Social media monitoring tools are very important to improve your social media strategy. These tools helped me keep track of my brand’s online reputation, analyze customer feedback, and stay ahead of my competitors. I believe it can actually help you, too. There are many options, from free social media monitoring tools to top premium tools available to meet your specific needs. I will explain social media monitoring tools and provide a detailed comparison of the best tools on the market. You don’t want to miss out, so let’s start!
Key Points
- Social media monitoring tools are important for improving social media strategy.
- Social media monitoring involves tracking and responding to social engagements such as user mentions, comments, hashtags, and brand-related keywords.
- Social media monitoring requires brands to be vigilant and monitor everything from positive feedback and reviews to negative feedback and complaints.
- Social media monitoring tools help brands keep track of many conversations related to their brand, including those that do not directly mention them.
- There are free social media monitoring tools available for businesses that want to experiment with this feature before committing to a recurring subscription.
What Is Social Media Monitoring?
Social media monitoring involves tracking and responding to social engagements such as user mentions, comments, hashtags, and brand-related keywords. It is an active process that requires brands to monitor everything from positive feedback and reviews to negative feedback and complaints. The key difference between social monitoring and listening is that brands must track social engagements and respond to them promptly.
Social media monitoring requires brands to be vigilant and look for opportunities to engage with their audience. For instance, when a competitor calls out, brands can use the opportunity to intervene and showcase their strengths. Similarly, when people ask for product recommendations, brands can offer their products as a solution. However, such conversations do not always appear in notifications, especially if a brand is active on multiple social media platforms.
To solve this problem, you should use social media monitoring tools to supplement your native data. These tools help brands keep track of many conversations related to their brand, including those that do not directly mention them. Social media monitoring allows your brands to stay on top of their audience’s needs and sentiments and respond promptly to build a positive reputation and improve customer satisfaction. You can also check out free social media monitoring tools to help you get started.
Free Social Media Monitoring Tools
As a marketing manager for a growing tech startup, maintaining a positive online reputation and staying ahead of competitors was crucial for our success. We were launching a new product and needed to gauge customer reactions, identify potential issues, and understand how we compared to rival offerings. To achieve this, we employed various social media monitoring tools. Although paid platforms offer a wide range of features, free social listening platforms are perfect for businesses that want to experiment with this feature before committing to a recurring subscription.
#1. Mention
The free version of Mention covers the listening feature on various websites. This tool offered real-time monitoring of mentions across the web, including social media, blogs, forums, and news sites. It helped us stay on top of conversations about our brand and industry trends.
#2. Answer the Public
Answer the Public is a free social listening tool that effectively explores prospects’ or customers’ questions and problems. Rather than guessing what the audience might want to know, Answer the Public allows brands to create a strong social media presence by providing valuable, optimized social media content. The platform starts with entering a relevant keyword to the company’s line of business. Then, it reveals all the pertinent questions the Public asks on the internet (how, where, what, when), culminating in downloading a CSV report.
#3. Google Alerts
Google Alerts is one of the simplest monitoring tools available. It alerts the user when their search term(s) has changed. We use Google Alerts to identify new content, industry trends, conversations about our brand, or information about our competitors. The platform sends automatic email notifications when a result matches the searched keyword.
#4. Hootsuite
The free plan on Hootsuite enables users to add up to three social profiles. Although the platform has several functions, Hootsuite can be used to search for specific keywords or hashtags and create a personalized stream with this search. This versatile tool also allowed us to monitor multiple social media channels simultaneously. We set up custom streams to track mentions of our brand, product keywords, and relevant industry terms.
Top Social Media Monitoring Tools
In our quest to ensure the success of our new product, we closely monitor online conversations, understand customer sentiments, and keep a pulse on competitor activities. We leveraged some of the top social media monitoring tools to achieve these goals. Here are some of the top social media tools you should consider:
#1. Sprout Social
Sprout Social gives you everything not only to track important interactions but also to act on them. Our platform tracks mentions, comments, and keywords across multiple networks, including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok. The ability to condense your interactions into one platform is a massive time saver. It ensures you don’t miss any noteworthy mentions or let customer service concerns go unanswered. For example, Sprout’s Smart Inbox provides a real-time, up-to-date list of your social interactions, including communications between leads, followers, and customers. You and your team can reply to mentions and call-outs with a collaborative inbox without leaving the platform.
These features speed up response times and allow your team to offer a consistent customer experience. Beyond monitoring, Sprout’s s suite of social listening tools is equally powerful. You can track specific queries using boolean operators to zero in on conversations that matter most. We make it easier to detect call-outs and shout-outs as they happen.
With Sprout’s social analytics, you can report on all of the above to track the progress of your social presence. Track metrics, including average response times and engagement volume, to ensure that you’re consistently growing and improving. The best social media monitoring tools work across multiple platforms and encourage growth wherever your team is active. That’s exactly what Sprout does.
#2. Agorapulse
Agorapulse’s platform lives up to its namesake, with features that help brands monitor their social mentions more effectively. The platform’s monitoring and listening features are designed to help brands focus on “what counts.” With countless notifications and mentions for busy brands to sift through, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Agorapulse allows users to set parameters to filter specific phrases and platforms from their monitoring feeds to combat comment overload.
The platform also makes it a cinch to label and organize notable customer conversations and competitor activity. This activity includes negative competitor mentions and opportunities for your brand to intervene. These features highlight the fast-paced, high-stakes nature of social media monitoring and why tools matter so much.
#3. RivalIQ
Perhaps not surprisingly, RivalIQ’s platform focuses on competitive analysis to help brands monitor their business rivals. Monitoring and benchmarking features allow brands to understand their share of voice and how they’re growing versus their competitors. The most notable feature of RivalIQ is the platform’s variety of real-time alerts.
For example, the platform can identify when a competitor has changed their social media bio as soon as it happens. Recent features also include the ability to see when a competitor boosts an organic post as an ad. These alerts can give you a head start on understanding your competitors’ positioning, promotions, and campaigns.
#4. Mention
Mention is another monitoring tool that lives up to its namesake as a powerful @mention tracker. The platform monitors over one billion sources for relevant mentions and comments for brands and agencies alike. With so many conversations to sift through, the platform offers plenty of filtering options to help brands “eliminate noise.”
Likewise, the platform’s alerts can keep brands in the loop. Additional features of the platform include identifying spikes in the mentioned volume. These instances can help brands identify a potential social media crisis or PR opportunity sooner rather than later.
#5. Keyhole
Keyhole’s monitoring abilities primarily focus on helping brands find influencers to work with. Automated keyword and hashtag searches uncover influencers posting about topics relevant to brands. The platform also uses hashtag analytics to highlight influential accounts, posts, and conversations around any subject.
#6. HubSpot
If you already use HubSpot as your CRM, consider how the platform can double as your social media monitoring tool.HubSpot’s features are similar to most of the tools on our list. The platform tracks interactions, engagements, and content performance.
Coupled with HubSpot’s sales CRM, the tool highlights the correlation between top-performing content and social interactions with sales. For example, you can see if customers interacted with a certain piece of content or a team member via social. This goes hand in hand with understanding your social media ROI and the impact of your social team.
#7. Brand24
Brand24’s media monitoring features include sentiment analysis and instant notifications for your social mentions. The platform can also detect trending hashtags that relate to your brand.A notable feature of the platform is its mention feed that detects spikes in activity. The platform’s “summary” feed also makes it easy to track your brand’s PR efforts from week to week.
#8. Attributes
Attributes is a consumer intelligence tool with an emphasis on social media monitoring. Helping brands uncover “unmet needs,” the platform digs deep into customer conversations and data. Specifically, the platform highlights common complaints within any industry through sentiment analysis. This provides opportunities for competing brands to identify pain points and intervene. Atribus can automatically classify mentions into complaints versus inquiries, too.
#9. Zoho Social
The platform’s complimentary social media monitoring features are incredibly useful if using Zoho as a CRM. Beyond the standard monitoring features we’ve talked about, the platform lets you build a custom listening dashboard. From hashtags to specific platforms or media outlets, this gives you a comprehensive understanding of your PR and social presence.
#10. Awario
Alario’s monitoring features are also similar to many of the abovementioned platforms. Awario Leads is a noteworthy addition to the platform’s regular monitoring and listening capabilities. In short, Awario can identify specific instances of people asking for recommendations for a particular industry. This again shows how monitoring is an active process that can help you win more business.
A Checklist On How To Use Social Media Monitoring Tools To Improve Social Media Strategy
Comparison of Social Media Monitoring Tools
Social media monitoring tools are essential for businesses to track their brand reputation and identify growth opportunities. Here’s a comparison of some of the top social media monitoring tools in the market:
#1. Sprout Social
It offers a suite of social listening tools that track mentions, comments, and keywords across multiple networks. To speed up response times, it provides a collaborative inbox and real-time list of social interactions.
#2. Agorapulse
It helps brands focus on “what counts” with monitoring and listening features that allow users to filter specific phrases and platforms out of their feeds. It also allows users to label and organize notable customer conversations and competitor activity.
#3. RivalIQ
Focused on competitive analysis, it allows brands to monitor their share of voice and understand their growth compared to competitors. It offers real-time alerts when competitors change their social media bios or boost organic posts as ads.
#4. Mention
Monitors over one billion sources for mentions and comments relevant to brands. Offers plenty of filtering options to help brands eliminate noise and identify potential social media crises or PR opportunities.
#5. Keyhole
It helps brands find influencers to work with by automating keyword and hashtag searches. It also uses hashtag analytics to highlight influential accounts, posts, and conversations around any subject.
#6. HubSpot
It can double as a social media monitoring tool for businesses already using it as their CRM. Tracks interactions, engagements, and content performance and highlights the correlation between top-performing content and social interactions with sales.
#7. Brand24
It offers sentiment analysis and instant notifications for social mentions. It detects trending hashtags related to a brand and makes it easy to track PR efforts from week to week.
#8. Attributes
A consumer intelligence tool that digs deep into customer conversations on social media to uncover “unmet needs” and identify growth opportunities. Each tool has unique features and strengths, making it important for businesses to consider their specific needs and goals before choosing a social media monitoring tool.
Related Post
Social Media Etiquette: Best Practices
MARKETING PROJECT MANAGEMENT: Unveiling Insider Tips and Strategies for Success
References
