Social Media Marketing

Top 29 Social Listening Tools for Marketers in 2020

List of the top social listening tools available to marketers in 2020.

There are tons of social listening tools out there and it’s hard to choose the one that’s right for your company. 

If you’re looking for a social media listening tool in particular—one that can track what people are saying about your brand—then you’ve come to the right place.

To make your search for the right social listening tool easier, we’ve compiled a huge list of the best tools in the industry, including research on the pros and cons of each tool.

Here’s a full roundup of the top social listening tools for marketers and agencies, updated for 2020:

Looking for a specific tool? Jump ahead:

1. Keyhole
2. Hootsuite
3. HubSpot
4. Union Metrics
5. BuzzSumo
6. Sprout Social
7. Mention
8. Brand24
9. YouScan
10. Agorapulse
11. Brandwatch
12. BrandMentions
13. Meltwater
14. Sprinklr
15. TalkWalker
16. Mentionlytics
17. Digimind
18. Zoho
19. Falcon.io
20. Iconosquare
21. Awario
22. Nuvi
23. Sendible
24. Reputation.com
25. Socialbakers
26. Oktopost
27. Statusbrew
28. Sentione
29. Mediatoolkit

1. Keyhole

Social Media Tools - Social Listening Tools - Keyhole

Keyhole helps marketers measure the impacts of their marketing campaigns. Keyhole offers campaign monitoring, influencer tracking, brand mention monitoring, and powerful competitor research tools that make it easy to benchmark your campaigns against your competitors’.

Keyhole offers social media listening and analytics for Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and other online media sources all in one easy to use dashboard.

Social Media Tools - Social Listening Tools - Keyhole Social Media AnalyticsDashboard

Take it from Neil Patel: “This tool [Keyhole] does a lot of things others can’t. And as a bonus, it’s extremely user-friendly.”

You can also use Keyhole to conduct social listening and identify which online accounts or influencers are talking about you or your brand.

Social Media Tools - Social Listening Tools - Keyhole - Best Social Listening Tool

Using social listening, you can conduct in-depth sentiment analysis and understand how your audience feels about your brand, certain features, or if there’s anything noteworthy.

Social Media Tools - Social Listening Tools - Keyhole - Sentiment Analysis

Pro: Keyhole has an attractive, real-time analytics and mentions dashboard that can easily be exported to client-ready PDFs.

Pricing: Starts at $30 USD per month after a free trial. You can view all Keyhole pricing plans here.

2. Hootsuite

Social Media Tools - Social Listening Tools - Hootsuite

Hootsuite is one of the longest-standing and most popular social media management platforms. While it’s best-known for its social media publishing features, it does possess a suite of social listening features, branded as Hootsuite Insights Powered by Brandwatch.

Hootsuite has useful features to help you track brand mentions, identify thought leaders and influencers, and track brand sentiment.

Pro: Hootsuite has a robust set of end-to-end features for pretty much anything you would ever want to do on social media, from publishing, to advertising, to tracking.

Con: Hootsuite’s big feature set comes with a big price tag, and the social listening features are only available for their Business and Enterprise-level plans.

Pricing: Hootsuite’s social listening features are a paid add-on to their Business and Enterprise plans, starting at $599 USD.

3. HubSpot

Social Media Tools - Social Listening Tools - Hubspot

HubSpot is an all-in-one stack of marketing, sales, and service tools. HubSpot offers everything from a CRM, to a CMS, to a customer service platform.

As part of their marketing stack, HubSpot offers social media monitoring to create custom keyword monitoring streams, email alerts to track mentions, and analytics tools to compare performance across social channels.

Pro: If you prefer all of your tools in one place, HubSpot has nearly every marketing tool you could ever need.

Con: Because HubSpot does so many things, their social listening features aren’t as deep as some of the other tools on our list, and the 

Pricing: HubSpot’s social listening features are included in their Professional and Enterprise plans, starting at $800 USD per month.

4. Union Metrics

Social Media Tools - Social Listening Tools - Union Metrics

Union Metrics is a social media analytics tool that offers social media metrics, keyword listening, campaign reporting, and competitive analysis.

Union Metrics offers standard listening features like real-time mention monitoring, sentiment analysis, and insights like best times to post.

Pro: Union Metrics has many easy-to-use analytics dashboards.

Con: Union Metrics’ more advanced social listening features like sentiment analysis aren’t unlocked until their top pricing tier.

Pricing: Union Metrics starts at $39 USD per month if paid annually.

5. BuzzSumo

Social Media Tools - Social Listening Tools - Buzzsumo

BuzzSumo is a popular content discovery tool, allowing marketers to track content that’s trending for certain topics or keywords.

Although not exactly a social listening tool in the sense of some of the other tools on our list, with BuzzSumo, you can track competitors, brand mentions, and industry updates.

Pro: BuzzSumo is extremely useful for tracking trending content and influencers.

Con: BuzzSumo doesn’t offer as much when it comes to tracking your social media accounts.

Pricing: BuzzSumo starts at $79 USD per month when paying yearly.

6. Sprout Social

Social Media Tools - Social Listening Tools - Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a full social media management platform, allowing you to track engagement, manage your publishing schedule, measure analytics, and perform social listening.

Sprout Social has tons of useful social listening features like audience demographic analysis, customer sentiment tracking, influencer identification, campaign analysis, and competitor comparisons.

Pro: Sprout Social offers an all-in-one social inbox to track Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn in one place.

Con: The Standard pricing tier has limited social listening features.

Pricing: Sprout Social pricing starts at $99 USD per user per month.

7. Mention

Social Media Tools - Social Listening Tools - Mention

As the name suggests, Mention lets you track all of your brand mentions online. Mention offers a variety of social listening and publishing tools to monitor online media, analyze your competition, and manage your brand.

Mention offers real-time mention tracking and detailed analytics on your industry competitors.

Pro: Mention provides daily recap emails with key info as well as alert emails when your mentions suddenly spike.

Con: Their pricing model limits the number of mentions you can track per month.

Pricing: Mention has a free model for up to 250 mentions. Their paid plans start at $25 USD per month.

8. Brand24

Social Media Tools - Social Listening Tools - Brand24

Brand24 offers brand mention tracking across social platforms, news sites and blogs, video sites, review platforms, and more.

Brand24 features include a mentions feed, a discussion volume chart, marketing analytics, influence score, sentiment analysis, alerts, and reporting features.

Pro: Brand24 has some extra bonuses like a Slack integration and a mobile app.

Con: Online reviews mention a sometimes-challenging user interface and a thinner feature set than similarly priced tools.

Pricing: Brand24 pricing starts at $49 USD per month.

9. YouScan

Social Media Tools - Social Listening Tools - Youscan

YouScan is another social media listening tool that offers monitoring of social media, blogs, forums, reviews, and other online media.

YouScan offers some unique AI-powered listening features like logo recognition and object and scene detection to help brands track pictures as well as brand mentions.

Pro: YouScan’s Visual Insights feature is a game-changer for brands that want to track when their products appear in a post.

Con: YouScan has a huge price tag, so it’s cost-prohibitive unless you’re a major global brand.

Pricing: YouScan pricing starts at $12,000 USD per year.

10. Agorapulse

Social Media Tools - Social Listening Tools - Agorapulse

Agorapulse is another full social media management platform, comparable to Hootsuite, Sprout Social, or Buffer.

On top of publishing and analytics tools, Agorapulse offers basic social media listening features like brand mention monitoring on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.

Pro: Agorapulse offers some unique collaboration features like the ability to label important posts or assign a post to a teammate.

Con: Because Agorapulse is a full social media management tool, its social media listening tracking features aren’t as robust as some of the dedicated tools.

Pricing: Agorapulse pricing starts at $79 USD per month when paid annually.

11. Brandwatch

Social Media Tools - Social Listening Tools - Brandwatch

Brandwatch is an AI-powered social media listening tool. It’s a well-established tool that allows you to benchmark competitors, track audience sentiment and demographics, and uncover influencers.

Brandwatch also offers many new listening features like image analysis, historical data, trending topic identification, and entity tagging to train AI.

Pro: Brandwatch always has some of the most innovative features in the social media monitoring space.

Con: Brandwatch is one of the priciest tools on the market.

Pricing: Brandwatch does not make its pricing available on its website, but according to PCMag, Brandwatch pricing starts at $1,000 USD per month.

12. BrandMentions

Social Media Tools - Social Listening Tools - Brandmentions

BrandMentions is another social media monitoring tool that offers standard features like brand monitoring, competitor tracking, sentiment analysis, and reputation management.

Pro: BrandMention also allows you to integrate website traffic monitoring into your analytics reports.

Con: In online reviews, some users report difficulty filtering down a large number of social media mentions.

Pricing: BrandMentions starts at $49 USD per month.

13. Meltwater

Social Media Tools - Social Listening Tools - Meltwater

Meltwater is a full marketing and social media suite offering social media monitoring, online media monitoring, social engagement reports, influencer management, newswire distribution, media relations tools, and more.

They allow social media monitoring for 15 different social networks, and offer tracking through a mobile app.

Pro: Meltwater is a powerful PR tool and offers a robust media database.

Con: Meltwater constantly adds new features, but they often require add-on pricing and can be overwhelming for users, according to online reviews.

Pricing: Meltwater doesn’t post pricing publicly, but according to Prowly, pricing starts at $4,000 USD per year.

14. Sprinklr

Social Media Tools - Social Listening Tools - Sprinklr

Sprinklr is a customer experience management (CXM) platform. Sprinklr is quite different than many of the other tools on our list, as its bread and butter is allowing you to engage with customers and monitor their experience with your product or service.

That said, as part of its offering, Sprinklr allows you to perform audience profiling, identify influencers, benchmark against competitors, and measure custom metrics.

Pro: Sprinklr allows you to unify your customer experience management with your marketing activities.

Con: Sprinklr is an enterprise platform that isn’t suitable for small and medium businesses.

Pricing: Sprinklr does not make its pricing available online, but its pricing is reportedly modular based on which features you add.

15. TalkWalker

Social Media Tools - Social Listening Tools - Talkwalker

TalkWalker is primarily a social media listening tool, with standard features like mention tracking, report creation, and automated alerts.

TalkWalker also has more advanced features like brand image detection, a Virality Map, and other AI-powered features.

Pro: On top of standard social media and online mention tracking, Talkwalker also allows you to monitor TV and radio content.

Con: TalkWalker’s pricing is catered only to larger businesses.

Pricing: TalkWalker pricing starts at $9,600 USD per year.

16. Mentionlytics

Social Media Tools - Social Listening Tools - Mentionlytics

Mentionlytics is a fairly standard social media monitoring tool for business of all sizes. They also offer social intelligence and publishing tools.

Mentionlytics allows you to track mentions on social media, online news, and other online platforms. It also allows you to reply to tweets or posts in real-time. You can also monitor keywords and competitors to identify sales opportunities.

Pro: Mentionlytics has AI-powered features to help you identify fans, ambassadors, and even trolls.

Con: Users have reported an outdated UI design, but as of 2020 they have a new beta design in the works.

Pricing: Mentionlytics pricing starts at $39 USD per month.

17. Digimind

Social Media Tools - Social Listening Tools - Digimind

Digimind is a social intelligence tool offering solutions for brand reputation, competitive intelligence, consumer insights, influencer identification, trend tracking, and marketing campaign analysis.

Digimind’s social listening tools include geolocalization, automatic sentiment and translation, topic clustering, and “marked as read” capabilities.

Pro: Digimind’s Top Reputation module allow you to track what people are searching for when they research your brand.

Con: According to online reviews, the tool can be quite cumbersome for beginners.

Pricing: Digimind does not make its pricing publicly available. Contact to discuss.

18. Zoho

Social Media Tools - Social Listening Tools - Soho

Zoho is a cloud software suite with many SaaS applications for businesses. On top of social tools, they offer a CRM, email and document platforms, and financial tools.

Zoho’s social tools include publishing, monitoring, and reporting. Their listening tools allow you to monitor brand mentions in real time.

Pro: Zoho allows you to create your own monitoring dashboard.

Con: As Zoho isn’t a social platform at its core, the tool is fairly limited in features outside of mention tracking.

Pricing: Zoho’s pricing starts at $10 USD per month.

19. Falcon.io

Social Media Tools - Social Listening Tools - Falcon.io

Falcon.io is a full social media platform that allows you to publish content, create ad campaigns, engage with your audience, and monitor the web for insights.

Falcon.io’s social listening tools include trend tacking, sentiment analysis, audience demographics, and influencer identification.

Pro: Falcon.io has a custom audience tool that allows you to create an audience based on the profiles detected through your social listening campaigns.

Con: According to user reviews, there are no export capabilities for reports.

Pricing: Falcon.io starts at $129 USD per month.

20. Iconosquare

Social Media Tools - Social Listening Tools - Iconosquare

Iconosquare is an Instagram analytics, management, and scheduling platform for brands and agencies.

Iconosquare is one of the most powerful Instagram analytics tools, offering competitor analytics, hashtag analytics, promoted posts analytics, industry benchmarking, conversation tracking, scheduling, Excel and PDF reports, custom dashboard, and more.

Pro: Iconosquare offers some unique Instagram features, like tracking of individual comments, photo tags, and mentions and tracking of content types like photos, videos, and carousel images.

Con: Iconosquare only allows tracking for Instagram and Facebook, unlike most of the other tools on this list.

Pricing: Iconosquare starts at $29 USD per month.

21. Awario

Social Media Tools - Social Listening Tools - Awario

Awario is another popular brand monitoring tool. Awario tracks brand mentions and keywords in real time and offers additional features like sentiment analysis, influencer tracking, boolean search, white label reporting, and email alerts.

Pro: Awario has a social selling feature that tracks competitor complaints or recommendations for your product category, allowing you to identify leads on the fly.

Con: The abundance of information in Awario gives it a steep learning curve compared to its competitors.

Pricing: Awario starts at $29 USD ($49 CAD) per month.

22. Nuvi

Social Media Tools - Social Listening Tools - Nuvi

Nuvi is a customer experience and reputation management tool that includes social media publishing and listening tools.

Nuvi’s listening capabilities include keyword monitoring, influencer analytics, sentiment analysis, audience insights, and automated reporting.

Pro: Nuvi’s robust platform also includes content planning, publishing, creation, and collaboration tools.

Con: As social listening isn’t Nuvi’s main feature, it doesn’t offer much beyond the basics.

Pricing: Nuvi does not make its pricing publicly available online. Contact for pricing.

23. Sendible

Social Media Tools - Social Listening Tools - Sendible

Sendible is a social media management and tracking tool that includes features for planning, collaboration, engagement, and analytics.

Sendible’s listening capabilities include mention alerts and hashtag and keyword monitoring. 

Pro: Sendible monitors Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn.

Con: Sendible has a wide feature set, but its listening capabilities are fairly shallow.

Pricing: Sendible starts at $16 USD per month when paying yearly, 

24. Reputation.com

Social Media Tools - Social Listening Tools - Reputation

As its name suggests, Reputation.com is a complete reputation management tool. Its capabilities include online review monitoring, business listing management, directory management, surveys, and social tools.

Their social listening tool includes mention tracking and sentiment analysis.

Pro: Reputation.com has a huge suite of reputation management tools.

Con: Reputation.com is less useful for those looking for social media insights.

Pricing: Reputation.com does not publish its pricing online.

25. Socialbakers

Social Media Tools - Social Listening Tools - Socialbakers

Socialbakers is a unified social media marketing platform that includes research and content strategy tools, social media management, measurement and reporting, customer care, influencer marketing, and listening tools.

Their social listening tool is powered by AI that automatically labels posts to help you spot trends. They also offer sentiment analysis and mention tracking across multiple channels.

Pro: Socialbakers offers helpful collaboration and approval flow capabilities.

Con: Socialbakers’ rich feature set comes with a rich price tag.

Pricing: Socialbakers starts at $200 USD per month when paid annually.

26. Oktopost

Social Media Tools - Social Listening Tools - Oktopost

Oktopost brands itself as the social media management platform for B2B enterprise. It features tools for social media management, social employee advocacy, and social media promotions.

Oktopost’s social media listening tools include keyword, mention, and competitor tracking, primarily aimed at customer support.

Pro: Oktopost offers the unique ability to amplify your social posts through your employees’ social accounts.

Con: Oktopost is more focused on B2B promotion than social listening.

Pricing: Oktopost does not publish its pricing online.

27. Statusbrew

Social Media Tools - Social Listening Tools - Statusbrew

Statusbrew is a tool for social media management, marketing, monitoring, and customer care.

Statusbrew provides live mention and conversation tracking, advanced keyword queries, sentiment analysis, lead profile building.

Pro: Statusbrew integrates with Google Drive, Slack, HubSpot, Salesforce, Zendesk, Dynamics 365, and other popular tools.

Con: Statusbrew is comparably more expensive than some of the similar listening tools on our list.

Pricing: Statusbrew starts at $99 USD per month when billed annually.

28. Sentione

Social Media Tools - Social Listening Tools - Sentione

Sentione is an AI-based social listening and conversational bot tool. Sentione provides tools for online data analytics, chatbots, voicebots, and other automation-powered customer service tools.

Sentione’s social listening capabilities include audience insights, comparative research, automated alerts, and AI-based anomaly detection.

Pro: Sentione’s social listening tool allows for unlimited keyword tracking.

Con: Sentione is quite a bit pricier than other listening tools.

Pricing: Sentione’s basic social listening plan starts at $299 USD per month.

29. Mediatoolkit

Social Media Tools - Social Listening Tools - Mediatoolkit

Mediatoolkit is our final brand monitoring tool. Mediatoolkit provides website and social media monitoring on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, forums, blogs, and review platforms like TripAdvisor.

Mediatoolkit offers deep search capabilities, including location and language filters. They also offer sentiment analysis, influencer tracking, and custom PDF reports.

Pro: Mediatoolkit offers mobile and Slack notifications.

Con: For a tool that only provides social tracking, its pricing is quite high.

Pricing: Mediatoolkit starts at $117 USD per month.

Start your Social Listening Analytics Journey

If you’ve made it this far, you’re either the world’s biggest fan of social listening tool, or like to weigh all your options before selecting a social listening tool.

Related Articles:

Top 25 Social Media Analytics Tools: The Definitive Guide

16 Content Creation Tools to Make Life as a Marketer Easier

To get insights about your brand within minutes, we recommend our social listening tool: Keyhole. Start your free trial now!

9 Essential Social Media Metrics to Monitor [+ 5 Best Tools to Track Them!]

You’ve mastered the art of churning out social media content on a consistent basis. Your brands’ social media accounts are now all active with strong engagement rates.

But, are you using your social media accounts correctly? Is your business seeing any return on investment from all your social media efforts?

Let’s get straight to the point. Are you measuring your social media efforts effectively?

From Facebook metrics to Twitter metrics, to Youtube metrics and Instagram metrics, what should you be tracking?

Are these metrics performing up to your standards?

The good news is, it’s easier to measure your social media efforts than you imagine.

Let’s take a look at 9 metrics that every company should be measuring right now and the best tools to use.

Jump Links:

Top Social Media Metrics to Monitor:
1. Number of Social Media Followers
2. Impressions and Reach
3. Engagement
4. Volume and Sentiment
5. Top Influencers
6. Response Rate and Time
7. Top Engaging Social Channels
8. Conversions
9. Social Channels Revenue

Best Social Media Tools to Track Your Metrics:
1. Keyhole
2. Sprout Social
3. BuzzSumo
4. BrandWatch
5. Google Analytics

Top Social Media Metrics to Monitor 

1. Number of Social Media Followers

Number of social media followers is one of the many metrics that many marketers tend to dismiss as a vanity metric. 

Having engaged followers is more important than having many followers.

However, if one of your goals is to increase your social media following or brand reach, then you need to know how many followers you have.  

When working to increase your brand reach, it’s important to know how many social followers you have managed to gather over time. 

You may find out that some of your accounts are doing better than others. You want to focus more on the ones that are attracting more audiences than the ones that aren’t. 

Another way to approach social media followers is to look at follower growth rate over time.

Are your followers growing or are you losing followers? By examining the follower growth rate, you’ll be able to identify any trends in your growth.

Having a consistent growth rate over several months will help you justify the effort and dedication you’ve put in.

Again, the follower growth rate will help you single out faster-growing profiles so that you can cut the cord on profiles that remain stagnant, or identify which social profiles need a little bit more love.

Most social media profiles will show you your follower count in their analytics section.

You can use a simple spreadsheet to monitor your follower growth each month. 

2. Impressions and Reach

If you’re interested in increasing brand awareness and perception, then reach and impressions should be in your social media analytics report. 

Reach refers to the number of unique social media users who have seen your content. It indicates how viral your content has gone. 

Impressions, on the other hand, show the number of times a post shows up in a social media user’s timeline.

Impressions give you insight on the number of people who saw your posts even if they didn’t click, comment, or engage with that post in any other way.

The biggest difference between impression and reach metrics is that impressions measure the total number of times your content is seen by the audience.

Reach, on the other hand, is the number of people actually seeing your content. 

So, why are these metrics important? 

Impressions and reach indicate how your social media engagement is doing. When your impressions and reach are low, it’ll result in a lower engagement rate, since there’s fewer people seeing your post.

If this is the case, then you need to look at your content and make sure that it’s being received well by your audience. 

Another thing that you need to look at is your target audience. Are you targetting the right audience?

3. Engagement

Engagement is what will prevent you from losing your social media followers. Engagement allows you to see how your social media efforts are resonating with your followers. 

There are a few engagement metrics that you need to monitor: 

  • Likes, Comments, Retweets, Shares etc.: How many people like, comment on, retweet or share your content?

  • Post Engagement rate: (# of likes and comments / # of followers) x 100. The higher the rate the more the love your content is receiving.

  • Click Through Rate (CTR): # of clicks / # of impressions. CTR measures the number of people who click your link after seeing your post.

  • Account Mentions: Monitor how many times your brand has been mentioned on social media. Account mentions help to measure brand awareness. 

Monitoring your engagement metrics will help you know how engaged users are with your content.

It will also give you insights on the best days and times to share your content on social media platforms. Keyhole allows you to view account optimizations and can also tell you when the best time to post is.

Engagement will also let you know whether users like your product or service and most importantly when to launch new products on social media.

4. Volume and Sentiment

The volume metric indicates how much people are talking about your business or brand online. It counts mentions.

Sentiment shows you how people feel about your brand. To measure sentiment, monitor messages and relevant keywords online.

You can sort them into emotion-based categories such as sad, angry, and happy.

With these metrics, you get to know where you stand against your competitors when it comes to online conversations.

In other words, you get to see how many people are talking about your brand online and how they feel about it as compared to your competitors.

You can also choose to monitor specific keywords associated with your brand to find out your online volume and sentiment metrics around keywords outside of your name.

Don’t forget to monitor trends associated with volume and sentiment to see what’s most often associated with your brand. 

5. Top Influencers

Influencer marketing is one of the best marketing strategies to implement for 2020.

Influencers can help you grow your audience and increase your sales significantly. 

But how do you find the best influencers to work with?

Monitor the people talking about you online and the kind of influence they have. Monitor who your top supporters are and encourage them to keep engaging with your brand. 

By monitoring your top influencers, it will help you know who to reach out to when creating effective marketing campaigns.  

There are a number of good social listening tools that you can use to find your top influencers and their influence scores. 

Remember, having a large audience does not necessarily mean an individual is influential. Just because someone has a lot of fans and followers, does not mean they have the influence to make them support your brand.

6. Response Rate and Time

40% of customers who share their complaint via social media expect to get a response within one hour.

This goes to show how important customer service support on social media is important. 

Monitor your response rate and time on your social media profiles to determine whether you need a community manager in order to improve on this metric. 

This metric will help you get insights into your overall customer service approach. You’ll know whether you need to restructure your strategy if most of your client issues went unresolved. 

7. Top Engaging Social Channels

One of the major goals of social media marketing is to increase web traffic. You want people to go beyond liking your Facebook post.

You want them to visit your website and hopefully buy your product or service. 

It’s important to monitor which channels are driving the most traffic to your website. 

Beyond simple traffic, monitor what those social users do once they land on your site. Are they engaging with your web content, or leaving straight away?

By learning how they engage with your content you will be able to improve on your web content to make it more engaging so that you can reduce your bounce rate.

The longer users stay on your website, the more likely they are to make a purchase. 

You can track your social referral traffic in Google Analytics. 

8. Conversions

You’re on social media because you want to convert more people into your customers. Conversions are a metric not to be overlooked.

Monitor how many people visited your website from your social media profiles and purchased your product or service during that visit. 

If you were running an ad on social media, you also need to track how many people converted into customers from that ad. 

You also need to monitor other important actions that your fans took such as signing up for your weekly newsletter, downloading an app, scanning a QR code, etc. 

9. Social Channels Revenue

Do your company executives a solid by assigning a monetary value to your social conversions. 

While it’s exciting to say that X number of people became customers following your social media efforts, it’s even more exciting to the finance department when you can state the amount of revenue you’ve been able to bring in. 

Use Google Analytics to set website goals for each conversion point. Add a dollar value to each conversion.

This way you can easily calculate the revenue generated by your different sources, including social media.

Best Social Media Tools to Track Your Metrics

1. Keyhole

Keyhole is one of the best and most affordable social media monitoring tools available. 

Get an in-depth look at your brand’s social media health via Keyhole’s social dashboard feature. 

You’ll be able to view metrics including total impressions, total engagements and total link clicks.

Other metrics that you’ll find useful include: 

  • Performance of keywords, URLs, topics, hashtags, and @mentions.
  • Top influencers for your brand and information about their engagement rates, reach, and more.
  • Info on global conversations, topics, and influencers driving your market.
  • Sentiments around your brand.
  • Campaign performance on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.
  • Brand or keyword mentions on news, blogs and forums.

Additionally, you can use Keyhole to compare your social media accounts and campaigns against those of major competitors.

Price: Starts at $179 USD per month. 

2. Sprout Social

Use Sprout Social to gather analytics from multiple social media accounts. 

This tool allows you to quickly compare social media metrics across multiple networks at once from one place. 

You can see analytics from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.

Once you have these metrics, you can quickly use them to create presentation-ready reports using templates and custom reporting options available.

This gives you multiple ways to not only conduct social media metric tracking but also be able to understand these metrics and present them to others.

Price: $99 — $249 USD per month.

3. BuzzSumo

While BuzzSumo is not strictly a social media tool, it is a great tool to analyze your content engagement. 

This awesome tool allows you to see how many times your blog post was shared on Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest. 

Use BuzzSumo to also monitor the performance of content that contains relevant industry keywords.

This enables you to see how your content marketing campaigns are competing against the competition.

With this tool, you are able to tell which types of posts receive the most engagement and use this data to inform your own content strategy.

Price: $79 – $499 USD per month.

4. BrandWatch

Want to know what your customers are thinking? Use BrandWatch. 

With BrandWatch, you can collect useful metrics from social media profiles, blogs, forums, and news/review sites. 

BrandWatch will show you the volume of your brand mentions. You can then compare it with that of several competitors. 

Additionally, get to know what your customers think about your brand by observing the sentiments about your brand. 

Plus, see your audience demographics and the topics they are most interested in. 

Take advantage of the data visualization tool that lets you create engaging reports by representing data in form of graphs.

Price: There are different plans depending on the number of mentions per month.

5. Google Analytics

You’re probably using Google Analytics to monitor your web traffic. But did you know that you can use it to monitor your most important social media metrics?

While this is not solely a social media analytics tool, it’s one of the best ways to track your social media campaigns. 

It’s also one of the best tools to help you measure social ROI.

Price: Free

Final Thoughts

When it comes to tracking your social media metrics, consistency and preparation are important for effective measurement. 

Select the metrics that align with your social media goals and start tracking them now. Track your metrics over time and observe how they change. Then apply this knowledge to improve your social media marketing tactics. 

By measuring these social media metrics, you’ll be able to better understand how effective your social media activity is and what you need to improve on.

Related Articles:

Top 25 Social Media Analytics Tools: The Definitive Guide

7 Important Instagram Analytics Marketers Need to Know [+ 4 Tools!]

Keyhole is a real-time conversation tracker that provides keyword and hashtag analytics for Twitter and Instagram. Get started for free and search your brand.

How Much Instagram Influencers Cost: A Guide to Influencer Marketing Pricing

Nowadays, if there’s a single Instagram marketing strategy gaining momentum then that surely is influencer marketing.

If there’s anything troublesome about influencer marketing, it’s that there is definitely a bunch of marketers trying to determine Instagram influencer pricing. 

Yet, with the influencer marketing industry expected to be worth up to $15 billion by 2022, it seems marketers are left with no other option but to find their way around it. 

Тhis can cause a lot of headaches, but when you see the ROI come in from your influencer marketing efforts, it’ll make going through the trouble of pricing and budgeting for an influencer campaign worth it.

Still, there are many factors contributing to the overall influencer marketing pricing that can prove to be helpful in the long-run.

From understanding the different types of influencer campaigns you can plan, to the different types of influencers you can collaborate with – once you wrap your head around it, it all becomes more pragmatic and manageable. 

And that’s precisely what we’re aiming at in this text, so read on if Instagram influencer pricing intimidates you or if you’re not sure how to set pricing.

Jump Links:

What Are Influencers and Why Are They Important?

Types of Instagram Influencer Campaigns:
Giveaways 
Takeovers
Sponsored Instagram Content
Instagram Story
Instagram Post
Instagram Live
IGTV 
Gifting 
Brand Ambassador 
Discount Codes 

Different Instagram Influencer Tiers

Instagram Influencer Pricing Factors

What Are Influencers and Why Are They Important?

If you look up the definition of the term influencer on Google, here’s what you’ll find: 

In general, an influencer is a person or thing that influences another. 

In a marketing context, an influencer is described as a person with the ability to influence potential buyers of a product or service by promoting or recommending the product/service on social media. 

So, influencers are people who usually have a large number of social media followers, create engaging content and are in a position to influence others with their suggestions and recommendations. 

And when marketers decide to collaborate with influencers, that marketing strategy is known as influencer marketing strategy. 

Way back in 2016, Forbes called influencers celebrity endorsements. 

In fact, it seems influencers are so highly regarded, that their social media importance surpasses that of actual celebrities. 

And if you still have some doubts about the power of influencer marketing, consider the following 2020 influencer statistics: 

  • 70% of teens trust influencers more than traditional celebrities
  • 86% of women use social media for purchasing advice
  • Influencer marketing campaigns earn $6.50 for every dollar spent
  • Influencer marketing Is the fastest-growing online customer-acquisition method
  • 67% of marketers promote content with the help of influencers
  • 60% of consumers have been influenced by social media or blog while shopping at a store

As much as statistics and research data might be reliable, they aren’t helpful with certain practical aspects such as answering the question of how much does an Instagram influencer cost?

Types of Instagram Influencer Campaigns

The purpose of every influencer campaign is to raise brand awareness, reach new customers and generate more revenue. 

And social media is the perfect format to do so!

 Source: Mediakix 

In fact, when it comes to influencer marketing, Instagram is the leading social media channel. And, as such, it allows you several options to choose from for your campaign. 

Giveaways 

You may not have organized giveaways (yet), but one thing’s for sure – if you have an Instagram profile, you have definitely seen one at some point. 

Although giveaways are short-term, they’re quite popular and at the same time they’re a great way of raising brand awareness. 

Giveaways are orchestrated by giving an influencer your product/service to offer to their followers.

Entering and engaging with the giveaway involves followers tagging their friends, new users following the influencer’s Instagram profile as well as the brand’s profile. There are many different ways to enter giveaways.

Giveaways are significant, as they involve a lot of comments and likes; they increase the engagement rate and leave everybody satisfied.

The followers get a chance to win a free product, the influencer increases their engagement rate and following and the brand promotes its product/service, plus potentially gains more followers on Instagram. 

Takeovers

Takeovers are becoming increasingly popular, but they’re usually not the first part of an influencer campaign. 

Oftentimes, after a brand has gained confidence in a particular influencer, they would offer them access to their Instagram profile so that the influencer creates content for the brand. 

This can be a one-off engagement, or it can last for a longer period of time – it’s a mutual decision made by the brand and the influencer. 

Sponsored Instagram content is one of the most frequently used approaches when it comes to influencer marketing.

  Source: Mediakix

The success of influencer campaigns isn’t random. In fact, there’s a higher digital hierarchy when it comes to how well certain content formats are accepted. 

Based on the results presented in this graph, we can conclude that Instagram posts are the most influential content format (78%), followed by Instagram stories (73%). Instagram videos are fourth place (54%). 

All you have to do is come up with your campaign details, and get things moving.

And if you want to check the success of your influencer marketing campaign afterwards, you can use some third-party tools to help you.

For example, here at Keyhole, we assist marketers in finding potential influencers to partner with as well as measuring the impact of social media and influencer campaigns. 

Instagram Story

Instagram stories allow you to post and view visual and video content for 24 hours. Insta stories are great, because they allow you to… well, to really tell a story. 

Influencers can get creative, engage in visual storytelling and bring your brand closer to their following. 

Oh, and once you settle on how much the influencer collaboration will cost you, expect to get a higher price if you want your website’s link to be included in the stories. 

Instagram Post

Instagram posts can include a photo or a video. Instagram also allows you to post a photo carousel, with a combination of photos / videos, and more than one photo or video per post.

There are also post captions that allow you to express yourself below what’s being posted.  

In general, slideshow posts will cost you more than a single photo, and a video costs more than an image (it might cost up to 40-50% more). 

Instagram Live

Instagram live is another popular Instagram feature because it allows influencers to connect with their followers in real time. 

It makes the digital relationship stronger because followers can ask questions and get their answers right away, as well as request to get access in the live stream (depending on what format the influencer decides on prior to hosting the live event). 

Instagram live is also awesome because it puts both the influencer and the followers on the same level of communication, and it makes their interaction much more engaging and amusing. 

IGTV

IGTV  is a video feature on Instagram that allows users to upload vertical videos up to ten minutes long (or up to 60 minutes if you’re a verified user, but they have to be uploaded from a computer). 

This is a great feature if you want to talk about something in greater depth and open up a longer discussion. 

For example, if an influencer wants to talk about the brand’s latest clothing collection, they can post several photos and a couple of stories, but if they want to review each outfit and promote actual clothing pieces they have more freedom, time, and space to do so in an IGTV.  

Gifting

Gifting is pretty much self-explanatory. 

Usually, a brand would send a specific product to an influencer (oftentimes accompanied by a personalized message) and hope they’ll post the product and publicly thank the brand. 

This is called product seeding, and it’s done with the intention of getting brand recognition, proper exposure as well as getting clients willing to make a purchase. 

It’s also great for getting feedback – the comment section on Instagram is a great place to see if your product is yay or nay! 

Brand Ambassador 

Being a brand ambassador sounds like having a very formal title, but it’s again a straightforward collaboration, only meant to last a bit longer. 

Brand ambassadors usually share photos, images, videos and stories about your product for a certain amount of time, and they’re meant to be seen as those who use your product the MOST. 

For example, if you want to promote leggings, then a brand ambassador would post images of themselves frequently wearing those leggings while in the gym, riding a bike, exercising at home, and so on. 

Suggested Read:  What is a Brand Ambassador? & How to Launch a Successful Ambassador Program

Discount Codes 

If the purpose of your campaign is to drive sales and stimulate users to make a purchase, then discount codes come into play. This is done with a so-called “unique” discount code.

Let’s say the influencer’s name is Stephanie, and her account name is fashion_with_Steph. The discount code can be something like Stephanie10.

So, the influencer can share the product that’s supposed to be purchased (or it could be more items, a whole collection, and so on), and share the discount code with their following. 

The results of this campaign (based on the number of purchases) can show if this was a successful campaign as well as assist you in deciding on the Instagram influencer pricing.  

This approach also lowers the difficulties in calculating your influencer marketing ROI.

Different Instagram Influencer Tiers

No one could undermine the importance of influencers, as according to Bernard Clive, every growing brand thrives on brand influencers and advocates. So, influencers can be the key factor when it comes to reaching the clients you’re targeting. 

However, the way you manage that is going to depend on the type of influencer you’re collaborating with. 

Believe it or not, there’s some digital hierarchy even within the influencers’ world!

Let’s dive into the specifics of it and see what each influencer tier entails!

Mega Influencers (1m+ followers)

Mega instagram influencers hold a celebrity status and have a following most Instagrammers can only dream of. 

They’re well-known in their niche, post high-quality photos, and shape popular culture. They’re the movers and shakers on Instagram. 

Partnering with a mega influencer might make your sales skyrocket, but it will require a huge initial investment on your part too. That’s why usually large brands tend to collaborate with them. 

They cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per post. 

A great example of a mega-influencer is Chiara Ferragni, the most-followed Italian influencer, who, as of April 2020, has 19.4 million followers on Instagram. 

She has been known to collaborate with brands such as Pantene, Calzedonia and even Lancome. She’s a leader in the fashion industry and even even has her own store. 

Macro Influencers (500k – 1m followers) 

Macro-influencers have a sizable following on Instagram, and they’re very appealing to brands because they don’t cost as much as mega-influencers do, yet they hold very similar social media importance as them. 

In other words, working with macro-influencers allows you to reach a huge audience without breaking the bank (which is highly likely to happen if you decide to collaborate with a mega-influencer, for example). 

They’ll usually request thousands of dollars per post.

A well-known travel influencer is Kiersten Rich better known as The Blonde Abroad, who basically changed the way travelers see travel. 

She organically grew her audience, has 564K Instagram followers, worked on producing high-quality website content as well as creating her own photo presets. 

She’s been known to collaborate with Murad Skincare, Pura Vida Bracelets, and Backcountry, to name a few. 

Mid-Tier Influencers (50k – 500k followers) 

Mid-tier Influencers are capable of securing expensive sponsorships, yet, they can’t reach the same amount as mega or macro-influencers can. 

Brands love them because they’re much more accessible than the higher influencer categories, yet they can deliver the same quality promotion. 

If you want to collaborate with a mid-tier influencer, expect to have to pay them anywhere from hundreds to thousands of dollars per post. 

Our mid-tier example is Alice Catherine, a UK based blog writer, very recognizable for her appreciation for vintage style in all shapes and forms. She has 207K Instagram followers. Alice has written extensively about fashion, skincare and has engaged in paid sponsorships as well as affiliate marketing. 

Micro Influencers (10-50k followers) 

According to some, micro-influencers are the gatekeepers of social media. 

They manage niche-specific communities, whereas larger influencers attract a broader audience (which again has its benefits too). 

Although micro influencers don’t have what you might consider a huge following (when compared to other influencer tiers), usually they have a very loyal and engaged following.

Micro-influencers are considered useful in raising awareness about new items and have been perceived as more credible than other groups.

In 2016, Bloglovin’ asked 2500 micro-influencers how much they typically charge per post on various platforms. The survey showed that 84% charged less than $250 and 97% charged less than $500 per branded post on Instagram.

These numbers show why micro-influencer collaborations have become so frequent – micro influencers provide great results at an affordable price.

Suggested Read: How to Find Micro Influencers on Instagram to Boost Sales

Take Jenn from Hello Rigby, for example. She has 25.4K Instagram followers. 

Both her blog and Instagram profile revolve around fashion, dogs and lifestyle in general. Her profile is full of images with her dog, colourful outfits, and engaging in fun activities, and she has worked with brands such as Target, Freshpet and Cold Stone Creamery. 

Nano Influencers (1-10k followers) 

According to a New York Times article, the best way to describe nano-influencers is the following: “everyone who’s on Instagram has that friend who is just really popular and is racking up ‘likes’ and comments and has great content”. So “that friend” would be a nano-influencer.

Nano-influencers tend to be open for collaborations and usually they ask for a minimal amount of money or a free product (sometimes maybe both) and that’s it. 

These are known as in-kind influencer partnerships. 

A good example of a nano-influencer is Bricely Liriano. She’s a lifestyle influencer and a fashion creator, as she likes to call herself. Bricely has advertised products from Aussie Hair USA, The Seaweed Bath Co., rue21, and so on. She has 9.618 followers on Instagram. 

Instagram Influencer Pricing Factors

As you might have noticed, we have not given you exact numbers so far.

That’s because of two reasons:

  1. Most influencers don’t share their fees publicly online.
  2. The price you pay is very individual and heavily depends on a couple of factors.

Number of Followers 

Usually, the more followers an influencer has, the higher the price. This is the case because the more followers one has, the larger audience the audience he/she can reach. 

However, keep in mind that many influencers have fake followers and that’s something to look out for in order not to be manipulated. 

Engagement Rate 

Besides the number of followers, another key factor to determine Instagram influencer pricing is the level of engagement. There’s a quick formula to calculate the engagement rate of a particular Instagrammer:

engagement rate formula
Engagement rate = (likes + comments) / followers x 100 

Usually, an engagement rate on Instagram between 1% and 3% is considered to be pretty good. In general, you’d consider the following questions: how often does the influencer posts on Instagram? Do they interact with their followers? If yes, how do they do it? Do they reply to questions, answer comments, engage in discussions? 

Knowing this is more important than you might initially think because it can determine if the post aimed at promoting your business will be seen by the influencers’ followers or not. 

Type of Post 

The influencer collaboration cost also depends on the type of content you want the influencer to create. 

Is it a single Instagram post? Are they doing a giveaway? Should they record a video? 

Think about which approach works best for your brand. Also take into account what the specific influencer you’re interested in has to offer and what kind of content has worked well for them in the past. Consider the influencer’s affinity with the brand too. 

Type of Product

The type of product also affects influencer pricing. 

For example, promoting a motorbike is definitely going to cost more than promoting yogurt. 

The first one asks for more logistics, open space, more in-depth planning, and so on. 

Direct Partnership vs. Through an Agency Partnership 

Are you directly contacting the influencer or you’re working with an agency? Both have pros and cons. 

An example of an influencer marketing package by Blixtiz 

For instance, if you decide to contact an agency, then you’ll have to pay both for the agency and the influencer (plus agencies usually offer fixed packages), but if you collaborate with an influencer only, then the terms of the contract are up to you and the influencer. Plus, you have greater freedom to negotiate. 

Suggested Read: Instagram Influencer Marketing: A Start-to-Finish Guide

Final Thoughts 

Instagram influencer pricing is indeed puzzling, and there’s always something to be added, mentioned or calculated. 

Granted, influencer marketing comes with its own set of challenges, but at the same time it’s a chance for marketers to show they are capable of overcoming them. 

After all, no influencer campaign ever came out without a dose of uncertainty, spontaneity and a deep trust in the marketing unknown. That’s how most collaborations are born anyway. 

Hence, Pantene has collaborated with Chiara Ferragni. Daniel Wellington has collaborated with Kendall Jenner. Morphe has collaborated with James Charles. 

What about you?

Who’s the next Instagram influencer you’re collaborating with? 

Related Articles:

What Type of Influencer is Best for My Campaign?

Influencer Marketing ROI: Calculate ROI and Maximize Your Social Impact

Keyhole is a real-time conversation tracker that provides keyword + hashtag analytics and social media analytics across platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Get started for free here.

Top 25 Social Media Analytics Tools: The Definitive Guide

The Top 25 Social Media Analytics Tools

[Updated in June 2020, for a brand new Social Media Analytics Tools comparison!]

Did you miss our previous article on the 27 best Hashtag Analytics strategies? No worries, you can read it here: https://keyhole.co/blog/hashtag-analytics-27-actionable-strategies/

It can be a daunting task.

You’ve asked everyone and every query tool for the best social media analytics tools and you’re still unsure which to use. And you don’t have the time and money to waste using a tool only to find out later on that it doesn’t suit your needs. 

Whether you’re asking other marketers or searching on Google, it can be quite confusing — with every brand making enticing promises.

How do you know which of them would deliver on their promise? A good complete guide is a great place to look.

Here’s a guide showing you the top 25 social media analytics tools, and how they work.

Looking for a specific tool? Jump ahead:
1. Keyhole
2. AgoraPulse
3. Brandwatch
4. BrandMentions
5. Meltwater
6. Reputology
7. TapInfluence
8. Hootsuite
9. NetBase
10. Oktopost
11. quintly
12. Rival IQ
13. Social Studio
14. Sprout Social
15. Socialbakers
16. Brand24
17. Mention
18. Followerwonk
19. Iconosquare
20. Audiense
21. Tailwind
22. TweetReach
23. Falcon.io
24. Minter.io
25. Snaplytics

Read moreTop 25 Social Media Analytics Tools: The Definitive Guide

Keyhole Social Media AnalBottleRock

How BottleRock Music Festival Amps Up Influencer Engagement with Keyhole

Updated on May 24th, 2020.

BottleRock is a Napa Valley music festival that aims to bring together the best of Napa culture- wine, music, food and more wine, in true Napa fashion.

Jump Links:

Identifying and Finding Influencers
Identifying Trends by Tracking Hashtags Year-Round
Sharing User Generated Content Live At Your Event
Optimizing Content

“When people come to Napa, the first thing that they think of is great wine. What goes along with great wine is great food, and what pairs perfectly with food and wine is music. Add beautiful rolling hills, vineyards, and world-class hospitality and you have what we call BottleRock Napa Valley.”

-Jasa Laliberte, Marketing Manager.

Jasa Laliberte for BottleRock for Keyhole

The festival was originally started in 2013, and by 2015 was selling out. In 2018, with an impressive lineup, festival tickets sold out earlier than ever before, spurring successful sales and a dedicated fanbase in the years of the festival after.

“We really focus a lot on customer experience, paying particular emphasis to our 4 different levels of VIP and providing an all-around amazing experience for the concert-goer from start to finish. In the same way that Napa provides such amazing hospitality, we try to do the same thing at our festival.”

Why Keyhole?

The marketing team at BottleRock accomplishes some pretty awesome feats through our tool year-round. Check it out! They include:

Identifying & Finding Influencers

Jasa’s team is able to regularly find and engage artists and influencers they didn’t know were speaking about BottleRock through Keyhole’s Influencers feature.

The ‘Influencers’ tab in Keyhole shows top users engaging with your hashtag or keyword, allowing you to engage with them and their content directly from the platform.

“Before Keyhole, I wasn’t seeing some of the bigger accounts that were talking about us. I just never knew they were out there being a positive influencer for us! So now I’m definitely looking into those people. We have kind of a daily ‘a-ha!’ moment with Keyhole.”

Identifying Trends by Tracking Hashtags Year-Round

According to Jasa, Keyhole’s biggest impact is saving time by clearly depicting cross-platform data.

We asked Jasa what she did before Keyhole, to which she laughingly replied, “Well, I had lots of spreadsheets!”

“The biggest thing that’s been helpful for us is being able to actually see our overall impressions online. The data was on different platforms and we were not able to see what other people were saying about us very easily. Now we are actually able to put a number and a statistic behind it.”

By tracking relevant hashtags and keywords year-round, Jasa’s team is also able to identify relevant trends as they happen, and adjust their marketing strategies and event accordingly.

“The biggest things are the analytics behind it, the numbers. We’ve tracked hashtags for the last 5 years, but we’ve never done it all year round–so it’s been beneficial for us to see different trends and quantify them.”

By being able to identify trends and track keywords and hashtags, it brings numerous benefits to the team by being able to measure reach and engagement, benchmark against competitors or other similar festivals, as well as track how people feel about milestones such as lineup announcements. 

Sharing User Generated Content Live At Your Event

Keyhole offers a Media Wall feature that’s extremely easy to moderate, and allows your audience to share content and connect on any sized screen. 

Whether it’s a massive jumbotron or simply a mobile app, help your event attendees connect and share experiences through the Media Wall feature. 

BottleRock uses Keyhole’s Media Wall to live stream content that festival attendees share on their social media to enhance the experience.

The team can also control what is actually being displayed on the Media Wall with the handy moderation feature – filtering out any content that may be inappropriate or irrelevant. 

Optimizing Content

Lastly, Keyhole helps with content creation by giving insight into the types of conversations users are having.

Keyhole’s word cloud for the ‘#BottleRock’ Keyword tracker shows what else people discuss when talking about Napa online.

“It is influencing our strategy. As we are moving to figure out specific copy and content, we are looking at what we’re putting out there in terms of hashtags and keywords, and figuring out what themes and trends we are seeing…what is being engaged with the most. We try and find that theme and replicate it.”

The word cloud helps to identify relevant themes and topics that can bring insights into marketing strategies by shining light on subjects that are also being buzzed about. 

Keyhole Streamlines Marketing Processes

Overall, Keyhole’s data has helped BottleRock’s marketing team save time and simplify their processes, allowing them to focus on what’s most important: creating unforgettable festival experiences and selling out year after year.

What can Keyhole do for you? Sign up for a 3-day free trial and find out!

Related Articles:

Broadcast and Media Companies: Improving Performance with Social Media Analytics

How NBC Universal Uses Keyhole to Flag Security Breaches

Keyhole is a real-time conversation tracker that provides keyword + hashtag analytics and social media analytics across platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Get started for free here.

Pitching eSports Sponsors: How to Use Social Media Metrics to Secure Sponsors

While being a professional gamer sounds like it’s all fun and games—securing an eSports sponsorship is serious business.

Asking and pitching for an eSports sponsorship takes planning, research, and a bit of marketing savvy.

Sponsors care about more than just your follower or subscriber counts—they want to know how much you’re truly able to influence your audience, and whether your audience matches their target demographic.

So, to land a sponsorship, you’ll need a compelling sales pitch backed by data. Here’s how to ask for an esports sponsorship using key insights from your social media metrics.

Jump Links:

Which Metrics Should You Track to Secure Sponsorships?

How to Build an eSports Pitch Deck with Social Media Metrics
1. Research the Sponsor’s Brand
2. Detail How You’ll Solve Their Problems
3. Describe Your Audience
4. Gather Compelling Data
5. Tie Everything Back to Their Business Goals
6. Make it Pretty

Case Study: How One of Our eSports Clients uses Keyhole

Which Metrics Should You Track to Secure Sponsorships?

Every business is looking to make data-driven decisions. When seeking out influencers for their brand, eSports sponsors want to know:

  • how big your audience is?
  • who your audience is
  • how much influence you have over your audience

There are thousands of esports gamers out there, so you need to present them with specific data on why they should choose you or your team over anyone else.

As we go through these metrics, keep in mind that you can track and present data related to:

  • Your main team accounts
  • Your team members’ accounts
  • Your team’s branded hashtag
  • Your sponsors’ accounts
  • Tournaments you’re playing in

It’s about painting a full picture of everything your team can bring to their brand.

Here are the key metrics that can help you ask for an esports sponsorship:

Follower Count

Your total follower count is the number of fans, subscribers, or followers you have on your social media accounts.

More followers, of course, translates to more views, shares, and comments on your content—so gaining followers is the main goal for most social accounts.

That said, follower count is only a surface-level indicator of an account’s popularity. Accounts with equal numbers of followers can see wildly different audience engagement depending on the quality of the posts, when posts are made, or how often the posts are shared by other influencers.

Why followers matter to eSports sponsors: High follower counts are a great way to get your foot in the door with sponsors. But buying fake social media followers is a real thing, so sponsors want to know they’re getting the real deal You’ll need more compelling audience metrics to make a great sales pitch.

Bonus Tip: A steady follower growth rate is an indicator of your ability to grow your audience organically over time, vs. a one-time flash in the pan. Using Keyhole, you can showcase your historical follower growth rate.

Impressions

Impressions are a measure of the total number of times your content was displayed on someone’s feed.

Each social media network has a slightly different method for calculating impressions, but in general, they capture the total exposure of your posts.

On platforms like YouTube and Twitch, views would be considered an impression.

Raw impression metrics are useful on their own: they provide a count of the number of views on your posts and videos. But in context with other metrics, like followers and reach, they can also help measure your ability to resonate with your audience.

An example of what a keyword tracking dashboard looks like, within insights such as Tool Tips.

For example, if your post reaches 10,000 unique users, but receives 30,000 impressions, that means your average audience member came back to your post 3 times. That’s a telltale sign you’ve created something great.

Why impressions matter to eSports sponsors: Branding is all about repeated exposure. The more times your sponsored content will be viewed, the more impact it will have on your sponsor’s brand.

Bonus Tip:
Keyhole can show you the time of day and day of the week when your posts receive the most impressions. You can modify your posting times based on what times are the most optimal to share content. Having that data is a great way to get the most out of sponsored posts.

Reach

Reach is a measure of how many people saw your social media content.

Unlike impressions, reach doesn’t count multiple viewings from the same user.

Reach is therefore a measure of the total spread of your content. Of course, the more followers you have, the more reach you’ll get on the average post.

Beyond your follower base, though, your reach metrics can showcase your ability to go viral. For example, on platforms with sharing, like Facebook and Twitter, high reach could mean lots of reshares of your post. On platforms without the re-share option, like Instagram or TikTok, this could mean your posts receive high favorability from the feed algorithms.

Why reach matters to eSports sponsors: Most sponsors want to see their content reach as many people as possible. High reach on your content indicates an ability to connect with large audiences.

Engagement & Engagement Rate

Engagement is a measure of how much your audience interacts with your content. Likes, comments, shares, mentions, retweets, favs, and reactions all follow under the umbrella of engagements.

Engagement rate is a formula that measures how much interaction a social media account receives relative to another metrics—like followers, impressions, posts, or reach. Engagement rate is a truer measurement of your content’s ability to resonate with people.

Engagement rate insights provided by Keyhole’s Social Media Account Analytics feature.

For example, an account that receives 100 engagements across 50 posts has an engagement rate of 2 engagements per post, and isn’t nearly as impressive as an account that receives 100 engagements on a single post.

Why engagement matters to eSports sponsors: Brands want to form an emotional connection with their target audience. High engagement rates mean that your content naturally speaks to people, and your sponsors want to be associated with that positive emotional connection.

Keyhole is a real-time conversation tracker that provides keyword + hashtag analytics and social media analytics across platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Get started for free here.

Follower Insights

None of the above metrics can tell you anything about who follows you. And that’s why sponsors are coming to you in the first place: because you have a specific audience they need.

Social media analytics tools can uncover key audience demographics, like which countries your followers are from, their gender, the keywords they interact with most often, and which devices they use.

Why follower insights matter to eSports sponsors: Most brands have a complete persona in mind of the exact demographic they want to target. For example, a brand could be targeting female gamers in the United States own PCs and love cats. If you can prove that your audience matches up with their target audience, you’re far more likely to land that sponsorship.

Bonus Tip:
Regularly checking in on your follower insights can help you tailor your content more closely to your audience, which can help raise all your other metrics.

Audience Sentiment

Here’s where you can take things to the next level.

Using sentiment analysis, you can measure how people feel about you. Sentiment analysis is an automated process that scans text for words associated with positive or negative emotions.

Major brands use sentiment analysis for market research, customer service, and reputation management, but gamers can use sentiment analysis to show how much their audience loves them.

Why sentiment matters to eSports sponsors: Brands are highly selective when choosing who to sponsor, because their brand is their currency.

They’re looking to create positive associations, so they can’t risk associating with unlikeable personalities. If you can prove you’re not just popular, but also well-liked, that’s another argument in your favor.

How to Build an eSports Pitch Deck with Social Media Metrics

Now that you’re an expert in the most important social media metrics, it’s time to craft your data into a sales pitch and create a compelling marketing report.

Here are the key steps to building a great presentation when asking for an eSports sponsorship:

1. Research the Sponsor’s Brand

Learn as much as you can about the sponsor’s brand and business goals. Research their past marketing campaigns, press releases, recent product launches, social media accounts, and blogs.

Ask yourself:

  • Are they trying to increase brand awareness?
  • Do they have an active social media presence?
  • Who appears to be their target audience? Does it align with your audience?
  • Are you a natural fit for their brand?

2. Detail How You’ll Solve Their Problems

As you go through these questions, write down your answers in as much detail as possible. As you write, you’ll start to uncover a narrative to help guide your sales pitch.

You should be able to answer how your players and your brand can help move them closer to their business goals.

The goal here is to establish how you can help them. Everything should be outcome focused.

3. Describe Your Audience

Remember:

Sponsors want to know you can reach their target audience and that you can do so with high volume. You must convince them that your audience is their dream audience.

Using a tool like Keyhole, you can pull your audience demographic data. Build a persona of one or two typical audience members, and back up those personas with hard data.

To take things to the next level, you can pull demographic data on the potential sponsor’s audience to illustrate the current gap that you fill.

For example, “You’re looking to grow your brand with the younger, Gen Z audience. Today, only 5% of your followers are under 25 years old. That’s where we can help you. 60% of our team’s social media audience is under the age of 25. They’re also predominantly male, at 75%, which is your core demographic.”

4. Gather Compelling Data

Now is the time to back everything up with data. Show off your impressions, reach, and engagement, detailing how many eyeballs see your content across every platform.

For example, “Our content receives 3,000,000 monthly impressions, with a reach of 500,000 people. Our content has an engagement rate of 50 engagements per post, showing that our audience interacts a lot with our content.”

You can take things over the top with audience sentiment data, and actual examples of your mentions.

“90% of posts about our brand are positive. Our audience most-often uses words like ‘awesome’, ‘amazing’, and ‘sick’ when talking about us.”

5. Tie Everything Back to Their Business Goals

In as much detail as possible, tie everything back to the brand’s return on investment.

The more proof you have that you can make an impact for your sponsors, the better.

If you’ve worked with other sponsors, show how you’ve grown their audience or increased their follower count.

For example, “Before our previous sponsorship with Lenovo, we had an overlap of only 100 followers with their brand. After a 6-month sponsorship with over 500,000 impressions on our sponsored content, we now have an overlap of 5,000 followers. Not only did we increase their reach, our sponsored links to their website generated over 50,000 page views and over $100,000 in direct sales.”

6. Make it Pretty

This is a true sales presentation, so make sure it looks like one.

If you’re not a professional designer, you can still easily design a beautiful presentation using tools like Canva, or you can take a look at other content creation tools.

Make sure to visualize your data: nobody wants to see flat numbers.

Create charts and infographics to highlight your most compelling data points.

End your presentation with a compelling call to action, and you’re good to go.

With this pitch deck in hand, you’ll be sure to land that esports sponsorship.

Case Study: How One of Our eSports Clients uses Keyhole

One of our eSports clients has a huge presence in the gaming world.

Since their founding in 2009, they’ve won six North American League of Legends Championship Series. This particular eSports league has players in League of Legends, Apex Legends, Hearthstone, Super Smash Bros, Fortnite, and more.

As a collective of pro gamers, sponsorships are a big part of their income. Our client is currently sponsored by:

  • Logitech
  • Lenovo
  • Twitch
  • Geico
  • Grubhub
  • Game Fuel

To land and keep major sponsors like these, they use Keyhole to track their social media analytics data.

Here’s how they do it:

Brand Monitoring

Our client regularly reviews mentions and engagements to their team’s social media accounts to keep their finger on the pulse of their overall brand sentiment.

They also track relevant keywords and hashtags across social media tools, news sites, and forums. For example, they track branded keywords that are relevant to their league and their sponsors.

And they’re not just interested in volume, they want to know who’s talking about them and what they’re saying.

Having evidence for a sponsor that their team’s brand is highly regarded is a big plus.

Team Member Tracking

Our client also uses Keyhole to track their team members’ individual accounts—not to spy on them, but to track their engagement rates.

This helps them narrow down which team members are generating the most buzz for their brand.

They track accounts like JONATHAN, who has over 550,000 YouTube subscribers, and ImperialHal, who has over 180,000 Twitch followers. They also track their own branded accounts in different regions.

They’re also invested in overall impressions and reach across all these accounts, because they can prove the total viewership of their audience to help secure even better sponsorships.

Influencer Management

This client tracks over 250 influencers, grouped in Keyhole’s Influencer Management feature by category.

They typically use the Influencer Management feature to group each individual players’ social media accounts and aggregate the metrics across different platforms to paint a fuller picture of how each player contributes to our clients overall profile.

Grouping their influencers by category helps them aggregate metrics across different accounts and platforms, because their players are scattered across networks like Twitch, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram.

Sponsor Tracking

This is our clients’ most innovative use of Keyhole.

Not only do they track their own accounts, they also track their sponsor’s accounts, keywords, and hashtags. They monitor sponsors such as Lenovo, Geico, Gamefuel, and Grubhub to keep an eye on each sponsors’ account performance.

They can even track those brands’ other sponsorships. This allows them to measure their impact on their sponsor’s brands compared to their competitors, proving the ROI on their partnership.

Earn More Sponsorships with Keyhole

Using compelling data like impressions, reach, and engagement can help you land more esports sponsorships.

Keyhole can help you track, gather, and report on that data in a simple, yet meaningful way.

To unlock your social data, start your free Keyhole trial today.

Related Articles:

eSports: Increasing Revenue and Doubling Down on Monetization [+ Case Study!]

Social Media for Nonprofits: Proving Your ROI and Impact through Social Media Analytics

How Are Impressions Calculated?

Every marketer wants to know the impact of their campaigns, and impressions are a calculation of just that.

Jump Links:

What are Impressions?
Why Should You Track Impressions?
How Are Impressions Calculated?

What are Impressions?

Impressions are the total number of exposures to your content. This can include the same person seeing your content multiple times.

Impressions are tracked on many different platforms. For example, how many times people see your Instagram posts, or how many times your ad is displayed with Google Ads.

Impressions are often confused with reach. While reach counts the number of people who saw your content, impressions count the total number of views.

Why Should You Track Impressions?

Impressions tell you how many times your content has been viewed, so that’s interesting on its own. But your impressions give you more information when you compare them against other metrics.

Keyhole is a real-time conversation tracker that provides keyword + hashtag analytics and social media analytics across platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Get started for free here.

For example, content with a high impression to reach ratio mean that people are re-viewing your content many times—which probably means they like it!

Or, if you have lots of Instagram followers but relatively few impressions, it could mean that you may have followers that don’t spend very much time on Instagram, and you may want to target a different demographic.

How Are Impressions Calculated?

On most platforms, an impression is tracked every time your content visibly appears in someone’s feed.

On a platform without a feed, like Snapchat for example, a “Story View” would be considered the same as an impression.

How to Measure Impressions

Most platforms give you impression data directly on a post’s analytics. On Instagram, for example, you can go to your profile and tap “Insights” to see your posts’ impression data.

To track all your impressions in one place, you can use a social media analytics tool like Keyhole.

Keyhole will not only show you the total impressions you achieve on your posts, but it will also help you identify content that is likely to get the most impressions before you even post!

This can help you pick strategies that are more likely to result in increased viewership.

Related Articles:

What Is Social Media Reach?

Reach vs Impressions

Keyhole is a real-time conversation tracker that provides keyword + hashtag analytics and social media analytics across platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Get started for free here.

How Do I Calculate Follower Growth Rate?

When tracking any social media metric, it’s best to think in terms of rates and percentages rather than raw numbers.

Rather than tracking the raw number of social media followers you’ve gained or lost, it’s much better to track your follower growth rate.

Jump Links:

What is Follower Growth Rate?
Why Should I Track Follower Growth Rate?
How to Calculate Follower Growth Rate

What is Follower Growth Rate?

Follower growth rate, expressed as a percentage growth, measures the speed at which your social media account is gaining (or losing) followers relative to your previous follower count.

For example, your monthly Instagram follower growth rate would be the percentage growth your follower count has seen since last month.

Why Should I Track Follower Growth Rate?

Tracking a raw increase in follower count doesn’t tell you as much about how quickly you’re gaining followers as your growth rate does.

Keyhole is a real-time conversation tracker that provides keyword + hashtag analytics and social media analytics across platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Get started for free here.

Follower growth rate serves as a better health check on the performance of your campaigns.

Tracking your follower growth rate can help you track your performance against your competitors. For example, you could have fewer followers due to having a newer account, but you could be gaining traction much faster than they are.

How to Calculate Follower Growth Rate

Follower growth rate is calculated as the number of followers you gained divided by the number of followers you started, times 100% (over a specific time period).

The follower growth rate calculation is:

Follower Growth Rate = New Followers / Starting Follower Count x 100%

For example, if Company A starts with 1000 followers and gains 100 followers in a month, they’ve achieved a growth rate of 10%.

Contrast this with Company B that starts the month with 10,000 followers and gains 100. That’s a growth rate of only 1%.

Although both accounts gained the same raw number of followers, Company A’s is doing a much better job at attracting new followers—their growth rate was 10 times faster relative to their original size.

Related Articles:

The Top 5 Social Media Strategies For Marketing Success in 2020

How to Get More Instagram Followers: 30 Proven Strategies

Start Calculating Your Follower Growth Rate

To easily track and report on your follower growth rate—and that of your competitors—start your free Keyhole trial today.

How Do I Calculate Engagement Rate?

Social media accounts with larger following are going to see more interactions on their posts. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean their content is better.

Engagement rate gives us an assessment of content quality independent of the number of followers an account has.

Jump Links:

What is Engagement Rate?
Why Should You Track Engagement Rate?
How to Calculate Social Media Engagement Rate

What is Engagement Rate?

Engagement rate is a metric used to assess the average number of interactions your social media content receives per follower.

Engagement rate is calculated as the total number of interactions your content receives divided by your total number of followers, multiplied by 100%.

In simpler terms, it’s a measure of how well your content performs independent of your follower count.

What counts as an interaction depends on the platform, but most often refers to likes, reactions, shares, and comments.

Why Should You Track Engagement Rate?

Because you’re factoring out the number of followers you have, engagement rate provides an honest assessment of the quality of your content.

For example, if a brand has millions of followers, but only receives a few dozen interactions per post, it’s likely they’re not producing high quality content.

Contrast that with an account with only a few thousand followers that gets tons of shares and comments every time—that’s a high engagement rate.

Keyhole is a real-time conversation tracker that provides keyword + hashtag analytics and social media analytics across platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Get started for free here.

Engagement rate can also be indicative of a mismatch between the content you’re producing in your audience. If you have a low engagement rate, it’s possible you’ve gained a large following that isn’t your target customer.

Or, you have been able to reach a following from brand recognition alone, but you’re not creating the content your audience wants.

How to Calculate Social Media Engagement Rate

Engagement rate is calculated as total engagement divided by total followers, multiplied by 100%.

The engagement rate formula is:

Engagement Rate = Total Engagement / Total Followers x 100%

engagement rate formula

In this case:

  • Total Engagement = the sum of all interactions (shares, comments, reactions)
  • Total Followers = the number of people who follow your account

For example, if Company A posted on Facebook to their 10,000 fans and received:

  • 200 likes
  • 100 comments
  • 50 shares

Their total engagement would be 350 (200+100+50). Plugging this into the equation:

Company A Engagement Rate = 350 / 10,000 x 100% = 3.5%

Track Engagement Rate with Keyhole

Related Articles:

How Do I Calculate Social Media ROI?

How Do I Calculate Social Media Conversions?

Keyhole is a real-time conversation tracker that provides keyword + hashtag analytics and social media analytics across platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Get started for free here.

What Is Social Media Reach?

In a perfect world, everyone you wanted to reach with your online content would see your posts or ads.

In reality, not all of your followers will see every post you make, and you will likely only reach a fraction of your total potential audience size. Reach is a measure of this concept.

Jump Links:

What is Reach?
Why You Should Care About Reach
How to Measure Reach

What is Reach?

Reach is the number of unique people who are exposed to an advertisement or social media post. In simpler terms, it’s the number of people that saw your content.

Reach is often confused with impressions, which is the total number of times an advertisement or social media has been viewed, including repeat views by the same people.

Why You Should Care About Reach

Reach is used as a measure of brand awareness or how popular your content is. It’s a better brand awareness measure than followers or impressions, as it counts the actual number of people you were able to impact.

Reach can be used both in the planning and reporting phase of a marketing campaign.

Before planning any marketing campaign, you need to know the potential size of your audience. This allows you to estimate the possible impact of your campaign.

Keyhole is a real-time conversation tracker that provides keyword + hashtag analytics and social media analytics across platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Get started for free here.

Calculating reach also allows you to assess a campaign while it’s happening or assess its performance after the fact. You may need to pivot your content strategy to a different platform or format in order to achieve your desired audience size.

For example, if your posts in the morning receive more reach than posts you make in the afternoon, you may consider shifting more of your content to earlier in the day.

Tracking reach allows you to assess the viewership of your:

  • Hashtags
  • Posts
  • Ads
  • Events
  • Social media profiles

How to Measure Reach

Calculating reach is challenging, as you only want to factor in every individual once. Otherwise, you’re measuring impressions.

To measure your reach, you can use a social media analytics tool like Keyhole.

Keyhole will not only allow you to track the total reach of your content, it will also allow you to estimate the potential reach of a piece of content before you post it.

This can help you pick strategies that are more likely to result in increased viewership.

Related Articles:

Reach vs Impression: What’s The Difference and Why Is It Important?

5 Under Analyzed Social Media Metrics that Matter [+ Tools to Measure Them!]

To start measuring your reach, start a free Keyhole trial today.

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