Tracking audience behavior plays a crucial role in refining your social media marketing efforts. Thankfully, numerous tools are available to help monitor social platforms. By keeping an eye on customer conversations and feedback, you can uncover useful insights about their views on your offerings.
With the abundance of social media monitoring tools on the market, picking the most suitable one can be overwhelming for businesses. This guide outlines essential factors and tips to assist companies in selecting the ideal tool tailored to their unique requirements.
What are Social Media Monitoring Tools
A social media monitoring tool helps businesses track and analyze online conversations about their brand, competitors, or industry. These tools range from basic keyword tracking to advanced platforms offering real-time insights, sentiment analysis, and trend monitoring across various channels.
By centralizing online discussions, these tools simplify the process, providing a clear view of public sentiment and trends without the need to switch between platforms. This makes it easier to refine strategies, enhance engagement, and make informed decisions.
Advanced tools also analyze conversation tones, offering deeper insights into customer emotions. This allows businesses to manage their reputation, respond proactively, and build stronger relationships with their audience.
images:With a social media monitoring tool, you can:
- Monitor Mentions: Track and assess when and how your brand or products are discussed on social media;
- Track Competitors: Gain valuable insights into competitor strategies and see how the public reacts to them;
- Discover Trends: Stay informed about trending topics and use this information to engage your audience more effectively;
- Generate Reports: Access comprehensive reports on audience sentiment, brand visibility, and reputation;
- Improve Customer Engagement: Respond promptly to customer feedback, showing attentiveness and fostering stronger relationships.
Should I Use a Social Media Monitoring Tool or Do It Manually?
Using an automated tool for social media monitoring is much more efficient than managing it manually. Manually tracking social media can lead to important conversations being missed due to human error and consuming valuable time that could be better used for other tasks. Instead of constantly switching between platforms, a unified social monitoring tool allows you to focus on more important work by handling the tracking for you.
The best social monitoring tools can track, aggregate, and analyze posts, tweets, and conversations around the clock. To choose the right tool for your needs, use this guide to help identify which solution fits your team’s requirements.
These tools are also useful to find job recruits on Twitter, where discussions about candidates and job opportunities occur often. Automating the tracking process helps you quickly identify relevant conversations and engage with potential recruits more efficiently.
How to Choose the Right Social Media Monitoring Tool
Finding the best social media monitoring tool for your business requires a clear plan. Follow these steps to ensure you choose the right tool:
Define Your Objectives
Identify your key goals. Determine what you want the tool to achieve, such as managing brand reputation, analyzing competitors, or tracking market trends.
Next, make sure the tool integrates with your current systems for a seamless workflow.
Begin with Research
Research different social media monitoring tools, focusing on those with strong monitoring features. Then analyze features: Look for essential features like sentiment analysis, influencer tracking, real-time alerts, and detailed data reporting.
You can consider AI tools. Opt for platforms that use AI to provide predictive insights and enhance monitoring efficiency.
Test and Evaluate
Use free trials or demos to see how the tool works in real-world scenarios and check compatibility. During testing, ensure the tool fits smoothly with your social media workflows and overall strategy.
Assess Usability
Choose intuitive tool that your team can learn quickly. Look for tools with simple setup features, like one-click widgets.
It’s also useful to read reviews, case studies, and testimonials to understand how others rate the tool’s usability and efficiency.
Plan for Future Growth
- Choose scalable tool: Make sure the tool can grow as your business and social media needs expand;
- Check for upgrade options: Explore how easily you can expand features or move to higher plans as your needs change.
Evaluate Customer Support
Check support quality. Look into how responsive and helpful the tool’s customer support team is.
Ensure access to resources. Make sure the provider offers comprehensive guides, tutorials, and training materials for easy onboarding.
Ensure Data Security
- Review security measures: Confirm that the tool uses robust data protection methods in line with industry standards;
- Verify privacy practices: Ensure that the platform follows strict privacy regulations, especially if your industry requires higher data security, like healthcare or banking.
Make Your Decision
After reviewing your notes, choose the tool that meets your monitoring needs and offers the best value for your business.
20 Best Social Monitoring Tools to Use
When you have the proper data in front of you, you can analyze the information to make informed decisions about how you promote on social media in order to achieve maximum engagement – which, in turn, can increase sales. The key to gathering the data you need is using a great social media monitoring tool or tools. These programs monitor everything about user behavior – you can track keywords, hashtags, URLs, and much more.
Here are some of the best social monitoring tools that can make your social marketing efforts more fruitful.
Twilert
Twilert is an all-inclusive X (formerly Twitter) search tool designed to monitor X activity 24/7. It offers advanced features that streamline the process of tracking and analyzing tweets.
One of its key features is the use of Boolean search operators, which allow users to narrow down results by excluding specific keywords or targeting tweets based on location or language. This functionality makes it easy to find the exact conversations you’re interested in.
Twilert also provides a search history and email digest feature, enabling users to revisit important tweets at any time and even manage personal activity, such as deleting retweets and likes.
Another standout feature of Twilert is its scheduled alerts system, which captures tweets in real-time or according to a user-defined schedule and delivers them via email. This ensures that you’re always up-to-date on breaking news or new opportunities.
Twilert supports geo-targeting, allowing users to pinpoint specific areas for their queries, and offers multi-user management for monitoring several accounts or searches simultaneously.
The tool also includes a white-labeling option in its agency package, making it a versatile solution for businesses looking to present reports under their own branding.
Awario
Awario is a relatively new player in the social media monitoring industry, but it has quickly gained a strong reputation among businesses. It aims to offer affordable services tailored to startups and small businesses, while also serving larger organizations with its robust feature set. Awario helps track mentions of your brand and competitors across multiple platforms.
One standout feature is its ability to identify top influencers in your industry, making it easier to connect with them. It also provides unique content ideas and guest blogging opportunities.
The basic plan starts at $29 per month, allowing you to test the service and decide if it fits your needs. Awario tracks brand mentions on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter), Reddit, blogs, and news sites, making it a comprehensive social monitoring solution.
Brandwatch
Brandwatch is a powerful tool that provides detailed reports from top platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, X, Pinterest, blogs, and news sites. It’s an excellent choice for marketing and PR teams looking to analyze customer social media posts and gain insights into customer expectations. This tool also helps you measure the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.
A key feature of Brandwatch is its Image Recognition capability, which distinguishes it from other social monitoring tools. Even without technical expertise, users can use Brandwatch to reach their marketing goals efficiently.
Sprout Social
Sprout Social is primarily designed as a social media management tool for small to medium-sized businesses to manage daily content publishing, but it also includes media monitoring features. At the core of its monitoring functionality is the Smart Inbox, which consolidates messages, mentions, and tags from various platforms into one centralized location.
This eliminates the need to switch between networks to track notifications. With inbox filtering and tagging options, users can prioritize interactions and focus on the most important opportunities online.
Additionally, Sprout Social allows users to monitor key conversations by setting up keyword searches to track brand and product mentions. The Trend Reports feature provides insights specifically on Twitter’s performance, breaking down data by common hashtags, trending topics, and popular public figures. However, this feature is limited to X and does not cover other major social networks.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a popular platform that offers monitoring capabilities for major social media channels such as Facebook, X, Instagram, and YouTube. In addition to social media monitoring, Hootsuite helps with content publishing and collaboration.
While primarily focused on social media, Hootsuite can be integrated with other tools to extend its monitoring capabilities to cover popular blogs and news sites.
Meltwater
Meltwater is a robust social media monitoring tool that is highly effective for tracking multiple keywords across platforms. It gathers data from key platforms like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and various blogs.
One of its standout features is the customizable dashboard, which allows users to tailor their monitoring experience to fit specific needs. This flexibility makes Meltwater an excellent choice for marketers looking for a personalized approach to social monitoring.
Cyfe
Cyfe is a tool that allows users to centralize data from their media activity, along with site metrics, sales data, marketing spending, and customer support, into customizable, widget-filled dashboards.
The platform makes it simple to get started by offering pre-built dashboards or the option to build custom ones from various display widgets. Cyfe pulls real-time data on social media mentions, keywords, and likes, as well as competitor activity, into these dashboards for live monitoring or exportable reports.
Additionally, Cyfe offers instant email and SMS alerts when there is a spike in mentions or engagement. This feature allows users to act quickly on opportunities or address potential issues in real time, making it a useful tool for both monitoring and engagement.
Talkwalker
Talkwalker is a sophisticated monitoring and insights platform tailored for large agencies and global brands looking for detailed insights into consumer sentiment, public figure relationships, competitor analysis, and reputation management. It’s especially useful for companies operating in multiple regions, as it supports monitoring in 187 languages across both digital and offline media. The Enterprise package even allows users to track images and logos, offering a more comprehensive view of brand visibility.
With Talkwalker, depending on your subscription level, you can collect data from over 150 million websites and more than 20 social platforms. The entry-level package includes a year of retrospective data, while the full subscription offers up to two years.
The platform also provides ready-made dashboards for tracking brand health, audience insights, and campaign analysis. For those needing more specific monitoring, custom dashboards can be built to track targeted keywords and topics. The analytics dashboard provides a clear breakdown of social activity, including mentions, sentiment, hashtags, and engagement metrics.
Statusbrew
Statusbrew is designed for businesses managing multiple conversations across various social media and review channels. The platform’s Unified Inbox simplifies the process by consolidating all social interactions into one centralized hub. This allows teams to respond to customers and collaborate efficiently without switching between different platforms. Statusbrew integrates with key networks such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (now X), Pinterest, WhatsApp, Google My Business, Google Play Store, and the App Store.
In addition to its monitoring capabilities, Statusbrew offers robust analytics tools that give insights into customer behavior, trends, and performance across channels. The data is presented in shareable reporting dashboards, making it easy to track and share progress with your team or clients.
Digimind
Digimind is a social media monitoring tool primarily focused on helping businesses track brand reputation. While it may not offer comprehensive social media tracking across all networks, it excels in gathering brand mentions and analyzing sentiment from key social platforms and publications. Digimind is best suited for businesses seeking insights into how their brand is perceived online.
Brand24
Brand24 is a strong competitor in the social media monitoring space, especially for medium-sized brands. The platform focuses on day-to-day social media monitoring and provides middle-tier analysis and reporting. It’s ideal for businesses needing to track mentions and run keyword searches across core channels, including blogs, news sites, and visual platforms like Instagram and YouTube.
Brand24 also offers Mentions and Analysis dashboards that provide insights into sentiment and public figure activity. Users can easily export reports into templates, create custom reports, or visualize data through graphs and word clouds, making it an efficient tool for monitoring social media activity.
Agorapulse
Agorapulse serves as a dual-purpose tool, offering both social media management and monitoring capabilities. It includes an intuitive Social Inbox where all your brand’s social comments, mentions, and conversations are consolidated into a single feed for easy access and response. In addition, Agorapulse features an influencer outreach dashboard and a built-in CRM, making it a valuable tool for managing both engagement and relationships.
Along with its strong publishing and scheduling features, Agorapulse enables you to measure and improve the ROI of your content strategy. It provides ready-made, exportable reports that give insights into how your content is performing, making it a well-rounded tool for brands looking to streamline both management and monitoring tasks.
Mention
Mention is a straightforward tool designed for small to medium-sized brands looking for effective social media monitoring and analytics. It allows you to track brand mentions, run real-time competitor searches, and receive daily alerts on mentions from the past 24 hours. The tool provides options to filter by channel, language, and date, ensuring you can focus on the most relevant conversations.
Mention also includes Pulse alerts, which notify you when there’s a spike in mentions, helping you react quickly to either capitalize on positive sentiment or manage potential PR issues.
Keyhole
Keyhole is a versatile social media monitoring and reporting tool designed to track campaign performance, manage influencer relationships, and monitor ongoing conversations. Its user-friendly dashboards make it easy to evaluate customer sentiment, spot opportunities within your audience, and benchmark against competitors. The platform supports real-time searches for influencers, hashtags, and keywords across communities, allowing you to stay updated on relevant discussions.
A standout feature of Keyhole is its visualization tools. These allow you to convert social media activity into heat maps, charts, and word clouds, which can be used for internal analysis or exported for presentations. This makes it an excellent choice for businesses looking to track their social media impact visually and efficiently.
Emplifi (formerly known as Socialbakers)
Emplifi offers a complete solution for day-to-day media monitoring, listening, content planning, and influencer discovery. The platform also includes advanced analytics and reporting tools. You can customize your dashboard with various social media metrics and widgets, making it adaptable to your specific needs.
With Emplifi’s analytics tab, users can run both top-level and in-depth analyses, tracking trends across competitors, industries, and regions. These insights are powered by AI suggestions, making it easier to identify actionable trends. Reports can be exported with graphs, charts, or tables to showcase campaign results and demonstrate ROI.
Sendible
Sendible is a comprehensive social media management tool that offers scheduling, monitoring, and insights all in one platform. It’s designed for marketers who manage multiple brands and is particularly suited for agencies or small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs). The platform allows you to assign social media tasks to relevant team members, speeding up response times and ensuring efficient management.
Sendible’s monitoring dashboard covers all major social platforms, and its reporting feature provides exportable data on mentions, sentiment, and other key metrics. This makes it easy to track performance and share insights with clients or team members.
BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is built around four key pillars: discovery, research, influencers, and monitoring. The Discovery dashboard highlights the best-performing content from your brand and competitors, helping you strengthen your social media presence. The Monitoring dashboard tracks real-time mentions, market trends, and competitor activity, while the Research dashboard allows for keyword, influencer, and Boolean searches across a vast index of social media posts.
BuzzSumo also offers up to five years of historical data, allowing users to compare past and present campaigns and capitalize on emerging market trends.
YouScan
YouScan is a visual-focused social monitoring tool that captures both written and image-based data. In addition to tracking text mentions, it identifies logos, backgrounds, and people in images across social media, blogs, and forums, giving you a deeper understanding of how your product is perceived.
This makes YouScan ideal for measuring sponsorship ROI, discovering user-generated content, and connecting with valuable brand ambassadors. It offers a unique perspective on customer behavior, helping businesses gain a fuller understanding of their market.
Zoho Social
Zoho Social provides a user-friendly platform for managing, monitoring, and analyzing social media. The Monitor section allows users to set up customizable streams to track interactions on X, specific public figures, or conversations with leads.
Zoho integrates smoothly with its CRM system, allowing users to easily add social media data directly into customer profiles. This cross-team feature enables efficient collaboration between marketing and customer service teams, making it a valuable tool for businesses already using Zoho’s platform.
Sprinklr
Sprinklr’s social media monitoring and listening tool is part of its larger customer intelligence package, designed for enterprise brands. It supports 25 social networks, including international platforms like Weibo and WeChat.
The platform offers templates and custom report dashboards that provide comprehensive analytics on campaigns and viewer demographics. Sprinklr’s drill-down functionality and visual widgets make it easy to interpret data and measure social media impact across global markets.
Key Reasons Social Media Monitoring is Crucial
Social media monitoring plays a vital role in both strategic and operational efforts, offering valuable insights into what is being said about your brand or business. These tools are specifically designed to track conversations and provide detailed data analysis.
Key benefits include:
- Reputation Management: Monitoring tools help detect negative mentions early, allowing you to address issues before they escalate and manage public perception by responding promptly to feedback;
- Customer Insights: These tools allow you to analyze customer feedback to adjust products and marketing strategies. They also help identify key influencers who can boost your brand’s reach;
- Competitor Analysis: Monitoring competitors helps you uncover opportunities, compare performance, and spot areas where your brand may need improvement;
- Product Improvement: Social media feedback offers direct insights into your products, helping you spot trends and new ideas for development;
- Marketing Effectiveness: Evaluating the performance of marketing campaigns and content can help optimize your strategy and increase engagement;
- Customer Relationships: Quick responses to customer inquiries improve satisfaction and help build stronger, long-lasting relationships;
- Data-Driven Decision-Making: Social media monitoring tools provide actionable insights and help predict market trends, enabling more informed business strategies.
Ultimately, social media monitoring keeps your brand competitive, engaged, and responsive, enhancing your overall market position.
Final Thoughts
Social media monitoring tools play a vital role in helping businesses stay connected with their audience, track brand mentions, and analyze key trends. These tools offer a range of features, from basic monitoring to advanced analytics and reporting, allowing businesses to make informed decisions and improve their social media strategies.
Whether you’re managing multiple brands, tracking competitor activity, or seeking to enhance customer engagement, the right social monitoring tool can save time and provide valuable insights. While these tools are highly beneficial, it’s essential to understand their limitations and use them in combination with other strategies for a comprehensive approach to social media management.
