Social Media Analytics Twitter 14 X (Twitter) analytics tools to amplify your strategy

You're putting in the hours on X (formerly Twitter)-creating posts, engaging with followers, and pushing your brand's message. But without the right tools, it's hard to know if all that effort is moving the needle.

Twitter's built-in analytics provide basic metrics such as follower counts and impressions. To truly understand what's working and how your strategy impacts business goals, a deeper dive into Twitter analytics is necessary. Third-party analytics tools give you deeper data-the kind that reveals what's really working, where you can optimize, and, most importantly, how your Twitter strategy impacts your overall business goals.

In this article, we'll explore why you need a Twitter analytics tool and list seven third-party X (Twitter) analytics tools designed to help you track and improve performance.

Why do you need an X (Twitter) analytics tool?

An X(Twitter) analytics tool optimizes your social media strategy by providing detailed insights into content performance, audience behavior and competitive positioning. It enables you to understand what's working and what's not, adapt your messaging and stay ahead of competitors.

Here's exactly how it helps.

Identify top-performing content

Knowing which posts in your Twitter marketing strategy resonate most with your audience helps refine your strategy and allows you to continually build on what works. With an X (Twitter) analytics tool, you can easily pinpoint posts with high engagement metrics like reshares and build on those insights to replicate success.

Understand audience demographics

Insight into your audience's age, location and interests helps you tailor your messaging. This deeper understanding of who's engaging with your content lets you create campaigns that directly address their interests and boost conversion rates. This could be through more targeted ads or curated content that speaks to their needs.

Track brand sentiment

Customer sentiment analysis helps you gauge how people feel about your brand in real time. Tracking brand sentiment allows you to amplify positive feedback or address complaints swiftly, preventing them from escalating and maintaining your brand's reputation.

Measure campaign performance

Analytics tools help you analyze your own strategies-whether it's engagement rates, content themes or audience interaction patterns. These tools also give you a clear picture of social media ROI and the insights needed to optimize future campaigns.

Monitor competitors

Stay ahead of your top competitors by analyzing their strategies with X (Twitter) analytics tools. Competitive monitoring tracks competitor X (Twitter) post performance in terms of engagement rates, follower growth and hashtag use. And you understand your competitors' overall share of voice, compared to your organization's, on the topics that matter to your brand.

Ready to see how an X (Twitter) analytics tool can transform your social strategy?

Try Sprout for 30-days free

14 best X (Twitter) analytics tools

We've evaluated several tools based on features, usability and the depth of insights they provide. Here are some of the best X(Twitter) analytics tools.

1. Sprout Social

Sprout Social delivers in-depth insights into account performance, audience engagement and content effectiveness across multiple X(Twitter) profiles.

Analyze key metrics such as impressions, engagements and follower demographics to refine audience targeting and optimize your X (Twitter) content strategy alongside other networks. Plus, identify your best-performing posts and conduct a competitive analysis to see how you stack up against industry leaders. These X (Twitter) insights give you a detailed look at what your audience likes, how they engage and when they're most active-so you can tweak your strategy for maximum punch.

Sprout's Premium Analytics further enables you to select metrics that align with your X (Twitter) goals. Create presentation-ready reports to showcase the impact of your strategies and share insights easily with key stakeholders through shareable links. You can also compare performance across multiple profiles with Sprout's cross-channel capabilities to get a holistic view of your brand's X(Twitter) presence.

In addition to these X (Twitter)-specific functions, you get access to a full suite of social media management tools-from publishing and analytics to engagement -to streamline your X (Twitter) strategy.

Features:

• An easy-to-use dashboard that offers a unified overview of your platform, including demographics and profile insights
• Hashtag tracking to learn what hashtags your audience is already using to reach and grow your audience
• Summarize by AI that distills complex data into actionable insights, making it easier to understand your X (Twitter) performance at a glance
• X (Twitter) Listening capabilities to understand audience sentiment and identify advocates and influencers
• Device demographics to inform your content strategy based on how your audience accesses X (Twitter)
• Customizable reports on audience growth during your selected reporting period
• Analyze by AI Assist to track metrics, hashtags, keywords, Smart Categories and emojis to uncover major insights
• Several report options to guide your X(Twitter) strategy, including:
  • Post Performance Report to identify your best-performing content and analyze engagement metrics
  • X (Twitter) Profiles Report for tracking changes in performance over time, including engagements, replies, likes, reposts and audience growth
  • Competitors Report to see how you compare to rivals
  • Paid Performance Report to track ROI from Twitter ads

2. Buffer

Buffer is an analytics tool ideal for creators and small teams. The platform offers a free plan that includes core analytics to track post performance, helping marketers make data-informed decisions without an initial investment.

Its clean interface provides insights into post-level performance and offers strategic tips to improve engagement. While the free plan is robust, paid tiers unlock deeper analytics like audience demographics and engagement trends.

Features:

• Unified analytics to track post performance across multiple channels, even on the free plan
• Audience breakdown and engagement metrics to understand who is interacting with your content
• An AI assistant to help create and analyze content within a single workflow
• Insights into your best-performing content and recommendations for optimal posting times

3. SocialPilot

SocialPilot offers social media scheduling, content curation, its own browser extension, help with ads as well as analytics.

Features:

• Automated reporting that generates and delivers daily, weekly or monthly reports
• Custom filters to perform tailored analysis, track performance over time, make historical comparisons and assess goal achievement
• Top Mentions Posts that highlight the number of times your brand gets mentioned
• Most Engaged Followers metric shows you who interacts with your posts, so you can reciprocate or give free products as a thank-you

4. Keyhole

Keyhole is a social media monitoring and analytics tool that helps you track your online presence. In fact, it differs from some of the other tools we've already covered because their entire focus is on social listening.

Monitor hashtags, keywords and trends across various platforms in real time to get insights into engagement and sentiment analysis. It also offers cross-platform publishing so you can schedule all your upcoming posts for all your channels (including X, formerly known as Twitter) from one dashboard.

Features:

• Automated, comprehensive reports that eliminate human error in spreadsheets
• Campaign-specific reporting so you can see how individual social media promotions are performing
• Hashtag reporting to track user-generated content and relevant hashtags your brand is promoting
• Analysis of post types and times that will generate the highest levels of engagement, such as likes, clicks and shares

5. Meltwater

Meltwater provides tools for social media monitoring, media analysis and audience segmentation that help you understand market trends and customer sentiments.

Meltwater is ideal for global brands who want to track multilingual conversations and stay culturally relevant while addressing market-specific trends.

Features:

• Multi-brand search functionality for various research purposes
• Data sources include social media platforms as well as traditional media like radio and TV
• Assisted search feature as an alternative to manual boolean searches
• Data storage covering a 15-month period

6. SparkToro

SparkToro is an audience research tool that goes beyond simple follower analysis. It helps you discover what your audience reads, watches, listens to and talks about online, empowering you to build strategies based on where their attention is actually focused.

Use the platform to uncover the websites, social accounts and podcasts your audience engages with. This provides a clear map for content partnerships, ad targeting and influencer marketing.

Features:

• Identifies the websites, social accounts, podcasts and YouTube channels your audience follows
• Analyzes competitor audiences to uncover strategic overlaps and new opportunities
• Provides actionable outreach lists of influential sources for digital PR and content marketing
• Performs audience research based on topics, keywords or behaviors, not just social accounts

7. Brand24

Brand24 helps you monitor and analyze brand mentions across various online platforms, including social media, blogs, news sites and forums.

It uses sentiment analysis to label mentions as positive, negative or neutral to help you understand public perception in real time. The platform's Brand Reports pinpoint emerging trends and correlations, highlight key mentions and identify key events.

Features:

• Automated sentiment analysis gives you a quick view of public opinion about your brand, helping you react faster to changes in sentiment
• Mentions feed for easy tracking and response to all X (Twitter) brand mentions
• Marketing analytics to monitor positive and negative mentions over time
• GPT-powered recommendations to identify growth opportunities and fine-tune your strategy

8. X Premium

X Premium is a paid subscription that offers additional features to improve your experience on the platform. It comes in three tiers, each with its own pricing and set of tools.

X Premium gives you advanced analytics to track daily post performance, new followers, profile visits, link clicks, and replies.

Features:

• X Pro, formerly TweetDeck, which lets you view and manage multiple accounts within the same interface
• Grok, an AI chatbot, which offers real-time AI-driven insights into trends and competitor activity to optimize advertising
• Media activity tracking to monitor media and video views

9. Tweet Binder

Tweet Binder is a hashtag analytics tool that generates detailed reports on hashtags from past campaigns and monitors those you plan to use in the future. Reports include stats on impact, reach, user rankings, and more.

10. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a social media management platform that offers a comprehensive solution for scheduling, analytics, and engagement. Its unified dashboard allows marketers to manage multiple X (Twitter) profiles and other social networks in one place.

Hootsuite's long-standing market presence and highly recognizable dashboard unify content streams from multiple networks, making it a familiar and versatile choice for marketers aiming to streamline their workflow.

Features:

• Unified dashboard to manage multiple X (Twitter) profiles and other social networks
• Advanced analytics for tracking trends and measuring team performance
• OwlyWriter AI assistant to support content creation
• Integrated social listening and monitoring streams to follow conversations
• Extensive app directory for custom integrations with other marketing tools

11. Rival IQ

Rival IQ is a social media analytics tool focused on competitive benchmarking. It allows marketers to move beyond surface-level metrics and understand their performance within the context of their industry landscape.

Unlike all-in-one suites, Rival IQ's laser focus on competitive analysis provides deep insights for head-to-head social media performance tracking, helping you identify strategic opportunities with concrete data.

Features:

• Automated competitive analysis and benchmarking reports
• Side-by-side comparison of social profiles, content, and audience growth
• Hashtag analytics to discover competitor and industry trends
• Social post auditing with performance alerts to track top-performing content
• Detection of boosted posts to analyze competitor ad strategies

12. Sprinklr

Sprinklr is an enterprise-grade platform that unifies social media with other customer-facing functions. It's designed for large, complex organizations that need to manage the complete customer experience.

Sprinklr's key differentiator is its Unified Customer Experience Management (Unified-CXM) approach. This positions it not just as a social media tool, but as a foundational platform for managing the entire customer journey in one place.

Features:

• Unified Customer Experience Management (Unified-CXM) platform for a complete view of the customer
• Advanced, AI-powered social listening across more than 30 digital channels
• Enterprise-grade governance, compliance, and security features
• Integration of social data with marketing, advertising, research, and customer care functions
• Predictive analytics to identify emerging trends and mitigate brand risk

13. Talkwalker

Talkwalker is a consumer intelligence platform that provides deep insights through social listening. It uses AI-driven analytics to help brands stay ahead of consumer conversations and forecast trends.

Talkwalker stands out with its powerful Blue Silk™ AI, which delivers advanced predictive analytics and visual insights. This allows brands to not only monitor past conversations but also anticipate future market trends and consumer behaviors.

Features:

• AI-powered sentiment analysis that includes theme and intent detection
• Image and video recognition to track brand logos and scenes without text mentions
• Customizable consumer intelligence dashboards for market trend analysis
• Real-time alerts for brand mentions and potential crises
• Coverage of over 150 million sources, including social media, blogs, forums, and reviews

14. Minter.io

Minter.io is a specialized analytics tool that offers powerful, in-depth data for X (Twitter) and other social platforms. It's designed for marketers who need robust analytics without the complexity of a full management suite.

Its singular focus on analytics allows Minter.io to deliver exceptionally detailed reports and benchmarks at an accessible price point. This makes it a powerful supplement to any social media toolkit for optimizing strategy and proving ROI.

Features:

• Granular X (Twitter) profile analytics and follower tracking
• In-depth hashtag and keyword monitoring reports
• Competitor benchmarking for side-by-side performance comparison
• Automated, presentation-ready reports available in PDF and PPTX formats
• Data on optimal posting times based on historical audience engagement

Real-world use case of Twitter analytics tool in action

Radio.com's 96.5 WTDY-FM Philadelphia aimed to leverage Twitter for an "Artist of the Summer" poll. The core challenge involved accurately tracking massive tweet volumes, hashtags, and conversations. They needed a robust Twitter analytics tool to understand real-time audience sentiment and efficiently boost engagement on the platform.

WTDY-FM primarily used Sprout Social's social listening tools to monitor Twitter and Instagram for their campaign. Fans voted in the campaign by tweeting artist choices with specific hashtags. Sprout's analytics capabilities enabled precise tracking and analysis of these Twitter mentions, providing immediate vote counts and engagement metrics, demonstrating a practical application of our analytics tool.

The Twitter-focused campaign significantly boosted listener engagement and followers on the platform. The in-depth insights from 17 million engagements provided by the analytics tool helped understand audience preferences. Louis Tomlinson was crowned #ArtistOfTheSummer, showcasing how strategic use of Twitter analytics tools delivered measurable results and strengthened the station's social media presence.

What to look for in an X/Twitter analytics tool

Every social media analytics tool has its pros and cons. The best solution will ultimately depend on your business needs and the numbers you need to track most.

If you're not sure where to start, try using an all-in-one social media management platform like Sprout to unlock the potential of many different features at once. That way, you easily see what works best for you.

Here are a few tips for getting started with Sprout as an X/Twitter analytics tool:

Understand who your audience is and what they care about

Knowing your audience helps you maximize your impact through tailored content and data-driven decisions to achieve better engagement. Sprout's Social Media Listening tools make this process easier by analyzing what your audience is talking about in real time so you can join the conversation and latest trends.

Sprout's Premium Analytics tools help you stay relevant by allowing you to zero in on only the data you need in the moment. Tags for content and message type also help filter out noise.

Measure how each post performs

Each post you put out there is a learning opportunity-so it's important to pause and analyze why some posts tracked better than others.

Sprout's Post Performance Reports give you a unified view of your post's performance across all social networks, including X/Twitter, to help you understand how your audience responded. The platform's Optimal Send Times feature boosts post performance by indicating the best time to post on X/Twitter based on your audience and past engagement data.

Monitor competitors and benchmark your performance

Sprout's listening tools don't just monitor your audience-they also keep an ear to your competitors. Gathering data about your competition will help you better compare your businesses and find opportunities to set yourself apart.

Alongside competitor analysis tools, Sprout also identifies industry gaps, tracks share of voice and understands consumer attitudes toward your peers.

Track influencers and advocates driving engagement

Partnering with creators who regularly post content that engages your audience is a great visibility tool for your business-but it does require some scrutiny. Use Sprout's Influencer Marketing platform and Listening tool to quickly discover creators that align with your brand.

Once you've identified some contenders, these tools help you vet potential partners to reduce risks and move forward with confidence.

Which is the best X (Twitter) analytics tool?

When seeking the "best" Twitter analytics tool, the core lies in its ability to provide actionable data for strategic decision-making. Below are a few of the most crucial factors to consider when looking for a Twitter analytics tool:

• Deep Analytical Insights: Empower yourself with comprehensive metrics beyond basic engagement. Look for strategic offerings like the tool's ability to understand follower demographics, conduct sentiment analysis, and perform competitive benchmarking.
• Actionable Reporting: The ideal tool should have the ability to simplify data. It should convert the most important data points into intuitive and actionable reports supporting faster decision-making.
• Seamless Integration: The best tools integrate effortlessly with your existing tech stack, such as CRM, BI, and e-commerce platforms, ensuring unified data visibility and improved cross-team collaboration.
• Proactive Social Listening: Ensure your tool has robust social listening capabilities for real-time social media monitoring, including brand mentions, sentiment tracking, and trend identification. This will give you the confidence to adapt your strategy and protect your brand reputation.
• AI-Powered Efficiency: The best Twitter analytics tools should leverage AI and automation for content generation, detect optimal posting times, and perform data analysis that can significantly boost productivity, allowing your team to focus on high-impact strategic initiatives.
• Scalability: Prioritize building a tool that scales effectively with your business, adapting to rising data volumes and evolving requirements. It must be robust enough to meet future needs and support growth.

By prioritizing these factors, you can select the best tool to boost your social media strategy, driving measurable business growth and a strong return on investment.

Mold your social media strategy with the right X/Twitter analytics tools

Launch your best-performing campaigns yet with X/Twitter analytics tools that help make sure your efforts actually pay off. It all starts with picking the right solution.

Sprout gives users access to all the key performance metrics they need, such as post engagement, audience growth, impression trends and publishing activity. Its analytics features also allow social media professionals to monitor content performance over time, identify high-performing posts and uncover patterns in audience behavior.

Ready to connect with your audience and drive meaningful engagement? Test out Sprout's capabilities today with a free 30-day trial.

Twitter analytics tools FAQs

X(Twitter) analytics tools are software platforms that help users understand and optimize their performance on X (formerly Twitter). They pull the most important metrics like impressions and engagement, audience demographics, competitive parameters, and campaign parameters into simple yet robust dashboards with automated reporting. These tools empower data-driven decisions to enhance content, engagement, and overall brand presence on the X(Twitter).

To effectively manage your presence on X (formerly Twitter), focus on key metrics across three categories:

1. Visibility & Reach: These metrics show how many people see your content. Key among them are:

• Impressions: The number of times your tweets are displayed.
• Profile Visits: How often users visit your profile after seeing your tweets.
• Reach: The unique number of users who saw your content in their timeline.

2. Engagement Metrics: These reveal how well your content resonates and prompts user interaction. Key metrics include:

• Engagement Rate: Percentage of total interactions (likes, reposts, replies, clicks) per impression, showing content effectiveness.
• Engagements: Overall interactions like likes, reposts, replies, and link clicks, reflecting active audience participation.
• Video Views: How often videos are watched, with completion rates offering deeper insight into engagement.

3. Audience & Brand Health Metrics: These metrics assess your follower base and brand perception.

• Follower Growth: Net change in followers, showing audience expansion.
• Mentions: How often your brand is mentioned, reflecting awareness and conversation volume.
• Sentiment: Understand the tone (positive/negative) of brand conversations, crucial for reputation management.

Selecting the right Twitter (now X) analytics tool is crucial for understanding your audience, optimizing content, and measuring campaign success. Beyond the native analytics offered by X, third-party tools can provide deeper insights. Below are the key factors that will guide you in selecting the right tool for your business:

• Define Your Needs: Are you focused on audience demographics, engagement metrics, competitor analysis, or sentiment tracking? Your goals will dictate necessary features.
• Budget: Determine whether your business needs the comprehensive features, advanced insights, and dedicated support of a paid solution or if free resources offer sufficient data for your objectives.
• Key Features: Look for advanced reporting, real-time data, social listening capabilities, automation, AI-powered insights, cross-platform integration, and easy data visualization.
• Ease of Use & Actionability: Choose a tool with an intuitive interface that translates data into actionable insights for your marketing strategy.
• Scalability: Ensure the tool can grow with your business and handle increasing data volumes.

By aligning a tool's capabilities with your specific business objectives, you can effectively leverage Twitter analytics to drive meaningful results.