of your social media branding journey, you need to remember that creating a strong brand is not a one-and-done project. It requires continuous promotion and awareness building.

So promote your brand impact by creating a branding campaign on social media. Typically, the basis of a brand campaign consists of promoting your business and its visual identity in the hopes of reaching your target audience, instilling some brand recognition, and increasing the number of followers you have on social media.

While this can include organic posts, it’s typically an advertising campaign designed just to show off your brand. This works extremely well as a retargeting campaign as well.

Here’s an example of what this might look like from Typeform.

A simple image including the company’s brand name, fonts, and other visual elements—plus a high-quality image showcasing what the brand sells.

To run your own branding campaigns, choose the brand awareness objective as you set up your ads. Then, be sure to install your branding elements within the ad—include your logo, add your fonts and colors to the graphic, and better yet, include a high-quality photo of your product(s).

#10. Identify and engage with influencers or other brand partnerships

Partnering with influencers and other brands is another great way to solidify brand recognition and impact with your target audience. The challenge is always identifying the right influencers and brands to work with.

When partnering with influencers, you want to find users that have an audience similar to yours. This is so that—ideally—the influencer’s audience will become interested in what you have to offer, following your account and eventually becoming customers themselves.

As for brand partnerships, it’s important to find a company that complements your own without there being any kind of competition.

We see the perfect example of that below with email marketing platform Flodesk partnering with lead generation/form tool BDOW! to offer a mutually beneficial integration on their website

Part of finding the right influencer and brand partners is making sure they have enough followers and engagement to ensure the partnership would benefit your brand.

Socialinsider can help you compare influencer and brand accounts to compile a list of the best options for each platform you’re looking to partner on.

You can also browse their recent posts to make sure their brand personality and voice aligns with your own, creating a partnership that just makes sense for the both of you.

#11. Team up with your customer service to have a unified customer experience on social media

A lesser-known part of a complete social media strategy includes customer service as well. This can manifest in many different ways. Some brands choose to have customer service reps assist with responding to social media messages, while others create specific channels for customer support on social media.

For example, the calendar app Calendly has an X/Twitter account specifically for customer support.

Calendly customers who need help can quickly run to this X/Twitter account to send a direct message with their questions or concerns and get help.

However, Trello does this a bit differently. Instead of offering support directly on their social media platforms, the brand directs people to its customer support page on its website.

Work with your customer support team to decide what the best option is for your team. But keep in mind that high-quality customer service can have a big impact on the impression people have of your brand.

#12. Analyze your brand performance on social media

Finally, the last part of a good social media branding strategy for your business is to keep an eye on your brand’s performance through your social media analytics. How much reach and recognition are you getting? Are people engaging and resonating with your brand? Is your social media presence growing?

You can find out all of this by performing a cross-channel analysis with Socialinsider to get a glance at all of your posts, social media interactions, follower growth, impressions, and so much more.

To access the above dashboard, start by creating a brand. Name your brand, then assign a social media profile to it. You can even color code the different brands you add to keep everything organized.

Then, click on that new brand from the left hand sidebar to get an overview of your social media insights—key metrics, audience, posts, engagement, and more.You can also compare your brand performance with your top competitors. Head to the Benchmarks section, then choose the brands you want to compare your brand to in order to view a dashboard like the one below.

Make sure that you’re seeing a steady increase in your own results, otherwise you may need to revisit your social media strategy and overall branding efforts.

Final thoughts

In the past, branding was focused on print media. But in this day and age, it’s even more important to incorporate your branding on your social media posts—via your fonts, colors, voice, personality, and more.

This is why we’ve put together this complete guide on social media branding—to ensure that the impact of your branding efforts makes the right splash, helping you grow your online presence and resonate with your target audience.

Socialinsider can help you make sure you’re on the right track. Take advantage of the analytical tools available to you to create competitor analyses, track your brand performance, and find your voice on social media.

FAQs about social media branding

What is the difference between social media branding and marketing?

Social media branding involves highlighting your company’s defining characteristics—your core values, mission statement, company culture, personality, and generally the very identity of your business.

Social media marketing involves the tactics necessary to put these characteristics in front of your target audience—be it through advertising campaigns, organic posts, influencer marketing, etc.

What is the purpose of social media branding?

In short, a social media branding strategy aims to connect businesses with their audiences on a more personal level.

This allows companies to boost credibility, increase their brand awareness and reputation, as well as build strong active communities, and foster loyal consumer bases.

How to create a social media branding strategy?

Having a thorough understanding of your audience is a key factor in a successful social media branding strategy.

Make sure you understand your followers' pain points, needs, and preferences, and use that information to develop content that resonates with them. Also, prioritize engagement—interact with your audience through comments and spark open-ended conversations within your posts.