What is Social Media Monitoring? Best Social Media Monitoring Tools

14 min readNov 13, 2019

Social media monitoring refers to a process of using social media channels to track, gather and mine data. To run a successful business, the use of social media to communicate with your prospects and existing clients has become inevitable. We see customers talking about brands on online platforms. And also we have seen the power of a single Tweet or comment on Instagram that can cost your business hundreds of customers.

Therefore, it is necessary for organizations to implement social media monitoring, in order to get notifications on such mentions. Apart from monitoring customer’s comments, social media monitoring will allow an organization to gather intelligence. This helps to create unlimited opportunities, requiring a more effective social media-monitoring tool though.

What is a social media monitoring tool?

A social media monitoring tool is an application designed to maintain tracking of online conversations that relate to a brand. By using an effective tool for social media monitoring, you will not have to spend the whole day on Social platforms, looking for mentions manually. Instead, the social media monitoring tool will find the conversations that matter most to your brand and present them in an easy to understand manner.

Why is social media monitoring important?

Social media has become a favorite hangout place for customers. Customers participate in online discussions that relate to brands and products. While participating, they will share experiences, give suggestions and complain, posting on social media.

If you want to stay in business, you cannot afford to ignore such conversations. You need to respond to the different customer comments and reactions, on a real-time basis. A simple response could be your last chance to convert a prospect into a buying customer. In other words, social media is a lead generation and lead nurturing enabler.

Consider social media monitoring as a helpful tool when it comes to providing customer service. To provide customers the service they need, you have to listen carefully and respond in real-time. Social media helps in identifying influencers and advocates or tracking customer’s feedback.

Concisely, Social media monitoring is important for:

Tracking customers feedback
Providing good customer service
Lead generation / lead nurturing
Reputation management

Therefore, businesses should consider social media monitoring as a very important undertaking that guarantees them business continuity. This is through ensuring customer satisfaction, protecting product/brand reputation, tracking customer’s feedback to guide product development/improvement, and ensuring effective lead generation.

How does social media monitoring work?

Social media monitoring involves the use of an application that crawls and indexes platforms in real-time. The tool then searches for respective mentions, opinions, and sentiments on a particular brand, companies, products, or even people. It presents a proper analysis of the information gathered and the presentation of this information depends on the tool that you are using. Therefore, ensure that you consider the capability of a tool that you are using for social media analysis.

What is the best social media monitoring tool?

With social media monitoring being an important undertaking, it is important that organizations focus on using the best tools to achieve the desired results. The best social media monitoring tool out there should have the following features:

Both quality and quantity of mentions
Informative and detailed reports
Smart insights and personalized advice
Show key insights from the mentions
Boolean search for advanced queries
Discover competitors and industry insights

Therefore, before settling on a tool, ensure that you have looked at the different features that the tool provides. In our next session, we analyze different social media monitoring tools available today, free and paid. We will also analyze the features available on each of the tools to provide you a clear picture of what to expect.

#1 Mentionlytics

This is an intelligent social media monitoring application, providing organizations access to mention insights. Mentionlytics also enables organizations to discover top influencers while finding potential leads, creating an opportunity for brand growth. With Mentionlytics, a business can guard their online reputation, as the tool is not only for social media monitoring, but also helps in monitoring the entire web.

It allows jumping into conversations in real-time, replying to potential customers and furthermore preventing an upcoming crisis. It comes with a Social Intelligent Advisor, an AI service capable to derive actionable insights from social data. A unique feature among other social media monitoring tools, that provides smarter insights, better analytics, and simple suggestions for personalized brand management!

Mentionlytics is ideal for small, medium and large organizations. The tool also supports agencies and individuals. It is available in English, Arabic, Czech, Danish, and 16 other languages. Providing value for money, it is easy to use and has the ability to produce different reports, allowing an organization to take a step in the right direction.

Mentionlytics’ social media monitoring application provides a nice user-friendly design and produces informative reports. In addition, it supports the monitoring of multiple platforms and presents data in a single dashboard. Here is a breakdown of the application’s pricing.

Start free 14-day trial (No credit card information required)
Startup plan @ $39 per month
Essential Plan @ $99 per month
Advanced @ $199 per month
Pro @ $299 per month

Each of the above plans gives the user access to:

Social intelligence advisor (unique feature)
Customizable email alerts
Top mentioners report
Boolean mentions search
Social reach
Full web monitoring
Competitor monitoring
Full analytics dashboard with graphs and detailed analysis
Marketing leads or topics monitoring
Publisher
Labeling and assignment of mentions
Mobile application
Integration with Hootsuite

#2 Hootsuite

Another social media monitoring tool that allows marketers to see conversations easily is Hootsuite. This tool helps organizations to follow key conversations using monitoring features. With Hootsuite, the user can set up unlimited social streams organized by tabs to ensure the information makes sense. In addition, this can be shared with a single click.

Hootsuite is built with monitoring filters allowing the user to easily search using a keyword or by location. This allows easy finding and filtering of social conversations using keywords, by location or a hashtag. This social media monitoring application is multilingual, hence you can track and monitor what competitors, across the globe, are planning.

For your PR and customer service team, Hootsuite allows response as a team. Therefore, you can reply to posts and comments in a fast and efficient manner. Senior team members can approve responses to ensure the response conforms to your brand.

Hootsuite presents value for your money. Hootsuite is best suited for use on small and medium businesses, to larger enterprises and presents value for your money. The plans are as featured below:

Professionals plan @ $19 per month
Team @ $99 per month
Business @ $599 per month

The Enterprise plan provides custom solutions, with personalized team training. The professional and team plans include a free 30 day trial period.

The available features are:

Automated publishing
Content management
Multi-account management
Post scheduling
Brand monitoring
Customer engagement
Team collaboration
Reporting and analytics

#3 TweetReach

The twitter analytics tool is one of the most interesting measuring tools that tells you who is talking about your brand on twitter. With 330 million monthly active users, Twitter has become an important platform when it comes to earning customers. With TweetReach application, a business gets access to great analytics creating an opportunity to gain an in-depth knowledge of how your tweets perform.

Finding out who your tweets have influenced, is a great lead generation hint. The Twitter analytics tool gives you an opportunity to interact with those who have shown interest in your brand. In addition, you gain insights into critical information that informs your future marketing campaigns on Twitter.

The application is not only for organizations. Even individual users can gain insights especially when it comes to growing Twitter following. Monitoring the performance of your tweets using TweetReach is simple. You just need to enter your hashtag, the username or related information and start tracking what is said about the brand and find out exactly what they said.

The TweetReach plans are as shown below:

Social manager @ $49 per month
Social marketer @ $99 per month
Marketing team @ $199 per month

Each of the plans comes with different features. Check out the features under each plan to choose one that is ideal for your requirements.

#4 DigiMind

The DigiMind application provides the ability to measure social media sentiments, enabling the user to see if their brand has a negative or positive perception online. To gain competitive intelligence, the social media monitoring tool allows monitoring of what people are talking about online. You can see the conversations that matter to your brand. The tool works in real-time, enabling a fast and efficient responding to customers’ issues. It is rated as a valuable insights monitoring tool that will drive and improve your marketing strategy.

Are you looking for a social media monitoring tool that allows you to measure the performance of your own content? Then DigiMind is the platform you need to check out. It keeps track of unlimited social accounts presenting analysis in real-time. DigiMind allows organizations to understand their online reputation, with the ability to go beyond social networks; hence, you can see how your brand performs. By ensuring a good reputation, you enjoy business growth owing to repeat business from customers, referrals and online reviews.

To get the full pricing of DigiMind, Talk to their customer service. Here are some of the features provided by the social media monitoring tool.

Unlimited number of users
Customer support
Dedicated account manager
Interactive graphs and charts
Monitoring module
Engagement module
TOPReputation module
ROI measurement module
Smart reporting module

#5 Sprout Social

This social media monitoring tool creates a great opportunity if you would want to build and grow strong social media relationships. Through proper social media monitoring, an organization can easily understand and measure their social media performance. With this application, you can easily measure the performance across social media platforms and build a connection with your audience.

Sprout Social provides easy to use features and can boost great customer support ensuring top satisfaction. This tool comes with a high Return On Investment and has enjoyed a high user adoption thanks to the ability to measure social reach. When it comes to reporting, the user enjoys a detailed report on one platform enabling the discovery of top influencers. It is ideal for brand monitoring, as it also supports reporting of mentions across platforms. It gives the organizations an ability to understand their audience, uncovering current trends, hence informing their social media campaigns.

With sprout social, the organization can reach a wide audience, enabling planning, organizing and scheduling of content. With a reporting platform, the app lets you engage with customers on a real-time basis. To make strategic decisions, you can use the application to check out the analytics data.

The pricing is:

Standard Plan @ $99 per month
Professional plan @ $149 per month
Advanced Plan @ $249 per month

This application gives you access to customized reporting with listening and advocacy add-ons. The social media monitor comes with a free trial starting pack, and a demonstration is available on request.

#6 Brandwatch

Brandwatch is a social media monitoring service providing marketers access to data from over 80 Million sources. This tool delivers a huge amount of data for social media analytics and provides sentiment analysis. Brandwatch provides access to data beyond the usual demographics analyzing positive, neutral and negative comments.

#7 Keyhole

Keyhole is a Hashtag analytics tool, providing users effective social media monitoring to help in understanding online conversations. This software provides an effective platform for analyzing social media followers to better understand their interests. It is used to provide:

campaign monitoring
influencer monitoring
Brand monitoring
Event monitoring

Based on the functionality, Keyhole is an effective tool for carrying out market research. You will have access to hashtag analytics, real-time data, fast reporting and the ability to track influencer’s activities on social media.

#8 Falcon.io

Falcon.io is a social media monitoring software enabling businesses to monitor comments from social media followers and online communities. This platform provides an ability to analyze comments, classifying them into positive or negative, facilitating organizations to take appropriate action.

#9 Mention

This effective online listening tool provides marketers the ability to listen to conversations ensuring they do not miss valuable information. This tool allows users to share relevant content with their online communities and an ability to build your audience. Therefore, using the platform, you can be knowledgeable of what your target customers are saying online, and never miss valuable information.

#10 Sendible

If you are looking for a social media monitoring tool that allows you streamlined brand management, Sendible is the ideal platform. This platform enables businesses to plan and collaborate while engaging customers online. It provides an effective analytics platform allowing you to maximize organic reach effectively. It features an interactive calendar with an inbuilt editor. Sendible shows social media reports through a beautifully designed custom reporting window.

#11 Sentione

For effective social listening and customer service automation, check out Sentione. This platform is designed to provide users with the ability to boost customer service through AI-enabled conversational bots, delivering effective social listening. With Sentione, marketers can discover what 80% of brand mentions are about, and where these mentions are originating. The platform features include:

Social listening and analytics
Online customer service
AI Conversational Bots

#12 Awario

For real-time social insights, use Awario, which is an effective social media monitoring tool. This tool is built to provide businesses the ability to discover online mentions, join online conversations while providing a powerful reporting and analytics platform. It is effective for lead generation and social selling online.

#13 Sprinklr

This is a unified front office software featuring an ability to connect to your customers while providing a unified view of their interactions. This tool is designed to allow marketers to achieve more sales with minimal content marketing efforts. Sprinklr features an ability to plan, produce, publish and analyze online conversations.

#14 Napoleon Cat

This social media monitoring software allows organizations to reach new heights when it comes to social media marketing. This is through providing access to actionable analytics and features an automated customer service solution. This tool is built to provide users an ability to redesign their social media strategy. This is by ensuring access to data-backed insights.

#15 You Scan

You Scan allows organizations to easily scan their social media platforms to ensure informed strategies. This tool is designed to allow analyzing of social media posts, allowing the discovery of customer comments, hence enabling organizations to come up with actionable insights for their social media campaigns.

#16 Talkwalker

Consider Talkwalker as your extra set of eyes and ears allowing you to monitor what is happening on all social media platforms. It provides access to online media in real-time, and it is available in up to 187 languages. This tool lets you discover product mentions, event monitoring, and brand mentions.

#17 Oktopost

If you are searching for an effective social media-monitoring tool, Oktopost provides a suitable alternative. This tool is designed to ensure an ability to manage, monitor, and measure all the social media activities allowing organizations to reach B2B marketing goals. Use Oktopost for social media promotions monitoring, social employee advocacy and general social media management.

#18 Social Mention

For real-time social media search, use Social mention. This tool is built to provide easy tracking and measuring of what people are saying about your business or new products. It is effective for monitoring social media and online brand mentions. The tool is available for monitoring mentions on different platforms including Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg, and Google.

#19 Reputology

For effective monitoring of online reviews and management of social media posts, try Reputology. This online monitoring platform allows organizations to respond to and analyze comments from social media followers. It comes with 24/7 review monitoring, the ability to respond quickly from the platform, allows analyzing customer sentiments and the ability to measure campaign performances.

To Sum Up

To make social media work for your business, it is necessary that you come up with a social media monitoring strategy. Through proper social monitoring, the organization can see the performance of their products and services. In addition, it is easier monitoring their competitors and industry news to gain a competitive advantage. With proper data, your marketing team will be able to make strategic decisions. The social media monitoring tools also provide proper reporting and sharing of reports to enable collaboration.

If you are looking for the best social media monitoring approach, invest in a tool that provides multi-platform monitoring. In addition, check for a monitoring tool that has a proper reporting ability to ensure you can easily analyze the data to reach logical conclusions. At the end, what matters is being able to respond to customers in a timely manner. This guarantees you sustained engagement rates, an increase in social media following while protecting the overall brand reputation. Remember that a simple post on social can cost you millions of revenue if you do not respond in a timely manner.

Are you gathering data about your brand from the Web and Social Media?

If not, you can do it instantly with Mentionlytics. Just head to https://www.mentionlytics.com/free-brand-monitoring/ and enter your brand’s name to get started for free. You will be amazed by what you could find out about your brand that you never knew it existed.

Seeing this data is possible by performing simple search on Google or Social Media, but it’s really hard to make sense of it, by looking it sparingly in this way. This is where Social Media Monitoring tools come into play. You can use a tool like this to automatically gather all this data for you everyday, analyze it, and give you useful insights that you can extremely helpful for your brand.

What’s more, you can also get access to the same data for your competitors. Also, you can monitor keywords and phrases related to your industry, and this way you can get very useful consumer insights in real-time. These insights could cost hundreds of dollars to acquire from a research agency.

Originally posted on Mentionlytics: https://www.mentionlytics.com/blog/best-social-media-monitoring-tools/