Join us on April 2 at 1 p.m. CT for a 45-minute discussion featuring industry experts including Tatiana Holifield, VP, Social Content and Growth Marketing at SiriusXM and Pandora, Brianna Doe, Influencer, Founder at Verbatim and guest speaker, Forrester analyst, Kelsey Chickering, who will break down how to connect social media efforts to tangible business results. We will also discuss key findings from the 2025 Total Economic Impact™ of Sprout Social study, conducted by Forrester Consulting and commissioned by Sprout Social, and how to leverage it.

Attendees will walk away with actionable insights on how to:

• Quantify the ROI of social media efforts across different verticals
• Secure more resources and budget with effective data storytelling 
• Leverage the Total Economic Impact of Sprout Social study

The post Data to Dollars: Leveraging Social Data for Increased Social Investment featuring Forrester appeared first on Sprout Social.

Drawing from years of experience and brand new 2025 Sprout Social Index™ data, some of Australia’s brightest social media minds shine a light on what consumers expect from brands this year, plus how marketers can build a stronger social business case and AI cures for creative fatigue.

Tune in on-demand, as we explore:

• Expert advice for Australia’s unique social media landscape
• Actually authentic engagement strategies
• Aussie buying behaviours and their social care implications
• How your regional colleagues will use AI in the year ahead

Don’t miss your chance to get a first look at this Australian-exclusive data and hear the Q&A from the live audience. 

The post Social Trends to Refine Your Strategy in 2025: Index™ Insights Australia appeared first on Sprout Social.

While not all of these audiences are using social media to interact with businesses, a significant number are. The Sprout Social Index found that social plays a vital role for businesses:

• 93% of consumers agree it’s important for brands to keep up with online culture
• 90% of consumers turn to social media to keep up with trends
• Customers turn to social media for research when they need to make purchases within the next month

There’s measurable social media ROI no matter what industry you’re in, but to understand the impact for your business specifically, you need to track the right social media metrics and KPIs. That’s where we come in—throughout this article, you’ll learn more about what social media KPIs are, how to set the right ones and which KPIs to track for each of your marketing goals.

Bonus Resource: Set smarter KPIs using our social media KPI template and guide. Use it to uncover what drives impact, cut through distractions and prioritize efforts that deliver measurable results.

Get the template

What are social media KPIs and metrics?

KPI stands for key performance indicator. It’s a business term and isn’t limited to social media marketing. In this guide, we’ll focus solely on social media KPIs.

KPIs are the numbers you look at to see if your strategy is working and meeting your goals. Individual metrics and KPIs don’t tell the whole story. Adding context to your data by combining several KPIs will help you see if you’re reaching your goals.

The KPIs listed in this article are grouped by category. To find most of these metrics, you’ll need a business account on each platform. The analytics section will give you the data you need, or you can use software like Sprout Social to compile the social media analytics you want without pulling from separate networks individually.

How to set social media KPIs & metrics

But first, let’s talk about how to set the right social media KPIs so you’re tracking the most important metrics and analytics. Your KPIs should tie directly to your business goals..

Here are a few tips for pinpointing the right social media KPIs to track.

Determine your social media goals

Your social media goals are your north star in the chaos of changing platforms and trends. What are you hoping to achieve through your strategy? These should match the overarching business goals your company’s CEO, sales team and/or marketing team decide on.

For example, if your company is trying to grow its audience and brand awareness, your social media goals to match and support that are likely going to focus on reach. But if your company wants to generate more leads and sales, your social media goals should surround conversions.

We’ve categorized the social media KPIs in this article by the social media goal they support, so you can choose the best KPIs and metrics to measure performance and bottom line impact.

Look at your company’s growth stage

If you’re working for a startup that’s relatively new, sales are still important. But improving reach, boosting engagement and focusing on building community is helpful for long-term social media and business growth. Startups are also going to be looking for market validation, so KPIs and metrics surrounding customer feedback are key.

More established businesses, however, might focus more on conversions and the costs associated with bringing those in from social media.

Pinpoint just a few KPIs to monitor

Keep this in mind: KPIs can be metrics, but not all metrics are KPIs. You might monitor a whole slew of social media metrics to determine your overall performance.

However, your KPIs are going to be directly correlated to your business’s bottom line. Name only a few that really help you understand whether your social media efforts are assisting your business’s overall goals.

For example, if your business goals focus on social media sales, you’ll want to monitor metrics like follower count and web traffic. But your KPIs are going to be related to the number of sales per platform, total revenue or cost per acquisition.

Choose KPIs that help you prove social media ROI

To grow your social media program, you’ll need buy-in from the decision makers at your organization. Leaders who guide budgets at your organization need to see tangible, measurable impact to justify investing more into team resources and campaigns. The best way to prove social media’s value is by providing reporting that puts the impact these networks have centerstage. KPIs that tie social to the sales funnel and revenue show ROI in a way business leaders understand.

At Sprout, we refined our reporting by shifting to a multi-attribution model. This approach helped leadership see the full scope of social’s impact.

By moving to a data storytelling model that accounted for the multiple consumer touchpoints that involve social media, we attributed an additional 5,800% of pipeline impact to our campaigns. Metrics like earned media value and cost per lead provide tangible proof that social keeps our customer pipeline strong.

Social media KPIs for reach

How do you know that your marketing messages and campaigns are getting to the right people? How far has that message spread? Reach is an umbrella term for how many people come across your social media accounts and posts. It also includes the potential number of people your marketing message can access.

Follower count

An essential metric to track, follower count tells you how many accounts are keeping up with your brand. Every platform has its own version of followers or fans. These numbers are found right on your profile page. They can also be located within your social media management tool.

Impressions

Social media impressions are not the same as social media reach. Impressions tell you how many times a post or profile has been seen. This metric doesn’t distinguish between unique accounts; it totals up the views. So one account could see the same post in their feed four times, which equals to four impressions.

There are different types of impressions that are dependent on the network you’re looking at. On Pinterest, for example, you can see impressions per Pin. On Instagram, impressions are given for both posts and Stories.

Post reach

In the social media world, post reach (a more specific metric than the overall category of reach) indicates the number of unique accounts that saw your post. Going back to the previous example, when that one account saw the same post four times, the post reach is one.

Post reach is often found in the same analytics area as post impressions. Due to the differences we’ve outlined, post reach will likely be lower than impressions. For example, you’ll be able to see that a post reach of 10 unique accounts generated 50 impressions.

Reach can be roughly calculated by dividing the number of impressions by the number of followers you have. It’s also readily available for some platforms as well as by using a social media analytics tool.

Web traffic

Web traffic is a great way to see how well your posts with links to your website are performing. It’s also another good measurement for campaign performance. Web referral traffic indicates the number of times someone clicked a link on your social media account to get to one of your website pages.

This data is readily available in Google Analytics or through a website builder if you have one.

This metric is useful for a number of things:

• How well a blog post is received on social media
• Success of any sales you run solely through social media
• Campaign success when you use a landing page that’s shared on social media

Share of voice

Share of voice (SOV) tells you how much online visibility you have compared to your competitors. This one doesn’t come readily available in native analytics. Instead, you’ll need to decide on keywords, hashtags or categories that you want to focus on. For example, if you want to see your SOV around topics related to coffee, you would compile a list of hashtags and keywords to look at.

Then, you’d use a tool to gather information on how often your brand is mentioned with these words compared to the total number of times the key terms are mentioned overall. Without a uniform social media reporting system this comparison can be cumbersome, i.e. when you review hashtags individually, which is why a tool like Sprout offers both a hashtag report and keywords report to get a more effective overview of your SOV.

Social media KPIs for engagement

With reach metrics, you’ll know that people are looking at your posts and accounts, but what numbers show their actions? Are they only looking or are they also clicking through posts, interacting with them or sharing them?

Social media engagement is vital to a brand’s success online. No engagement is akin to you talking to a group of people and everyone is either staring at you silently or just passing by.

Clicks

Have you ever come across an Instagram caption where the first line was so intriguing that you just had to click to read more? Traditionally, clicks were about posts that had links that you could click on. But as social media posts have changed, so have clicks.

Clicks are everywhere. At the post level, a click could be an expansion of an Instagram caption or a tap on a Tweet to look through photos. There are also clicks that are made on your Instagram profile page and clicks you make to expand a Pin.

These numbers are found in native analytics or summarized in a tool like Sprout. As you dig into the social networks you’re targeting, you’ll learn in detail which clicks they track and how they name these metrics.

Likes

You’re familiar with double-tapping a post to show how much you enjoyed the Instagram photo. Likes and favorites indicate that the account appreciated your post enough to interact with it. This KPI can be useful to track for campaigns focused on the awareness stage of the funnel.

And while some platforms like Instagram and Facebook are now hiding the Like count from public view, you’re still able to see these numbers in your analytics.

Shares

Post and profile shares are an excellent way to measure engagement. It means your post was so intriguing that your audience had to send it to someone or share it to another platform.

Shares have different names on different platforms. On Pinterest, it’s a save; on X (formerly Twitter), a repost; on Instagram, you can use the share icon to send to either DMs or a Story; and on both TikTok and Facebook, the action is still called a share but you have many options to choose from. A high share count is also an indication of how viral a post is.

Comments

Along with likes, comments are another of those essential interactions that every platform has. Comments include those on posts and livestreams. You can track these in Sprout or find them in your native analytics, either per post or totaled up for an overall count.

Just like shares, comments are a good indicator of an engaging post. Your comment count can also help you figure out the bandwidth your social team has, or where they might need more resources.

Not only are they meaningful as metrics, but you should also be developing a strategy to effectively manage social media comments, so you engage with your fans through replies and interactions. If your organization uses social media as a customer care outlet, comments (along with mentions and messages) are a key way to track customer sentiment. Sentiment can be positive, neutral or negative and helps customer service teams understand what’s going well and where you need to adjustments..

Mentions

Mentions are when an account tags your business account or mentions your brand. It can happen in a post, in a comment, in a story or directly to you. This metric is not always tracked natively, so you may need to use a social media monitoring tool like Sprout to track how and how often your brand’s accounts are mentioned.

According to a Sprout Social Pulse Survey, social media is consumers’ top channel for product discovery. Your brand is being talked about whether or not you track it. To calculate your mentions, use a brand keyword report to see how often your brand is mentioned online, with or without being officially tagged.

Profile visits

When someone is just learning about your company, they’ll do things like visit your website, sign up for your newsletter and check out your profile page. The profile visit count tells you how often your page has been seen in a given amount of time. This number is found in native analytics and is a good reminder to keep your profile updated with your most important link destinations.

Social media KPIs for conversions

Now you know how to track both the results of your publishing on social media and how audiences are interacting with you. Now what? The next step in the marketing funnel is converting these interactions into customers.

Sales revenue

When you sell products and promote them through your social media presence, you definitely want to know if all of your efforts are paying off. To figure out your sales revenue, take a look at your Google Analytics or website builder. You’ll be able to see which clicks from social media to your website converted into purchases and what the total from that is.

Many networks are also incorporating e-commerce so you can shop directly on the platform through posts or streams. In these cases, the numbers can be found in your shop analytics.

Lead conversion rate

The lead conversion rate lets you know how well your social media strategy is paying off. It takes time to build trust with a customer but there are many ways to generate leads via social media. They might not purchase from you at the very moment they see your product but eventually, when they do, they’ll be counted as a customer.

Google Analytics offers a way to track your lead conversion rate via social media. For some organizations, more complex attribution models and tracking tools may be an even better fit for their marketing funnel.

Non-revenue conversions

The last social media metric for tracking conversions is the non-revenue kind. This metric is for all the non-product or service actions that a customer could take. It includes things like email newsletter signups, a white paper download or filling out a signup form. This conversion is one that you set—you decide what counts as a conversion and what doesn’t.

Social media KPIs for customer loyalty

Having a positive social media interaction with a brand is highly important to customers and it shows up as increased purchases and recommendations to friends.

Sprout’s recent study found that after a positive interaction with a brand, consumers are willing to buy that brand (78%), choose that brand over the competition (77%), recommend the brand (76%), increase their spending with that brand (72%) and develop a stronger bond (70%). All of these stats indicate how social media help increase customer loyalty.

Issues resolved

Social media is increasingly becoming the platform of choice for consumers to navigate service questions and issues. The issues resolved metric is not one that you can find inside of a native analytics dashboard. Instead, you’ll need to calculate this on your own by tagging Instagram and Facebook DMs in their combined Inbox, or by using Sprout’s Inbox Team Report to get a detailed look at how effectively your team is managing messages.

According to the Sprout Social Index™, nearly three quarters (73%) of consumers agree they’ll buy from a competitor if a brand doesn’t respond to their customer service inquiries on social. The majority expect that response to come within 24 hours or less.

To track how quickly you respond to issues, you’ll need a tool like Sprout that can report on these metrics. A faster response time leads to happier customers which in turn leads to customer loyalty. Pay attention to metrics like average first reply time, average reply wait time and average handle time to understand how long customers wait for responses.

Customer lifetime value

The customer lifetime value tells you in dollar amounts how much a customer buys from you over a period of time. After their initial purchase, your goal will be to get returning customers that will make further purchases. With the right customer loyalty strategies, you’ll find that you have a high customer lifetime value.

To calculate this metric, multiply the customer value by the average customer lifespan. Online CLV calculators also exist to help you with this process.

Social media KPIs to prove ROI

Social media campaigns drive impact across the business—from brand visibility to revenue growth. These KPIs make social’s ROI clear.

Earned media value

Earned media value (EMV) is one way to turn numbers like reach, interactions and views into a dollar value to compare to your bottom line. With this KPI in particular, however, subjectivity can muddy the waters. EMV can be customized and standardized for your individual organization. The key is setting a Cost Per Engagement (CPE) for each type of interaction (say $0.50). You can also “weight” engagement types if you’d like shares to be worth more than a simple like.

EMV will require some manual tabulations, but a social media management tool like Sprout can streamline by showing you a breakdown of likes, shares, etc. in one place. Here’s a simplified example of calculating EMV:

You receive 100 likes, 50 comments and 20 shares on a post.

You assign weights of 1 to likes, 2 to comments and 3 to shares.

• Likes: 100 likes x 1 x $0.50 = $50
• Comments: 50 comments x 2 x $0.50 = $50
• Shares: 20 shares x 3 x $0.50 = $30

Total EMV for the post: $50 + $50 + $30 = $130

When you have a post go viral, EMV can be significant. This is also a useful KPI to gauge success of influencer and employee advocacy campaigns.

Cost per action

To see the full scope of social media’s ROI, you’ll also want to understand how much it costs to generate webinar signups, secure a download or even get a single click on your post. Keeping your cost per action (CPA) low is a combination of using the right platforms and producing content that hits the mark with your audience.

To calculate CPA, take the total funds you spent and divide that by the number of actions taken on the post. If you spent $100 on an Instagram ad that received 25 actions (say, newsletter sign ups) your CPA would be $4.

Cost per lead

The cost per lead KPI tells you how effective your advertising or lead generation strategy is. Every company and industry has different benchmarks for costs per lead. If you have a high cost per lead, you have room to adjust your strategy and improve how you’re allocating your social marketing budget.

To find the cost per lead, take a look at your social media ads. Cost per clicks and conversion costs are found in ad analytics. You want to make sure that you’ve set up your paid social strategy for success with an efficient use of budget. Look into which of your ads have the lowest cost per lead and consider how to replicate what works well in other areas.

Leads generated

The more potential customers in your pipeline, the higher your potential sales. Social media can generate leads through campaigns dedicated to doing so, or by piquing interest through the various types of content you share. Many CRMs have lead tracking capabilities.  With diligent UTM tagging practices in Sprout, you can track leads generated in your preferred CRM. If you’re a Salesforce user, Sprout’s Salesforce integration supports even deeper analysis of your social media’s pipeline impact.

Use social media KPIs to grow your business

Tracking social media KPIs is an important part of any social media marketing strategy. Without tracking, you won’t know if you’re succeeding in your business goals. Leverage a social media marketing dashboard to monitor a combination of KPIs to match up with the goals you established.

For example, when you know how many comments, shares and likes your posts are generating, you’ll be able to track your overall post engagement rate. This number will increase over time as you use strategies that target engagement.

The future of customer service and business growth is in social media. Download our social media KPI template  to better understand what KPIs to track at different stages of the funnel and for specific business objectives.

The post 20 social media KPIs to drive business growth appeared first on Sprout Social.

These numbers show you exactly what works with your audience and what doesn’t so you can consistently post high-quality videos that truly resonate with them.

In this post, we’ll show you how to track your Instagram Reels analytics. You’ll also learn which metrics to keep an eye on, what they reveal about your content and how to use this information to build a larger, more engaged audience.

How to see Instagram Reels analytics directly from the app

Before we dive into what your numbers mean, let’s make sure you can actually see them.

To access your Instagram Reels analytics, you’ll need a business or creator account. If you’re still on a personal account, don’t worry – you can easily switch to a professional account.

Once that’s done, Instagram gives you two ways to check your Reels performance:

• Track analytics for individual Instagram Reels
• Track Reels metrics under overall account insights

We’ll walk you through each method below (with screenshots).

Tracking analytics for individual Instagram Reels

Want to know if that new hook worked? Or how many followers a specific Reel brought in? Checking each Reel’s performance shows you exactly which content style, topics and formats your audience responds to.

Here’s how to find these insights:

1. Open your Instagram profile and tap the Reels tab to view all your Reels.

2. Tap on the specific Reel you want to analyze.

3. Tap View insights at the bottom to see metrics for the selected Reel.

Alternatively, you can tap the three-dot icon (•••) at the bottom right of your Reel and choose Insights from the menu to view the same metrics.

Tracking Reels metrics under overall account insights

If you want a broader view of how your Reels contribute to your overall performance on the platform, tracking Instagram metrics under account insights is the way to go. This helps you identify trends across all your content and measure overall engagement.

Here’s how to access this data:

1. From your Instagram profile, tap the hamburger menu in the top right corner.

2. Select Insights to open your account’s analytics dashboard.

3. Scroll down to the Content you’ve shared section.

4. Tap Reels to view performance metrics for all your videos. You can customize the time period, filter by metric (e.g. views, comments, likes, reach, etc.) or sort your videos by newest, highest or lowest.

Note: You can also open your Professional dashboard directly from your Instagram profile. Tap on Content you shared and choose Reels from the drop-down to view the same insights.

Instagram Reels metrics for data-driven decisions

Tracking Instagram Reels metrics can help you grow exponentially on the platform – but only if you know what each number actually means for your strategy. You also need to understand how these metrics work together to show your content’s true impact.

Let’s break down each metric and what it tells you about your Reels performance:

Views

Views show how many times users have played or replayed your Reel. This metric shows your video’s ability to grab attention, especially in the first few seconds.

But since views also include replays by the same users, they don’t automatically show you’ve reached a wide audience. When you compare views to other metrics, though, they can reveal important information about your content.

For example, a Reel with high views but a low average watch time might show your hook is strong but the rest of your video is struggling to engage.

Additionally, look for patterns in your most-viewed Reels. If Reels starting with a bold statement get twice as many views as those starting with questions, you might want to adjust your hooks.

You could also test different types of Reel thumbnails (e.g. text overlay or facial expression) to see what works with your audience and gets them to play your Reel.

Reach

Reach reveals how many unique accounts see your Reel. Instagram further breaks down this metric into the percentage of followers and non-followers who watched your video.

High reach usually means the Instagram algorithm is actively distributing your content to new audiences through the Reels tab, explore page or hashtags. When your reach significantly exceeds your follower count, you’re successfully tapping into broader audiences.

There’s also a relationship between your views and reach. For example, more views than reach means people are watching your Reel multiple times – a strong sign of engaging content.

Pay attention to which types of content consistently reach new audiences. Many brands find that educational content often reaches farther than promotional posts. Making Reels on trending topics can also dramatically increase your reach.

Watch time

Watch time measures the total time viewers spend watching your Reel, including replays. This metric is helpful when you’re trying to understand audience engagement in a broader context.

For example, high watch time with more unique views shows a larger audience is interested in your content. On the other hand, high watch time with fewer unique views means deeper engagement from a smaller audience.

Watch time is also a useful metric for setting goals and measuring campaign success. For instance, your brand might compare the total watch time across multiple Reels to get a big-picture view of which videos got watched the most overall.

Average watch time

The average watch time shows how much of your Reel people typically watch before leaving. It’s calculated by dividing the total watch time by the number of initial plays (not replays).

If your average watch time is high, it means people are actually watching your whole video (or most of it), not just scrolling past after the first few seconds.

Similarly, low average watch time might suggest your hook is clickbait or your content isn’t meeting viewer expectations (e.g. it’s boring or failing to deliver value).

Knowing the average watch time helps you accurately evaluate your content’s quality.

For example, a 60-second tutorial with an average watch time of 50 seconds but fewer views might have a bigger impact than a 15-second viral clip with more views but an average watch time of 5 seconds.

Reels interactions

Reels interactions tell you how exactly viewers actively engage with your content. What do they do after watching your Reel? Here’s what’s included under this metric:

• Likes are quick, positive responses. They might be the easiest form of engagement, but they can help you identify which Reels immediately resonate with your audience.
• Comments show deeper engagement. If your Reels are getting lots of comments, it means they’re great at sparking conversation.
• Saves highlight Reels people want to reference later. To get more saves, consider posting more educational content or videos that provide long-term value.
• Shares reveal what your audience finds valuable enough to pass on. Users typically like sharing Reels that are relatable, offer unique value or solve problems.

Your total Reels interactions are the sum of all the above sub-metrics. More interactions means your content is driving active engagement, while low interactions indicate users are watching it passively without taking any kind of action.

Follows

Follows show which Reels convince viewers to become part of your audience. This metric contributes directly to your account growth.

More follows, even on Reels with moderate views, can reveal content that truly attracts your Instagram target audience. These people not only like your content – they want to see more of it.

Reel follows can be a strong indicator of success, especially if your brand’s goal is to build community and long-term engagement on Instagram.

How to level up your Instagram Reels analytics with Sprout Social

While Instagram’s native analytics show you the basics, serious brands and creators need deeper insights to grow on Instagram. This is where Sprout Social’s Instagram analytics tools can help.

Here are three ways Sprout can translate your Reels metrics into actionable data and improve your social media content strategy:

Advanced analytics and reporting

Sprout Social’s social media analytics give you detailed insights into your Instagram Reels performance with custom, visual reports you can easily share with others.

Track exclusive metrics like total plays for your Reels, which include both initial plays and replays. This helps you understand how your content is resonating with your audience on a deeper level and tweak your social media strategy accordingly.

Smart Inbox for managing engagement

Instead of switching between apps, you can respond to comments or questions on your Reels (and DMs) directly from Sprout’s Smart Inbox. This helps you achieve faster response times and build community by staying on top of conversations.

Calendar for tracking publishing activity

Sprout’s Publishing Calendar gives you a clear view of how Reels fit into your overall content mix. See your Reels alongside other content types (e.g. posts or Stories), even on platforms other than Instagram.

You can switch between Monthly and List views, spot gaps in your social media schedule and maintain a consistent posting rhythm that keeps your audience engaged.

Want to see the difference better analytics make? Sign up for a free trial and turn your Reels data into real growth.

Start your free Sprout trial

How to optimize your Instagram Reels for better performance

Now that you understand your analytics, let’s turn those insights into action. Here’s how to optimize your Reels based on what the numbers tell you:

Use trends to your advantage

Creating Reels around trending topics and audio can boost your performance, but you need to go about it strategically. Create a quick checklist to evaluate trends before jumping on them:

• Does it fit your brand?
• Can you add value to it?
• Will your audience care?

Here’s an example of Stanley’s take on the “very demure, very mindful” audio trend:

Source

By being selective, you’ll focus on trends that naturally align with your brand’s voice (like Stanley does above with its Instagram feed focused mostly on colors and aesthetics). Your Reels will perform better as a result because they genuinely connect with your audience.

Pro tip: Trends that you catch early often perform better than those you join late. Sprout Social’s AI-driven listening tools can help you spot trending keywords and topics on Instagram and other social networks so you’re always one step ahead of the competition.

Perfect your hooks – and deliver.

The first few seconds of your Reel determine whether viewers will stick around or scroll past. Create strong opening moments that grab attention and make viewers want to watch more.

Here are some proven hook strategies to try out for your Reels:

• Lead with a compelling point or statement (spoken or text overlay)
• Show an eye-catching visual or transformation (e.g. before and after)
• Ask a question targeting your audiences’ interests (and proceed to answer it)

Oreo grabs attention with this scroll-stopping Reel using a blend of high-quality (and mouthwatering) visuals, intriguing text, classic music and ASMR audio.

Source

Remember, though: a great hook only works if your content delivers on its promise. Match your content quality to your opening, maintain a good pace and end with clear value to increase watch time and engagement on your Reels.

Pro tip: Save hooks from high-performing Reels in your niche. Use this collection of Reel ideas to experiment with different openings and find out what works for your brand.

Post around peak activity times.

When your Reel goes live, it can have a huge impact on its reach and engagement. Instead of posting randomly, create a publishing schedule around when your audience is most active.

You can also check out our guide to the best times to post on Instagram to find out the averages are for different formats, countries and industries. Here’s an overview:

Source

Pro tip: Have audiences spread across the globe? Consider their time zone when scheduling your Reels. Sprout’s ViralPost technology recommends the best times to post for your audience based on historical data, and even schedules your Reels automatically for you.

Engage with comments quickly

The first hour after posting your Reel is critical for building momentum. Block out 15-30 minutes to actively engage with comments during this window.

This isn’t just about being polite (although that’s a big part of it) – it’s a strategic move to win over the algorithm and boost your Reel’s visibility.

Instead of leaving generic responses, add genuine value to the conversation. Tailor your replies, ask follow-up questions, and acknowledge and engage with people’s experiences. Here’s how baby feeding app Solid Starts does it:

Authentic engagement builds trust, keeps the conversation going and encourages viewers to save, share, follow and come back for more content.

Use Instagram Reels analytics to inform your strategy

Creating winning Reels consistently isn’t about luck – it’s about understanding your analytics and using that data to tweak your strategy. Start with Instagram’s built-in analytics to track basic Reels metrics, then use Sprout Social to dive deeper into your performance. Sprout’s cross-platform analytics show you exactly how your Instagram Reels and posts fit into your overall social media strategy. Start your 30-day free trial now.

The post How to analyze Instagram Reels analytics to grow appeared first on Sprout Social.

It’s surreal to reflect on a time when brands creating online social presences seemed radical. Now, it’s non-negotiable. On social, brands drive sales, influence sentiment about their company and products, and even build multi-million dollar businesses from the ground up.

So much about social has changed over the course of my career, but social teams still don’t feel like they’re getting a seat at the table. Despite social data being one of the most accessible and real-time sources of consumer insights available today, many teams don’t know how (or don’t have the tools) to connect social to company goals.

By empowering teams to perfect not just the art, but the science, of social data storytelling, brands can drive long-term awareness, pipeline and product evolution. Help your social team speak the language of executives, board members and product teams to bring this untapped data front and center.

In this article, I explain how the Sprout social media team distills meaningful business impact from social data, and what marketing leaders can do to finally close the communication gap with their social teams.

Do executives really trust social teams?

According to The 2025 Sprout Social Index™, 41% of social marketers say their greatest fear is company leadership not trusting them to publish content that will perform best. Which is interesting because more than half of marketing leaders attest executives completely trust their social team—this rises to 74% among executives themselves.

Social practitioners question if leadership is really bought in when they struggle to secure resources and approvals, even when they hit or surpass their KPIs. Per the Index, 92% of leaders anticipated their teams would reach their annual goals at the end of 2024.

Why don’t social teams feel trusted? Leaders and teams still aren’t on the same page about how much social content should reflect company priorities.

Balance company goals with performance and creativity

Social teams are hard-wired to create the best performing content possible. Think trending formats and memes. That content often casts a wide net and fails to highlight the priorities leaders are focused on.

When there isn’t a throughline from social content to an executive’s goals, budget or headcount might be redirected to other teams who directly impact company growth. Leaders have an opportunity to align key initiatives with social content and franchises—which helps the social team gain critical direction and executives see commitment to shared goals.

For example, senior leaders tapped my team to develop a series that showcases how marketers at Sprout use our platform to influence business goals and social strategy. We suspected it wouldn’t drive the same results as trend-centric posts, so we challenged ourselves to bring the same fun and online culture savvy to the content.

The result was somewhat unexpected, as these meme-style posts and tiny mic talking head videos actually drove two to three times the engagement of our typical posts.

Executives should push social teams to address business needs, but social teams still deserve the space to approach the content creatively—both can be true. Does your social team understand where leaders are focused? If not, tell them. While that doesn’t mean dictating their entire content calendar, it does mean guiding content themes and inviting the social team to strategic conversations.

Use the right data to secure more resources

Even when social content speaks to company objectives, that doesn’t guarantee your performance metrics translate to the KPIs leaders care about. Many social marketers bring impressions or production volume data to their executives, only to get lackluster reception.

According to the Index, leaders want teams to measure success with metrics like engagement, audience growth and volume of social interactions. Make your desired KPIs clear to your team and provide feedback on how they could improve their reporting dashboards and executive summaries. Help your team understand that when they request more headcount or resources, you need them to make the case with compelling data.

There’s also an opportunity for social teams and executives to look beyond standard performance metrics and hone in on more valuable data, like audience insights gleaned from social listening, competitive research and a direct tie to pipeline generation. To do that effectively, brands need stronger collaboration and the right tools.

How Sprout built alignment between our social & leadership teams

The Index found that the top thing social marketers wish their executives understood was that stronger collaboration is needed across departments. Even at Sprout Social—where we live and breathe the power of social data—harnessing sophisticated social insights required more intentional collaboration across marketing.

Here are the three steps we took to surface insights that mattered to our CMO, board members and even our own product team, and actionable steps you can use to break down communication barriers.

1. Get executive alignment on goals

Jumping into reporting without clarity on what you’re trying to measure can lead to a narrative that falls flat. You need to start from your goals and work backward. At Sprout, our first step involved our CMO and I guiding our team to reimagine a reporting approach that aligned to Sprout’s most critical business priorities and proved return on investment.

We needed to break the cycle of reporting on too many or the wrong metrics and start connecting the dots between organic social content and activity further down the funnel. We imagined a reporting ecosystem that enabled us to use our tools to capture multi-touch attribution—spanning top-of-funnel engagement and reach metrics to down-funnel demand.

We prioritized identifying which content impacts pipeline revenue generation, which helped us isolate key metrics like Earned Media Value (EMV), Cost Per Lead (CPL) and Leads Generated.

With executive sponsorship and co-authorship, we took our plan to other marketing teams. Having an executive stakeholder ensured the effort was prioritized within their workload.

2. Build consequential reporting rituals

Collaborating with other marketing disciplines is the only way to see the full value of social. Most consumers interact with your brand many times before they take further action, like making a purchase or registering for a webinar. By bringing together teams across marketing, including our marketing operations, SEO, and field and events teams, we were able to reexamine the customer journey and set up measurement systems that benefited all teams.

We worked with marketing analytics to connect our social efforts directly to revenue using Sprout’s integration with Salesforce. Diligent UTM tagging made multi-touch attribution possible, allowing us to track the impact of social media, influencer marketing and employee advocacy on leads across the customer journey and throughout the sales funnel. This new multi-touch attribution model uncovered a 5,800% increase in additional pipeline impact.

The integration allows us to see a fuller picture of the impact organic social has across channels and functions. By building a council of marketing stakeholders, we’ve opened up the door for greater interest in social performance and made these valuable insights more widely accessible.

3. Perfect data storytelling

Once we glean the data from our platform, it’s time to add meaning to metrics through compelling data storytelling. We weave together a narrative that illustrates the value of social and how it drives company-wide impact.

We package up our key metrics tied to business value with competitive context, so leadership sees how we’re stacking up against industry peers. Your team can even use the exact executive social media scorecard our social team shares with our CMO on a monthly basis.

The scalable formula enables us to consistently share meaningful insights with our CMO, but also with the rest of the marketing org, our entire Executive Leadership Team, board and product team.

By showcasing the impact of our strategy, we’ve secured additional budget for team growth, expanded our influencer marketing efforts and even gained buy-in for Sprout’s brand activation at Design Miami 2024. These wins wouldn’t be possible without a deep understanding of our data.

Use meaningful social data to bridge the trust gap

Closing the communication gap between executives and social teams requires more than just data—it demands alignment, collaboration and clear storytelling. By implementing the strategies outlined here, you can transform social media insights into a powerful tool for driving business growth and fostering trust across your organization.

For more on how your social team can tell compelling data stories, consult The 2025 Sprout Social Index™.

The post How to close the communication gap between executives and social teams appeared first on Sprout Social.

According to the newly-released 2025 Sprout Social Index™, social pros want their leaders to understand that growing a brand requires more social investment and team autonomy. Meanwhile, 65% of executives say it’s crucial for teams to demonstrate how social campaigns are tied to business goals.

Join us for an exclusive chat on how to bridge the divide, featuring Josh Rangel, Senior Director, Social, Ogilvy, and Tim Brogdon, Director of Digital Content at the Chicago White Sox. Plus our very own CMO, Scott Morris, will be sharing some takeaways in a special keynote during this event.

Watch this on demand webinar and you’ll leave ready to:

• Learn what consumers are looking for from your brand
• Develop stronger strategies for building trust with senior leadership
• Communicate performance metrics more effectively

The post Index™ Insights: How to Gain Executive Buy-In for Bolder Social Moves in 2025 appeared first on Sprout Social.

TikTok analytics tools let you monitor your most popular videos, analyze your audience demographics and gain complete insight into the effectiveness of your marketing strategy. With these tools, you can use your findings to adapt your strategy and improve your bottom line.

Below, we’ve rounded up 13 of the best TikTok analytics tools in the market. Read on to find out which tool will work best for your team—and how to choose the right one.

What is a TikTok analytics tool?

A TikTok analytics tool is a software that enables brands and creators to get a closer look at how their TikTok presence is performing. Your TikTok analytics shares details like:

• Top videos
• Video views
• Audience demographics
• Video engagement

Analytics help you get a clear understanding of if your TikTok marketing strategy is working or if you need to make changes to better reach and resonate with your audience. A TikTok analytics tool can present you with this data.

13 TikTok analytics tools to try in 2025

Want to get a better view into your TikTok performance? Find the right TikTok analytics tool for your brand. We’ve got 13 of the best options right here.

1. Sprout Social

Sprout Social is an all-in-one social media management platform that offers a number of features—TikTok analytics being just one. You can use Sprout Social to create a birds-eye-view of your entire social media plan, no matter which platforms you have a presence on.

Link your TikTok account to your Sprout Social account and monitor all of your social platforms in one simple dashboard. Look at charts and graphs to understand exactly how your content is performing, who your audience is and how TikTok fits into your overall social strategy.

You can also compare your TikTok analytics with competitor performance, create custom, monthly reports with a few clicks, publish, schedule and manage content across multiple profiles, respond to comments and messages and more.

Here are Sprout’s top features for understanding (and acting on) TikTok analytics:

Advanced performance analytics

Sprout’s TikTok Profiles Report gives you a clear picture of your performance. Access a performance summary or dive deep into metrics like video views, engagement, follower growth and audience demographics.

You can also see your top posts at a glance to understand how your strategy is working and what you can do to improve. Unlike TikTok’s 60-day limit, Sprout keeps your performance history forever, which helps you spot long-term trends in your data.

Custom views and filters

Build custom reports so you’re including the exact TikTok metrics and data that are important to your business.

View your results in different graphs so you can easily see what the numbers mean. You can also separate paid and organic TikTok analytics to seamlessly include in your reports.

Cross-network reports

Sprout lets you track metrics across multiple platforms to get a more holistic view of your social media strategy. You can access TikTok data in various Sprout reports, such as the Inbox Activity Report, Post Performance Report, Profile Performance Report and Tag Performance Report.

For example, you can compare your top posts on TikTok, Instagram and Facebook all in one report. This is great for understanding what type of content to post on each platform.

Pricing: Starts at $199/seat/month. Try free for 30 days.

2. Native TikTok Analytics

TikTok’s native analytics are completely free to use for anyone—creator and business accounts alike—who has published at least one TikTok video to their account. They are accessible on both the mobile app and on desktop, enabling users to view their analytics in their preferred format.

Key features:

• Get access to four main sections of analytics: Overview, content, followers and live videos.
• Learn what your top video content is so you can create more videos that resonate with your audience.
• Access data about your live videos if you regularly live stream.

3. Socialinsider

Socialinsider is another social media management tool that offers several different features—TikTok analytics being one of them. Socialinsider enables its users to monitor metrics like views, engagement, and follower growth, while also giving them access to information like historical content trends and top-performing content.

Key features:

• Compare your TikTok metrics over time by viewing historical data to find trends within your own content.
• Discover your most popular categories of content so you can easily create more that resonates with your audience.
• View charts and graphs with your TikTok metrics to interpret their meanings.

4. Loomly

Loomly enables brands and agencies alike to analyze their social media performance, create and schedule content, manage online campaigns and conversations and collaborate amongst their team. Loomly offers tools for a variety of social media platforms, TikTok included.

Key features:

• Measure your video content’s performance in real time to see which videos are most popular.
• Use post labels to easily categorize your content based on type or campaign.
• Automate analytics reports to make your reporting process even smoother.

5. Brand24

Brand24 is an AI social listening tool built to help brands monitor their online presence, their competitors and their audience. Brand24’s TikTok analytics is of a different sort. Instead of monitoring your own performance, you can use this tool to track brand mentions, industry conversations and competitor performance.

Key features:

• Monitor your mentions feed to see what people have to say about your business on TikTok.
• Track the volume of discussions around your brand to preemptively plan for potential crisis management.
• Find the top industry influencers you should be working with on TikTok.

6. Social Champ

Social Champ is a social media management tool that helps its customers publish social media content, manage their content calendar, analyze their performance and engage with their audience. Users can connect each of their platforms to this tool, including TikTok.

Key features:

• Get downloadable PDF and PPT exports of your TikTok analytics to share with your team.
• Keep an eye on weekly and monthly results to find patterns and improve your strategy.
• Discover your top-performing posts so you can create more content that your audience loves.

7. Pentos

Pentos is a TikTok analytics tool, plain and simple. Its entire purpose is to help brands and creators track their competitors, find the best audio clips to use, hop on trends and improve their overall TikTok performance.

Key features:

• Access an extensive list of each week’s top trending audio clips to include in your videos.
• Track your competitors’ performance so you can see how you stand up against them.
• Export your TikTok data to compile into your monthly social media reports.

8. Exolyt

Exolyt is another tool that was created only to help brands and creators get a better grip on their TikTok accounts. This tool is perfect for analyzing your content as well as monitoring trends, conversations, influencers and trends across TikTok.

Key features:

• Discover the day’s top hashtags so you can include trending tags in your video captions.
• Get insights into your brand sentiment on TikTok so you know your reputation on the app.
• Access audience demographics and metrics regarding your TikTok performance.

9. Iconosquare

Iconosquare is an analytics tool at its core, helping social media marketers monitor their presence across a number of social media platforms like TikTok. Other features include post scheduling, social listening and social media inbox management.

Key features:

• Create custom dashboards so you’re only met with the metrics that mean the most to your business.
• Monitor engagement to discover which content your audience loves best.
• Easily export your results to compile into your monthly, quarterly or yearly report.

10. Keyhole

Keyhole is another comprehensive tool that is solely dedicated to social media analytics and helping brands monitor their online performance. While brands can access publishing and scheduling tools, most features include social listening, historical trend tracking, influencer tracking and the like.

Key features:

• Measure your accounts over time to get accurate historical data and trend analysis.
• Find optimal posting times to further improve your overall reach and presence.
• Get deeper insights into your audience and what they want to see from you.

11. Rival IQ

Rival IQ is another social media analytics tool perfect for helping brands monitor their online presence across a number of social media platforms—of course, with TikTok being one of them. On top of offering a wealth of analytics tools as part of its regular subscription, Rival IQ also offers free reporting and benchmarking tools for marketers.

Key features:

• Use the hashtag analytics tools to find the best TikTok hashtags to use in your content.
• Conduct comprehensive social media audits to help adjust your strategy and improve performance.
• Get a birds eye view into your TikTok performance so you can see top posts, engagement and other TikTok metrics.

12. Quintly

Quintly is a social media analytics and competitive benchmarking tool that helps brands make sense of their online performance and compare it to their competitors. The suite of tools only includes options for analytics, reporting and other features.

Key features:

• Create custom reports by choosing from more than 500 metrics that you want to track.
• Access pre-made dashboard templates meant for analyzing different outcomes.
• Use the fast Analysis feature to gain instant insights into your TikTok performance.

13. Dash Hudson

Dash Hudson is a social media management platform that offers a suite of different tools for marketers, brands and agencies to use. Access tools like visual AI, social listening, link-in-bio tools, audience engagement and analytics.

Key features:

• Leverage predictive AI to help you find trends you can use in your content planning.
• Segment your content to easily pinpoint which types of videos perform best.
• Access analytics and reporting tools so you can ditch your spreadsheets for cohesive reports.

What to look for in a TikTok analytics tool

There are many different TikTok analytics tool options out there—we’re covering 13 different ones within this article. So how do you decide which tool will work best for your business?

By the way, if you’re looking for a breakdown of the best TikTok monitoring tools specifically, we recommend reading our post on those instead.

But generally, here are three key features to make sure your TikTok analytics tool has so it can help maximize your strategy.

Trend analysis

One important part of maintaining a relevant and exciting TikTok strategy is staying on top of popular TikTok trends. Knowing what’s trending improves your chances of going viral on the platform and reaching a massive audience with a single video.

This means you’ll want an analytics tool that gives you the full scope of what’s trending. This way, you can easily jump on trends while they’re hot, increasing views and staying relevant.

Streamlines reporting

Analytics platforms make it easier to get the full scope of your account’s performance. You can look at a single dashboard where all of your metrics are in one place. Best of all, many TikTok analytics platforms allow you to export your data, making social media reporting a piece of cake.

Hashtag tracking

A main facet of your strategy should revolve around TikTok hashtags. Hashtags can improve your position on the For You Page and can help your videos show up in search results. With 40% of consumers using TikTok as a search engine, this is extremely important for increasing your reach.

Find a TikTok analytics tool that can help you with hashtag tracking so you know the best and most relevant hashtags to include alongside each of your videos.

Use a TikTok analytics tool to grow your presence

The right TikTok analytics tool can help understand your performance, find opportunities and win on the platform.

But why stop there? Sprout Social’s social media management platform lets you track TikTok analytics alongside all your other social metrics—in one place.

Access granular performance data, spot trends, build cross-network reports, schedule videos and posts and even respond to comments and DMs directly through Sprout.

Want to check it out for yourself? Sign up for a free 30-day trial today.

The post 13 TikTok analytics tools to boost your strategy in 2025 appeared first on Sprout Social.