Metricool: Understanding Your Social Media Numbers
Metricool: Understanding Your Social Media Numbers
You've been posting on Instagram for six months. You're showing up consistently — book photos, behind-the-scenes, reader quotes, the occasional flat lay that took you twenty minutes to arrange. But if someone asked you which posts are actually working, you'd have to shrug. More likes? Fewer? You're honestly not sure.
Posting without understanding your data is a bit like writing without feedback — you can keep going, but you don't know whether what you're doing is actually connecting. Metricool is designed to change that, giving you a clear, accessible picture of how your social media is really performing.
What Is Metricool?
Metricool is a social media analytics and scheduling platform that consolidates your data from multiple platforms — Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter/X, YouTube, and more — into a single dashboard. Rather than logging into each platform separately and trying to make sense of their individual analytics interfaces, you get everything in one place, presented in a format that's genuinely readable.
Think of it as your social media control centre: a place to see what's working, understand when to post, schedule content, and make informed decisions rather than educated guesses.
Who Is It For?
Metricool works well for:
- Authors active on multiple social media platforms who want a unified view of their performance
- Writers who feel like they're posting into a void and want to understand whether their content is actually reaching anyone
- Authors who want to post smarter, not more — using data to improve quality and timing rather than simply increasing volume
- Anyone running paid advertising on social platforms who wants to track campaign performance alongside organic content
If you're posting very occasionally and don't have a deliberate social media strategy, Metricool's analytics depth might be more than you need right now. But if social media is a meaningful part of your author marketing, the insight it provides is genuinely valuable.
Key Features
Multi-Platform Analytics in One Dashboard
This is the core value proposition. Instead of navigating to Instagram Insights, then Facebook Business Suite, then TikTok Analytics — each with their own interface and terminology — Metricool shows you comparable metrics across all your platforms in one view. Reach, impressions, engagement rate, follower growth, best-performing posts — all in one place, all at once.
For authors who are active on two or three platforms, this consolidation saves real time and makes cross-platform comparisons far more meaningful.
Best Time to Post
Metricool analyses your specific account's engagement history and tells you when your audience is most active — and therefore most likely to see and engage with your posts. This is not a generic recommendation; it's based on your actual audience's behaviour on your specific account.
For authors who have been posting at whatever time is convenient, shifting to data-informed timing can make a meaningful difference to reach without posting any more frequently.
Content Planning and Scheduling
Metricool includes a content planner and scheduling tool — similar to Later — that lets you plan posts in advance and schedule them for automatic publishing. For authors who want a single tool that handles both analytics and scheduling, this is a significant convenience.
Competitor Analysis
You can add competitor accounts to Metricool and track their performance alongside yours. For authors, this typically means tracking other authors in your genre — seeing what content formats and posting frequencies are working for them, not to copy but to understand what resonates with your shared audience. This kind of genre-aware market research is surprisingly illuminating.
Hashtag Tracking
Metricool tracks the performance of hashtags you use, helping you understand which ones are actually contributing to reach and which ones are just adding noise to your captions. Over time, this data helps you refine your hashtag strategy based on evidence rather than guesswork.
Link Shortener and Link in Bio
Metricool includes a link shortener and a customisable link-in-bio page (similar to Later's Linkin.bio feature), giving you a single clickable destination from Instagram with clickable links to your books, newsletter, and website.
What We Love
All your platforms in one dashboard is genuinely transformative for understanding your overall social media presence. The time saved not having to bounce between multiple analytics interfaces adds up quickly.
The "Best Time to Post" feature is practically useful and based on your actual data, not generic advice. Acting on it consistently tends to produce measurable improvements in reach.
Competitor analysis gives you permission to learn from others. Seeing what's working in your genre — objectively, with data — is far more useful than scrolling through other authors' feeds and making assumptions.
What Could Be Better
The free tier is quite limited. One social profile with basic analytics is a reasonable trial, but to get the full value of Metricool — particularly multi-platform analytics and competitor tracking — you'll need a paid plan. The jump from free to paid is more significant here than with some other tools.
The interface can feel overwhelming initially. There's a lot of data available, and the dashboard presents a lot of it at once. We'd suggest starting with just two or three metrics you care most about — reach and engagement rate, for example — and gradually adding more as you get comfortable.
Some features feel buried. Certain useful capabilities take more navigation to find than they should. The tool rewards patience and exploration, but the initial learning curve is real.
Pricing
- Free — 1 social profile, basic analytics, limited scheduling
- Starter — Around $22 AUD per month (billed annually); multiple profiles, full analytics, competitor analysis, scheduling
- Advanced — Around $44 AUD per month; more profiles, deeper analytics, additional team features
Annual billing provides meaningful savings on both paid plans.
The Verdict
If you want to stop guessing about your social media and start understanding what's actually working, Metricool gives you the clarity you need. The multi-platform analytics alone justify the investment for authors posting across more than one channel.
Our recommendation: Try the free plan with one profile to get familiar with the interface. If you're posting across multiple platforms and genuinely want to understand your performance, upgrade to Starter. The data will change how you make social media decisions.
What social media platform do you find most effective for reaching your readers? And are you currently using analytics to guide your content decisions? Share below — we'd love to know!
