Running a solid business and making a lot of money has become a must. But what about the clients? How will you keep track of what customers have to say? In other words, how can you follow and monitor conversations regarding what customers are saying about your brand or products?
This is when social listening tools enter the picture. These tools collect and analyze mentions of your brand on different social media sites.
You might think of it as an extra task to get your job done, but believe me when I say it’s not! These tools can become a helping friend in all your company tasks.
What is Social Listening?
Social listening is an excellent approach to monitoring what customers and prospects are saying about your company, product/service, content, support, and other aspects.
It comprises monitoring your brand’s social media pages for customer feedback, direct brand mentions, and any conversations including relevant keywords, subjects, competitors, or industries. This is followed by an examination of the data. Any findings will assist you in determining the best ways to increase your social media strategy, brand awareness, and social presence.
What are Social Listening Tools?
Social listening tools can help you watch various social media channels in one spot. You may monitor brand mentions, relevant keywords, and direct feedback via tags and DMs.
Many of these tools allow you to post straight to your social media accounts from the dashboard. Furthermore, if you can combine your numerous social media accounts, you’ll be able to see all of your metrics in one place.
Best Social Listening Tools
#1. Awario’s
Twitter, YouTube, blogs and forums, Reddit, news, web, Facebook, and Instagram are all monitored social channels.
Nonstop monitoring, sentiment analysis, social selling, Boolean search, white-label reports, and influencer search are all available.
- Pricing: $39/month for Starter, $119/month for Pro, and $399/month for Enterprise.
- 7-day free trial
Awario allows you to track mentions of your own brand as well as competitors’ brands, industry buzzwords, specific campaigns, events, goods, and so on. Historical data will assist you in identifying industry trends.
Aside from reputation management, Awario’s social media listening service may be used to provide quick customer response, detect linkless mentions, monitor backlinks, and more. Furthermore, it provides a powerful search option based on a Boolean data type, allowing you to create complex queries to meet your specific monitoring needs across social discussions.
Awario also features a distinct social selling module known as Awario Leads. It finds people who could be interested in your business by searching for social posts that seek recommendations or alternatives to your competitors—a particularly effective technique to reach out to new potential customers on social media.
#2. Brand24
Brand24 monitors the following social media accounts: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, TikTok, Twitch, Web, Review Sites, Blogs, Newsletters, and Podcasts.
Mentions Feed, Conversation Volume Chart, Mention Analytics, Impact Score, Sentiment Analysis, Data Exporting, and Hashtag Analytics are some of the features available.
- Pricing: Individual: $49/month, Team: $99/month
- 14-day free trial
Brand24 allows you to monitor what people are saying about you on the Internet, communicate with clients and influencers, and gain more customer insights than ever before – everything you need to stay on top of your social media strategy!
Their product’s purpose is to make it simple to get enterprise-grade data in an easy-to-understand user interface, even if you’re new to utilizing social listening tools. In doing so, Brand24 delivers fast access to brand mentions across social, news, blogs, videos, forums, podcasts, reviews, and more.
Brand24 offers advanced functionality like as automated sentiment analysis, quick warnings, automated reporting, and extensive hashtag tracking.
Brand24 offers an extremely appealing pricing point for its features and should definitely be considered when selecting a social listening solution for your marketing plan.
#3. Brandwatch
Platforms watched by Brandwatch: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Reddit, forums, and blogs
Competition analysis, report customization, exporting, and scalability, follower analysis, social measurement, influencer identification, trend analysis, keyword tracking, and sentiment analysis are all available.
- Pricing: Price begins at $1,000 per month for a total of 10,000 mentions.
- 14-day free trial
Brandwatch is a platform built with high-level professional marketing teams in mind, with the goal of assisting large organizations in monitoring social accounts and enhancing their present marketing activities. It’s one of the most versatile and robust listening tools for social data analytics, thus it’s also one of the most expensive.
Brandwatch provides picture recognition, demographic data about your audience, trending themes in your niche, API access, and dashboards that can be turned into customizable PowerPoint presentations, in addition to normal social listening functionality across social media posts and mentions. Furthermore, Brandwatch’s social media monitoring tool now includes AI, which finds hot topics important to your sector without requiring you to sift through massive volumes of data.
Vizia is a separate data visualization platform that comes with the product. It visualizes Brandwatch data and integrates it with information from a variety of other platforms (including Google Analytics, Buzzsumo, and Hootsuite), making it a genuinely powerful social media monitoring tool.
#4. Buzzsumo
Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, Reddit, and Pinterest are all tracked.
Content discovery, content research, influencer search, keyword monitoring, and account API are all available.
- Pricing: Free with a monthly limit of 10 searches, Pro: $99/mo, Plus: $179/mo
- N/A for a free trial
Purchased by Brandwatch, BuzzSumo is unusual because of its concentration on content and influencer marketing. It employs social listening to assess which material performs best on social media, provides recommendations for your own content production and promotion, and identifies content trends.
In terms of influencer marketing, it looks for major influencers in your issue area and displays the content and topics they most frequently share, as well as the domains they share.
It also offers Competition Analysis, which provides insights into your competitors’ marketing strategies and allows you to compare the performance of your content with rivaling companies. BuzzSumo enables companies’ social media accounts to serve as a critical source of efficient marketing by allowing you to peep into relevant conversations.
#5. Hootsuite
Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Youtube were all monitored.
Automated scheduling, social media monitoring, performance reporting, basic task management, Social Analytics, Sentiment Analysis, and Campaign Optimization are some of the features.
- Pricing: Pro: $49/month, Team: $179/month, and Business: $739/month.
- 30-day free trial
Hootsuite is another of those “oldies but goodies.” Hootsuite is a social media management and monitoring platform. The tool allows you to create an unlimited number of social streams to monitor a variety of topics. You can search by keywords and regions, as well as review sites. Hootsuite can also be integrated with other monitoring tools like the aforementioned Brandwatch or review tracking tools like Reputology and ReviewTrackers.
The Hootsuite signals tool displays the most popular material that contains your keywords. This can help you determine the hottest subjects in your business or the influencer who referenced your brand, in order to update your social media profiles appropriately.
#6. Keyhole
Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube are all monitored.
Features: Hashtags & Keyword Trackers, Account Trackers, Concentrate on individual influencers and remove engagement created by their activities. Obtain data from the past and backfill your account to examine patterns, API Acces, Competitor Tracking
- Pricing: Basic: $49/mo, Plus: $99/mo, Pro: $199/mo
- 7-day free trial
Keyhole is a high-end analytics application that combines two types of analytics. It tracks and analyzes your mentions while compiling all of your social media analytics from several platforms into one location. As a result, you can see the big picture in one place: how many people are talking about you, how they interact with the information you offer, how your social media following is (ideally) expanding, and how you can improve customer experiences accordingly.
You don’t interact with social mentions with Keyhole but rather uncover trends, insights, and analysis of your favorite hashtags, keywords, or accounts. Keyhole provides a variety of ways to deliver studied data, including keyword clouds, white-label reports, mention maps, historical reports, and an online dashboard that can be integrated or shared on your website to produce actionable insights.
#7. Mention
Monitoring Platforms: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Vkontakte, News, Websites, Forums, and Blogs
Features: mentions, Audience Targeting, Brand Tracking, API, Influencer Tracking, Keyword Tracking, Sentiment Analysis, Social Media Monitoring, Social Listening
- Pricing: Free, Solo: €29/month; Pro: €99/month
- 7-day free trial
Mention was one of the first social media monitoring tools, allowing businesses and brands to monitor online conversations and overall social presence. It focuses on immediate results; for example, after entering your keywords and setting up an alert, you will receive mentions from the last 24 hours. Only the Bespoke Plan includes access to historical data.
As for data visualization, Mention offers a separate dashboard where you can exhibit data in multiple ways, including line charts, pie charts, and bar graphs. It generates and distributes automated reports that keep you up to speed on the status of your alerts on a regular basis.
#8. Oktopost
Platforms monitored: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn
Social Analytics, Follower Analysis, Social Audience Insights, Employee Advocacy, Data Portability, Content Discovery, and Sentiment Analysis are some of the features.
- Pricing: Starter: $49/month, Marketing Plan: $119, Business: $249.
- 30-day free trial
Oktopost specializes in social media management for business-to-business firms. What this truly implies is that Oktopost is capable of tracking conversions back to social media participation and online chats, and enhancing lead generation data with social engagement and profile data.
Oktopost’s connections with marketing automation and CRM solutions make it easier to see how social media initiatives affect contacts already in your CRM.
#9. Sprinklr Social Listening
Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube, Instagram, Foursquare, Flickr, Slideshare, Tumblr, WordPress, Zendesk, Livechat, Bazaar Voice, Survey Monkey, Clarabridge, Sina Weibo, Tencent Weibo, Renren, and VK are among the platforms tracked.
Mentions, AB Testing, API, Benchmarking, Social Media Monitoring, Social Media Integration, Social Advertising, Sentiment Analysis, and Reporting/Analytics are some of the features.
- Pricing: Sprinklr offers customized pricing.
- There is no free trial.
Sprinklr is a renowned marketing platform that provides a variety of solutions for Enterprise-level customers. The social media system (Sprinklr Social Cloud) provides the following features:
- Features for Publishing and Engagement,
- Display is used to visualize social media analytics data,
- Core is used to store your social media material, and
- Social Listening function.
It is intended for large teams and continuous monitoring, which is enabled through a mobile app, bespoke alerts, and automated report exports. Sprinklr uses machine learning to spot unexpected and potentially hazardous trends and warns you in real-time for improved reputation management.
It analyzes social data and presents it in a variety of ways that you may personalize. Historical data dating back up to two years is available on demand, allowing you to design your social media campaigns with a wealth of knowledge about your sector and the social media dialogues taking place in your field.
#10. Sprout
Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tiktok, YouTube, WhatsApp, and Google’s Business Messages are all analyzed.
Smart Inbox, Comment Moderation, Collaborative Content Calendar, Sprout Queue, Asset Library, Group, Profile, and Post-Level Reporting, Query Builder, Amplification, and Social Selling are some of the features.
- Pricing: Standard: $89 per user per month (paid annually) or $99 month to month, Pro: $149 per user per month or $169 month to month
- 30-day free trial
Sprout Social combines social media management and monitoring into a single tool. It lets you plan your articles, engage with mentions right from the platform, and track keywords and hashtags. Sprout Social collects and analyzes all social data in one place to provide you with important marketing insights.
Sprout Social divides the social listening process into two independent components for monitoring and participation. The Smart Box contains all of your tagged social mentions, and the Discovery Function allows you to monitor a certain term or hashtag on social feeds such as Twitter and Instagram.
What Should Every Social Listening Tool Include?
That is the most crucial question. I contacted an expert with over ten years of expertise in the social listening industry for a complete explanation.
Mikoaj Winkiel, Chief Evangelist of Brand24, shares his thoughts:
- User-friendly UX — The most crucial distinction of the social listening tool is UX. Why? Every user should be able to use the tool (also non-experienced ones). It should also show social mentions and data in a straightforward and user-friendly manner. Marketing departments do not have the time to spend hours searching for data. It will be easy to find valuable results thanks to the features at your fingertips.
- Advanced Filters – Each day, social listening tools collect thousands of mentions. From a technical standpoint, it is critical that the tool enables simple data filtering. We can easily and quickly discover the information we need thanks to complex filters like Boolean Search.
- Notifications – The tool should allow you to configure notifications to be sent to you as soon as the monitoring detects the content of interest. Putting up storm alerts can be incredibly beneficial in recognizing public relations disasters early on.
- Summary tab – The Summary tab is a required feature (quantitative analysis). Really, I can’t imagine working with a program that doesn’t provide a summary of social listening data. Whether it’s a pdf report or a tab with the most significant figures, we’ll know right away whether the monitored topic is popular or not.
- The discussion’s context – The context of the discussion is another useful aspect to provide in a tool. It is a synopsis of the most relevant subjects covered in the monitoring study. It truly makes the task easier.
How Do You Choose a Social Listening Tool?
With so many options available, it can be difficult to choose the best one. Here are a few things to think about when selecting a social listening tool:
- First, consider how you intend to utilize the tool. What are your objectives? Do you wish to monitor brand mentions? Perform sentiment analysis? Boost brand awareness? You can narrow down your selections once you know what you need the tool to achieve. Examine the sources that the tool monitors as well.
- Second, consider the features that each tool provides. Some tools will be more powerful than others. Make certain that the gadget you select includes everything you require.
- Third, think about your budget. Yes, that is a critical component. Tools can range from free to hundreds of dollars per month (for example, Tweetdeck) (e.g. Brandwatch). When you begin your search, decide how much money you are willing to spend. Fortunately, there are numerous low-cost solutions on the market. I am sure you will locate a tool that matches your demands without breaking the bank.
- Finally, read reviews from other users. Check out what people are saying about the various tools on the market. Check out software review sites like G2 and Capterra for an unbiased viewpoint before making your decision.
With these four considerations in mind, you should be able to locate the ideal instrument for your requirements.
The Benefits of Social Media Listening Tools
As marketers, we are constantly looking for methods to remain ahead of the competition and improve our marketing approach. Social listening tools can help you in a variety of ways; they do far more than simply monitor what people are saying about your business online.
With the correct social listening tool, you will be able to:
- Monitor brand mentions and stay up to date on the latest social media debates. Listening in on conversations can provide you with useful insights into what people are saying about your brand, industry, and competitors.
- Perform sentiment analysis to discover and address any negative sentiment. It will assist you in identifying possible public relations problems and taking steps to limit the impact.
- Key social media metrics to track include reach, the share of voice, presence score, reputation score, and sentiment.
- Look for hot hashtags that relate to your business niche. You will also be able to follow hashtags to learn about their social media activity and reach, the volume of mentions, emotion, and so on.
- Boost influencer marketing by identifying influencers who are relevant to your business specialty.
- Improve your understanding of your target audience’s needs, potential issues, and interests, and customize your material accordingly.
- Perform rival comparisons to learn about their amount of mentions, sentiment, and mention sources.
Conclusion
Social media is one of the best places to learn about your social media audience, rivals, and industry. A social monitoring tool gives you access to a vast pool of opinions and viewpoints that are freely expressed on the Internet. If information is power, social media mentions are one of the most powerful sources of power on the planet.
Nevertheless, with great power comes great duty, and in this situation, the obligation lies in the social listening tools you use to ensure your social media performance is optimized.
There is a social listening tool for everyone, whether you are an entrepreneur, a marketing firm, or a member of a large corporation’s social media department. Consider what you have and what you require, and then make your decision.
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