10 social analytics companies you need to know

6. Simply Measured

Simply Measured provides reporting available both online and offline (in Excel form). It boasts granular analysis for individual tweets and reports across all channels focusing on number of unique people engaged, total organic engagement and potential reach and impressions.

The app provides date and time engagement analysis, as well as content type analysis to help optimize what types of content work and when. This is a complete solution that also provides data and analysis on community, similarly to SocialBro but with less robust data only showing most followed users, most engaged users and top users by Klout score. Users are able to track progress over time to see the progression of engagement.

7. SocialBro

10 social analytics companies you need to know

This European platform provides a wide range of Twitter analytics to measure the level of interaction each tweet receives and help determine who has interacted with the brand. Using the Twitter Dashboard within SocialBro, social media managers are able to monitor what is happening in their Twitter community and identify the quality of it.

A Global Stats graph demonstrates the evolution of a community in terms of followers, friends or a specific segment (i.e., followers from NYC). The platform stresses quality of community, allowing deep insights into followers, both active and inactive. Using the Kred score and Peerindex, community managers can determine how influential their followers are based on how frequently they are @ replied to, retweeted and followed.

Using language and time zone graphs, avatar analysis, URL analysis and private versus verified user identification, users are able to get granular data about their followers to ensure that they are focusing on and reaching the most productive audience. They can also do this analysis through the scope of comparing with competitors' communities.

8. Sprout Social

10 social analytics companies you need to know

Sprout Social is a fully comprehensive and user-friendly option for social media communicators looking to build their social media presence. The platform has a full suite of features that take the user from content planning and creation through to analytics. With an attractive single-column interface, the company has a huge focus on user experience, starting with a useful homepage dashboard providing a snapshot of connected accounts and aggregated trends.

A customizable inbox allows for monitoring of any combination of new followers, retweets, and keyword searches across all connected profiles. The inbox also provides engagement monitoring and reporting, tracking response times to identify gaps in coverage to keep users accountable for customer service and responses.

The strongest feature of the platform is the "collaboration for teams" options. Sprout Social integrates many aspects of a "Social CRM" solution, allowing managers to customize contact details, keep a history of interactions, assign tasks to team members and then turn messages into HelpDesk support tickets, tracked and managed in Zendesk and Uservoice without having to leave the dashboard. All of Sprout Social's reports are presentation-ready and considerably digestible, even for less informed stakeholders.

9. Sysomos

Recently acquired by MarketWired, Sysomos provides the best historical data with up to two years worth of backlogging. The platform splits into a two-pronged approach. MAP (Media Analysis platform) is the flagship product used to analyze and understand social media conversations, much like Radian6 and Brandwatch. The platform attempts to provide an explanation for who is driving conversations and why they're happening by mapping the conversations and identifying the people leading them.

Heartbeat is a real-time monitoring and measurement tool, which takes snapshots of social conversations delivered using user-friendly graphics. This arm of Sysomos manages workflow and provides geography and demographics of followers by country, state or city, as well as gender or profession.

10. Topsy

10 social analytics companies you need to know

Topsy is another useful analytics tool that has a free option. It is like a more powerful version of the advanced Twitter search. Using Topsy, social media managers can search URLs of web content to see who shared the article and how many times.

The platform has a robust influencer search, allowing users to identify topic-based influencers to follow and engage with. They can also see all the links to a specific site that a person shared.

While the free version has some great features, there is a noticeable disparity with the Pro version. With Topsy Pro, users gain the ability to track the geographic demographic of users who interact with their content, measure content's reach and exposure, further narrow-down search, and more.