The following are some of the best tools for monitoring social media. There are so many tools available that it can be hard to know which ones are worth your time and money, so we’ve done the research for you. Read on to learn about the top tools in each category.
Table of Contents
Monitoring Social Media Tools
1. Hootsuite
What does it monitor?: all major social platforms.
Arguably the easiest social monitoring tool to use on this list, Hootsuite’s customizable search streams will monitor any social platform you like so that you can see what’s going on at a glance. Zero in on essential topics, trends, and social profiles based on keywords, hashtags, locations, and specific users.
2. Hootsuite Insights, powered by Brandwatch
What does it monitor?: all major social platforms.
Ready to get to the meat of the conversation? It’s powerful enough to qualify more as social listening than a social monitoring app, but Hootsuite Insights will give you an instant overview of millions of online conversations in real time.
Search for any topic or keyword, and filter by date, demographics, location, and more. You’ll be able to identify thought leaders or brand advocates, understand the perception of your brand in the market, and get immediate alerts if and when your mentions spike (for good or for bad.)
3. Talkwalker
What does it monitor?: most major social platforms + broader web
Talkwalker offers more than 50 filters to monitor conversations across 150 million data sources, including blogs, forums, videos, news sites, review sites, and social networks.
You can easily analyze engagement, reach, comments, and brand sentiment.
Bonus: Watch our AMA with Talkwalker here to learn more.
4. Nexalogy
What does it monitor?: most major platforms + broader web
Nexalogy’s top-tier data visualizations set it apart: interactive timelines, geolocation-based heat maps, lexical cluster maps that show common patterns of topic. Plus the “basic” stuff that would take a human being weeks to figure out, like popular keywords and most active accounts.
5. Mentionlytics
What does it monitor?: all social platforms + broader web
Mentionlytics is a professional-grade social media monitoring app that tracks mentions, keywords, and sentiment across multiple languages.
6. Reputology
What does it monitor?: Yelp, Google, Facebook reviews + other review sites
For customer-facing businesses, a bad review can be a real blow if it isn’t dealt with correctly and quickly. Reputology lets you monitor major review sites such as Yelp, Google, and Facebook reviews from one dashboard.
You can track activity across multiple storefronts and locations, and respond using quick links.
7. Tweepsmap
What does it monitor?: Twitter
This combination analytics/social monitoring tool is built to show Twitter power-users how hashtags and topics travel, so you can tune into what your audience is talking about.
8. Reddit Keyword Monitor Pro
What does it monitor?: Reddit
With 430 million average monthly active users, Reddit is an often-overlooked social platform where conversation is often in-depth and honest. This tool allows you to monitor the site’s 138,000 active communities for the conversations you care about.
How to set up social media monitoring
Step 1: Choose the best social media monitoring tool for your purposes.
Refer back to that list above, if you haven’t narrowed it down yet.
Step 2: Brainstorm your search terms.
What words or names do people use when they talk about your brand?
If you’re a fast food chain, people might mention your veggie burgers a lot more than they mention your CEO. Whereas if you’re a 5-person AI startup, the name of that famous investor might be the entry point for discovery. Here are some places to start:
- Brand or company name as both handle and mention (i.e., @MoodyBlooms and #MoodyBlooms)
- Product name(s) (i.e., #PeekFreans #MoonPie)
- Names of thought leaders, CEOs, spokespeople, etc.
- Slogans or catchphrases
- Branded hashtags (i.e., #optoutside, #playinside, etc.)
You’ll also want to repeat all of the above for each of your major competitors.
Next, expand your sightlines to include your industry, vertical or niche.
- Industry hashtags or keywords (i.e., #inboundmarketing, #SEO,)
- Community or group hashtags or keywords (i.e., #banffcentreartist)
- Platform-specific hashtags or keywords (i.e., #containergardenersofinstagram, YouTubers)
- Location hashtags or keywords (i.e., #MileEnd, #JasperNationalPark #QueenWestWest)
For a detailed rundown on the most common searches brands are running, watch our recent webinar with Brandwatch.
Step 3: Set up your searches in your social media monitoring software.
This will depend on which tool you choose. In our humble opinion, the more simultaneous and saved searches a tool offers, the better. (Typing your chief rival’s name into the Instagram search bar every day is just too depressing.)
Bonus: Download a free guide to learn how to use social media monitoring to boost sales and conversions today. No tricks or boring tips—just simple, easy-to-follow instructions that really work.Get the free guide right now!
Here’s a quick how-to video that goes over how to use Hootsuite’s stream feature, in case you’re curious about how it works:
Step 4: Check your streams regularly.
If you’re the brains and the thumbs behind the company Instagram, you’ll be checking your streams daily, or even hourly, or perhaps you’ll never really not be checking them.
On the other hand, if shaking hands and kissing babies on social is not your job description (because cutting bouquets or training horses is) then consider setting a reminder for yourself to browse your search findings. Trust us, you’ll thank us later.
Step 5: Remember to revisit your search terms and adjust accordingly every so often.
Like all jobs that involve social media, social monitoring is never really done. After you’ve set yourself up and monitored for a few weeks, take another look to see whether your search is really catching everything you want, while filtering out what you don’t.
If you’re getting too many results, especially unrelated ones, consider tightening your search parameters. If you’re not seeing much pop up, then widen them. (Tip #2 in this article on research explains how to use Boolean operators to your advantage.)
Social media monitoring tips
Monitor in all the languages your customers speak.
This one can be easy to overlook for North Americans used to working in one language. But if your company just acquired a start-up in Montreal, remember to set up searches using French, English (and Franglais??) words and phrases.
Meanwhile, if your new client does a lot of work in a language that you don’t speak, work with the local team to find out how to spell “love it” in Vietnamese, or “the worst” in Russian.
Depending on the size and relative importance of your audience, you might want to use a language-specific social monitoring tool. Crowd Analyzer, for instance, excels at social monitoring in Arabic.
Many social media monitoring tools (ahem, Hootsuite) allow you to share permissions with team members so that you can get help where you need it, like for instance from your French or Spanish colleagues.
Feed your hashtag and keyword strategy while you’re monitoring.
If you’ve ever been stumped by what hashtag to add to an Instagram post, or paused in horror as you consider what will happen to your views if you don’t find the right keyword for your YouTube video, social monitoring can help.
For instance, the word cloud in Hootsuite Insights will provide ideas as to which keywords or hashtags you might want to add to your ongoing monitoring activities. But it can also provide keywords and hashtags that you’ll want to use on your own posts as part of your overall hashtag strategy.
Source: Hootsuite Insights, powered by Brandwatch
Knowing the language your followers are speaking (i.e., are people talking about “container gardening” or “balcony plants”?) will ensure you can help them find your amazing content.
Identify influencers and brand advocates you might want to partner with.
Another smart way to level-up your social monitoring is to keep an eye out for the repeat offenders. As you babysit the endless scroll, pay attention to people who repeatedly engage with or mention your brand.
If they’re always applauding or cheerleading, and have a following of their own, you might consider including them as part of your influencer marketing strategy.
Choosing a tool that can do the complicated math to figure out who your biggest fans are is an easy win.
Source: Hootsuite Insights, powered by Brandwatch
Set alerts for unusual activity.
If your sentiment takes a nose-dive when your new TV ad rolls out, or your competitor launches a terrifyingly cool new product, the social team should be among the first to know about it.
A social media crisis (or just a regular PR crisis) can arise at any time. Social media monitoring can alert you if mention volume surges, or the social sentiment meters are ticking over to red all the way down the board.
The correct tool will not just warn you, but make sure you have real-time insights at hand to help make decisions about how to solve the problem.
Share your results.
Speaking of sharing: let the rest of your team (or company) know what you’re seeing.
Sometimes, social media managers—humble people that we are—forget that we have an unparalleled view into our organization’s reputation and status in the world. How much do you want to bet that your sales team, let alone your CEO, have the time, know-how, or tools to sift through the Niagara Falls of opinions and feelings that the world’s 4.5 billion social media users are sharing online?
Social media monitoring reports are important for two reasons:
1) proving your work is worth 24% of the marketing budget (I’m not pointing fingers, but sometimes people need to be reminded) and,
2) making sure your insights about your customers and potential customers are getting to the people who are making decisions.
So, whether your company is customer-obsessed or data-led, our advice is to choose a tool that easily integrates social media monitoring with custom reporting.
social media monitoring companies
1. Synthesio
Based in New York City, Synthesio is one of the leading social media monitoring vendors in the world that operates in different languages. With its excellent performance, many international companies trust the system because it provides accurate information about how fans and customers across the world say about them on social media platforms and other online sites. Synthesio is best suited for both local and international businesses in the world because it uses information available on different social media platforms to provide insights, which enrich the clients’ databases.
Additionally, Synthesio measures the impact of your activities on social media platforms using social KPIs, which enables you to trigger collective functions in your company to improve brand awareness. To improve the performance, morale, and efficiency of your staff members, you can integrate this software with your company’s productivity systems.
It focuses on individuals and crucial conversations that matter to your brand when calculating your social reputation score. The starting price of Synthesio is $1,200 per month. The cost varies depending on the customer’s number of dashboards. Some of the clients who trust and use Synthesio include the following: Allianz, Adidas, American Express, Gillette, Ford, Lexus, HTC, BlackBerry, and many others. The company was founded by Thibault Hanin and Loic Moisand in 2006.
2. AgoraPulse
AgoraPulse is an affordable and easy-to-use social media monitoring tool. The software pulls out social intelligence and allows you to listen to your customers and prospects on social media platforms and engage them in a customized manner. Using the software, you can measure the results of your social media marketing campaigns.
AgoraPulse provides a variety of tools that enable you to manage all your social media accounts from one dashboard. Additionally, the content automation, analytics, and Facebook applications provided by AgoraPulse enable you to measure and track the engagements and messages of your customers and prospects. Also, it allows you to identify bad influencers. This social media monitoring vendor provides four payment plans to meet the requirements of different subscribers. They include the following:
- Enterprise – $299/month
- Small – $49/month
- Medium – $99/month
- Large – $199/month
Some of the clients that use AgoraPulse include the following: RTE Travel Marketing, Soci-Link, Netino, AgoraPulse, LLC, and Portent. Emeric Ernoult and Benoit Hédiard are the founders of AgoraPulse.
3. Sysomos
It is one of the best social intelligence companies that work with some of the most valuable brands in the world. Sysomos can improve your business because it provides unlimited and immediate access to millions of online conversations of your customers and prospects who use social media and other online sites. Therefore, this offers real-time insights that enable you to understand the requirements of your customers.
The software also offers image monitoring solutions on Instagram. It is one of the most recommended systems that combine all the needs of an online business to promote products and brand awareness. It can engage, listen, and discover your customers and prospects.
Markwire is the owner of Sysomos. Aljazeera, Honda, Sony Ericsson, HSBC, Interbrand, Nokia, IBM, Hilton, Microsoft, and Toyota are some of the leading brands across the world that use this social media monitoring and intelligence company. The vendor charges an entry-level price of $500 per month.
4. Crimson Hexagon
Crimson Hexagon is among the top performing social media monitoring tools. The vendor offers insights for brands and non-profit companies in the world. Based in Massachusetts, Crimson Hexagon helps business people in the world to use Facebook and other social media platforms to look into helpful data like product attributes, the performance of their marketing campaigns, purchase intent, and consumer trends.
Additionally, you can use Crimson Hexagon to create optimized content and share it to your social media accounts to engage your audiences better. This software does not impose any restrictions. Therefore, international performers and enterprises use it to analyze, schedule and track as many posts as possible. Microsoft, Hanes, CNN, Rubbermaid, HP, Thomson Reuters, and AdWeek are some of the leading brands that use Crimson Hexagon to monitor and analyze their performance on social media platforms. The introductory packages start at $2,000 per month. The other costs vary depending on the number of searches.
5. Meltwater Buzz
More than 20,000 companies in over 100 countries use Meltwater media intelligence platform. The vendor has been a global leader in social media and online intelligence for years. Meltwater Buz enables companies in the world to track and analyze social media sites. Also, it provides relevant news about your competitors. This will assist you to gauge the competition and use modern strategies to remain relevant in the market. It stores the data of its clients in one dashboard, which is easy to use.
With $13,000, you can get a subscription of one year. Unlike traditional systems, this monitoring tool measures brand reception levels and allows users to build their own dashboards. Owned by Meltwater Group, Meltwater Buz serves the following clients: University of Arizona, Bausch & Lomb, Vita-Mix, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Porsche Automotive North America, HZDG, and other government and private organizations.
6. Spredfast
If you want to maximize your social engagements with your customers and prospects, Spredfast is the best social software that you should consider. This social media monitoring vendor works closely with the major social media platforms in the world, such as Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and LinkedIn, to provide business value and social insights. You can use it to measure your online campaigns. Additionally, it is a perfect social media management and marketing tool.
Spredfast helps businesspersons to manage social marketing risks that are likely to tarnish the reputation of their businesses. Social data insights and real-time analytics provided by Spredfast allow companies in the world to deliver impactful social media advertising.
Based in Austin, Texas, Spredfast is a privately owned company that serves clients in almost every field. Some of the clients include the following: BBC, Amazon, Hyundai, Sierra Club, Nokia, British Airways, AOL, IBM, and SHOUTLET, INC. Its pricing begins at $250 per month.
7. Mediatoolkit
This is a well-known analytics solution that will track your organization’s performance on social media platforms. Mediatoolkit monitors online media such as blogs, social media platforms, and websites for any relevant mention from your customers and prospects. If you want to gauge your competitors, this social media monitoring tool is what you require. It will monitor the online mentions of your competitors, which will help you to know where your company stands against your rivals.
The raw feedback acquired by Mediatoolkit enables businesspersons to make significant decisions to improve their operations so that they can win more customers. The software gives you an opportunity to use unlimited keywords to capture mentions. Additionally, it automatically generates online branding reports.
From as low as $58 per month, you can get the services of this social media monitoring software. It is a privately owned organization based in Zagreb, Croatia. Red Bull, Aljazeera, Vichy Laboratories, and Ultra Europe are some of the clients that use Mediatoolkit.
8. Oktopost
Marketers and business owners use this social media monitoring tool to measure conversions, clicks, and engagements. It promotes all types of content on major social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. It is known for successful curation of content. The insights and analytics provided by Oktopost enable you to determine the most effective posts, networks, blogs, and profiles. The platform discovers content and helps in distributing it effectively.
The employee advocacy feature provided by Oktopost enables your staff members to control your online conversions. You can easily integrate Oktopost with all social networks.
The number of the client’s social profiles and searches determine the pricing of Oktopost. The customer can also purchase Automation integration and Twitter insights as additional features. The following are some of the companies that are using Oktopost: Ipro Tech, ATOS, Afidence, Inc., Daily Inches, Inc., and ExploreLearning, Inc. Daniel Kushner is the CEO and co-founder of Oktopost.
9. Simplify360
This social business intelligence software allows businesses in the world to carry out social media marketing, monitoring, analysis, and online engagement. As a businessperson, you can use this software to analyze and monitor social media conversations and mentions in real time. When publishing analysis and research reports, this software focuses mainly on the major social media sites, including YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook. After subscribing to this software, you can easily carry out your social media engagements with your social media fans and see every activity on the dashboard. Also, the software enables you to get free marketing guides.
The company sells its services in more than 90 countries in the world. Its partners operate in India, United States, Netherlands, Korea and many other countries. Some of its clients and partners include the following: Exide Life Insurance, Tata Sky, and Red Chillies Entertainment. Co-founded by Rohit Gupta, Bhupendra Khanal, Binit Thapa and several others, Simplify360 has a monthly subscription model. You can contact the company on its website to get a price quotation based on the requirements of your business.
10. Zoho Social
When it comes to maximizing your online presence’s impact, Zoho Social is an excellent tool consider. Whether you own or run a small or big business, this software is the best choice to help you meet your social media monitoring needs and publish your content. The software enables businesspersons to trigger real-time communication with their customers on social media platforms. Using this software, you can easily manage multiple social media accounts at a time. Moreover, you can use Zoho Social to reach the right audiences when marketing your company’s goods and services. After marketing your products online, the system will measure your performance to make sure that you are using the best advertising methods.
Zoho Social has a prediction engine that determines the right time when your customers or prospects are likely to read your posts on Facebook or other social media platforms. Android and iOS users can post and access content using the software because it is mobile optimized. The pricing of the software ranges from $8.33 to $125, depending on the packages that your company needs. Some of the clients that use Zoho Social include Affiliated Technology Solutions and Tabletop Records.
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