Monitoring your social media presence is one of the most important ways to make sure your company’s digital marketing strategy is on track. It’s also a great way to make sure that your employees are living up to expectations, and it can help you spot trends in the digital world before they become a problem.
That’s why we’ve put together this list of the best social media tools for monitoring. We’ve rated them based on ease of use, cost, features, and more. Each tool has its own strengths—some are good at tracking engagement and sentiment, while others are better at measuring performance over time. Some focus on specific platforms like Facebook or Twitter; others allow you to monitor multiple platforms at once.
No matter what kind of information you need from your monitoring tool, there’s probably one here that will meet your needs perfectly!
Social Media Tools Monitoring
Social media monitoring tools are the best way to find out what people are saying about your brand. And also what they’re saying about your product, your competitors, your industry, your Superbowl ad, your pandemic response, your customer service wait times, your new mascot—basically, anything your audience could possibly have an opinion on.
In other words: social media monitoring software gathers and presents audience and competitive insights for brands who want to pay attention.
In this post, we’re going to look at some of the best tools on the market, and go through set-up and best practices so you can start tapping into the conversation today.
First, here’s an overview of how we do social media monitoring (and listening!) here at Hootsuite:
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.
What is social media monitoring?
Social media monitoring means tracking hashtags, keywords, and mentions relevant to your brand in order to stay informed about your audience and industry.
By monitoring this data, you’re doing research that is both quantitative (metrics and analytics) and qualitative (inspiration for posts and strategies). You’ll get information that can help you determine things like:
- Social share of voice (i.e. what percentage of the conversation is about you, as opposed to being about your competitors)
- Social sentiment (i.e., what’s the mood of the conversation)
- Social ROI (i.e., how much your dollar investment in social is paying off)
- Relevant hashtags and keywords (i.e., which Instagram hashtags or YouTube keywords you might want to use in the future to expand your reach)
- Trends (i.e., what is your audience talking about, what new ideas, aesthetics or memes are popping up, are the platforms offering new tools and services, etc.)
For brands, social monitoring is an essential part of being a good social citizen, and succeeding on social, period. For instance, you wouldn’t launch into a high-pressure sales pitch (or informative lecture, or for that matter a stand up routine) to a new customer who’s just walked in the door. You’d listen first, and at least figure out what they’re looking for or why they’re in your office.
Likewise, on social media, paying attention to what people are saying is necessary to be relevant, engaging, and to prevent yourself from making off-key blunders.
@Johnsonville It’s not hoarding if you convince the couple behind you to buy the last package, right? Can we just cancel the #LimitedEdition on the firecracker? This needs to be available everywhere, all the time. 2020 needs some good news! pic.twitter.com/C7PShzpY7H
— Jim Prendergast (@jimpren) July 3, 2020
Get you some customers who love you as much as Johnsonville Sausage’s customers love them.
Note: You’ve probably also heard of social media listening, which is the next step you’ll want to take after social media monitoring. Social listening involves not just gathering and analyzing the metrics, but taking action. Take part in the conversation, and turn your intelligence into audience insights. Read our article about social listening over here.
8 social media monitoring tools
For brands and businesses, social media monitoring goes beyond just typing your own name into the search bar on Instagram or Twitter. This is why we’ve compiled this list of our favourite tools for making the task faster, easier, and—dare we say it—more fun? (Ok, ok, you don’t have to give me that look.)
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 tracker app
Short on time? Here is the list of the best apps to block, track and limit social media usage on Android and iPhone:
Social media addiction is difficult to overcome. The minute you wake up, you check your phone for notifications from Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok and other popular social media networks. These distractions not only consume a lot of your time but also dismisses you from the real world. This disappoints our loved ones the most!
If you are also one of them, juggling between work, personal life and your addiction to social media, then you’ve landed at the right place. After researching more than 50 apps & services, we’ve concluded a list of best apps to track and limit social media usage on iPhone and Android.
Having any of these listed applications on your smartphone can undoubtedly help you break social media addiction. So, let’s take a look at some of the most useful apps to block social media & limit your usage on iPhone and Android.
How These App Time Trackers Works?
Utility Makers are deeply concerned about users’ wellbeing and don’t want them to drip into the black hole of social media. Now, you might be wondering how these apps help? Well, these applications help you focus on your work & personal life by eliminating the internet and virtual distractions. Whenever you want to concentrate on something important or gain productivity, you can schedule focus time.
During this time, all social media apps & unwanted notifications will automatically be blocked. Additionally, you can keep a check on app time usage by setting a reminder for the same. Whenever you exceed the set time limit, the smartphone trackers alert you by sending constant notifications.
Hence controlling your online behaviour, is now easier than ever before with these best apps that limit Social Media use.
How Do I Monitor App Usage? Meet These Top 10+ Apps That Limit Social Media Usage
To simplify your work and help you break smartphone addiction effectively & quickly, here is the list of top social media blocker apps to help you limit social network & overall phone usage:
10 Best Apps To Track and Limit Social Media Time and Usage
Now that you know how these App Usage Trackers work to look at their feature set, advantages & disadvantages.
- Social Fever
Most Used Apps
It is a marvelous Android app that helps users to track and limit their Social media & smartphone usage in a few taps. The application is designed with advanced algorithms to help you manage your time wisely and connect with real life in the best way possible. It’s a fantastic phone tracker, packed with actionable features to combat digital addiction. Get a detailed summary of the phone and application usage.
Features: Social Fever
Brilliant smartphone tracker with intuitive UI.
Works with the latest Android OS.
Can inform you about the phone lock and unlock numbers.
You can set interest to balance your digital & real-life.
Set goals to track app usage & become a Smartphone user.
Get detailed info about your app usage.
Keep a check on your Ear & Eye health by receiving frequent reminders to have a break while listening to music & watching the screen.
Well-designed screen tracker that ensures you use your phone for a limited duration & instead spend your valuable time embracing hobbies.
Water reminders to stay hydrated.
Pros
Doesn’t occupy many phone resources.
Works in the background.
Doesn’t let you miss out on your real-life goals.
Get accurate info on the number of unlocking times.
Alerts every time your set app usage duration exceeds.
Cons
None as such for a free Social media & app usage tracker.
- Offtime
Offtime
Offtime is an easy to use application that helps you balance your digital devices usage app right at your fingertips. The app effortlessly works to limit social media time on your smartphone & tablet in real-time and scheduling timeouts to help you breakthrough. Let’s scour the features of Offtime:
Features: Offtime
Tracks and compares your device usage to help you improve.
Enables you to set personal device usage goals.
Use the app alone or ask people to join you to OFFTIMEs.
It provides you with daily feedback and an overview of your smartphone usage.
Syncs across all devices.
Pros
Choose Modes for better efficiency: Work, Family or Me Time
Wake-up calls to curb your habits.
Significantly reduce digital addiction.
Cons
Issues while editing profiles or saving changes.
Frequent updates annoy users.
Most of the features are available with PRO.
- Moment
Moment
With the tagline – Less Phone. More Real Life! Moment claims to be one of the best apps to track and limit Social Media Usage on both iPhone & Android devices. We cannot agree more to the fact that Moment does give you back the time that you’ve wasted scrolling through your Social network feeds. Let’s see how Moment has become the most useful app usage tracker:
Features: Moment
Monitor your phone and your family members’ screen time to control the addiction.
You can schedule your screen-free dinner time, this means for the next set time duration, no one can use their phone or else an annoying alarm will go on.
Tracks which app is used the most on your smartphone.
Keeps track on how many times you pick a phone to use it.
Set & manage goals to track screen time, sharpen focus, have more family time, sleep better, stop wasting time, reduce anxiety, improve relationships & more.
Pros
App runs in the background, no need to open it to access features.
Works well for all your family devices.
Shows accurate times, spent in scrolling.
Cons
Annoying alarm clock.
Sometimes it gets glitchy to work with.
- StayFree
Stayfree
A perfect blend of screen time & app usage tracker, StayFree is an excellent utility for self-control and enhancing productivity. Social media blocker works best to help you focus on important things by restricting the usage of your favorite apps. It gives time reports & statistics on your usage history so that you can improve your performance from day to day.
Features: StayFree
View charts & stats of your app usage history.
Sends quick notifications for overuse.
Customize the app usage tracker with five beautiful themes.
Widget for tracking Social media time is available.
Temporarily blocks Social media & your other favorite Android applications.
Displays inspiring & motivational quotes to enhance productivity and live to the fullest in real life.
Pros
One of the highest-rated apps to beat smartphone addiction.
Extremely fast & modern UI.
Well-known for its accurate usage stats.
Cons
Have to grant a lot of permissions to work properly.
- Stay Focused
Stay Focused
Stay Focused is an excellent blend of features, including app/website blocker, app usage tracker, self-control booster, keywords blocker, screen time,smart productivity booster & much more. It’s an all-round package to beat smartphone addiction without putting much effort. Let’s see what makes it the best app to limit and track Social media time.”
Features: Stay Focused
Tracks daily time spent while using your favorite apps.
Block apps & websites at particular time intervals.
Offers multiple modes for weak self-control.
Keeps track of time spent on websites as well.
Set limits on your overall phone usage & screen time.
Allows you to block certain keywords as well to make your device kid-proof.
The app usage tracker even features a dedicated locker to block apps temporarily.
Pros
Best app & website blocker.
Blocks email notifications temporarily.
A useful app to beat phone addiction.
Cons
Most of the features are available with a premium version.
Annoying ad popups.
- Freedom
Freedom
Freedom, as the name entails, helps you fight against Social Media & Smartphone addiction. Used by Millions of people from all around the world, Freedom is one of the best apps to track and limit Social media usage on iPhone & Android. It has a fantastic set of features to combat Nomophobia. Let’s take a look at what all the app usage tracker has to offer:
Features: Freedom
It helps you focus & improve productivity by blocking an unlimited number of distracting apps & websites such as YouTube, ESPN and Facebook.
The Social media blocker app allows you to block the internet in a single tap.
Allows you to create an exclusion list to keep certain websites from the blocked list.
This Social Media Time Tracker app creates a vast number of modified blocklists for all your requirements.
Schedule Freedom to run at specific days & times.
Convenient social media blocker app for novice & pro users.
Pros
Excellent app to limit Social media usage while working from home.
Actionable features to control phone addiction.
Custom blocklists.
Syncing across all your devices.
Cons
Has certain issues with low-end devices.
- Flipd
Flipd
Flipd is one of the accurate apps that track & limit social media time on your iPhone and Android using advanced algorithms. To maintain digital detox, Flipd helps in hiding social media apps & help you focus on your work. Let’s take a look at the features of Flipd to know what it can do:
Features: Flipd
Offers a dedicated locker to hide diverting apps.
You can schedule reminders whenever you want no distraction.
Monthly challenges within the Flipd community to enhance focus & overall productivity.
Features to set goals for enhancing Focus, Sleep Time, Study & Work.
Tracks the usage time and the time you didn’t use the app. Check the time which you save to motivate yourself.
Attending classes or working at home, get reminders to Flip off to save yourself from distraction.
Pros
Hides Social media apps to focus better on work.
Significantly increases productivity & tracks daily goals.
Lots of features available with a free trial version.
Cons
Poor support assistance.
Sometimes have issues in upgrading to a premium
- SPACE
Space
Formerly known as BreakFree, SPACE is an outstanding app to track and limit social media usage for iPhone and Android. This social media blocker app is quite popular & has been downloaded by over Millions of users from all around the globe. Let’s take a closer look at the features of Space:
Features: SPACE
You can customize the app usage tracker according to your phone usage habits & preferences.
It provides you with the opportunity to set & define your goals regarding your phone.
It tracks your phone usage behaviour and shows you the progress that you have made within 2 months.
It also sends non-intrusive notifications to intrude when your screen time bypasses the limit & alerts you to stay focused.
Pros
Beautiful UI.
Helps you understand your current hobbies.
Lets you know what ‘type’ of phone user you are.
Unlock top tips to achieve digital balance.
Cons
Uses a significant amount of RAM.
Sometimes crashes abruptly.
- QualityTime
Quality Time
It’s a fun, visually engaging and easy-to-use app to limit Social media usage. It offers real-time reports on how much time you’ve spent on your smartphone & Social media apps. QualityTime, an app usage tracker, features an actionable set of tools to curb your addictions and set your time restrictions in the form of Alerts, Take A Break & Scheduled Breaks.
Features: QualityTime
Create multiple QualityTime profiles to customize the way you wish to unplug from the digital world.
The social media blocker app works effortlessly well to get rid of annoying notifications, applications & reject phone calls too.
The app usage tracker allows you to auto-reply text messages when you are busy with your family.
View & manage your timeline activities from morning to night.
Pros
Has a built-in Social media time tracker widget.
Real-time smartphone usage reports.
Accurate & reliable app to limit Social media time.
Cons
Asks for lots of permissions to work properly.
New update has a few bugs.
Glitches while registering for the app usage tracker.
- AppDetox
Appdetox
Completely hooked with exciting mobile games? Can’t stop scrolling your Instagram feed? Well, install AppDetox, a fantastic social media blocker that lives up to its name. It helps you set your parameters for each application you use. So, you can only access them when it’s not a disruption. Let’s see what all this app usage tracker has to offer:
Features: AppDetox
Detox from heavy usage & stop procrastinating work.
Lock apps with a personal locker.
Get frequent reminders to take a break from using apps.
Simple yet effective app to limit social media time.
Plain UI with easy to understand functions, best for novice users who want a simple phone tracker to manage their app usage time.
Pros
Monitors overall phone usage progress.
Shows digital footprint & screen time duration.
Excellent app usage tracker to detoxify life.
Cons
This Social Media time tracker app has an old UI.
Requires lots of permissions to work properly.
Use These iPhone & Android Apps to Block Social Media, Websites, Apps, and the Internet
With the increasing addiction towards apps, Social Media and the Internet, it is essential to keep our online activities in check. Though smartphone addiction is unhealthy in several ways, one of the most important concerns is that it wastes your time, hampers personal life & procrastinates your work. You tend to lose your focus while working, hence poor productivity. Moreover, you spent more time in the reel world than real. This brings communication gaps, and it is certainly not healthy for any relationship that you have.
Alternatively, you can consider any of the above options to combat smartphone & social media addiction. So, what are you waiting for? Start your digital detox journey using Social Fever (recommended solution) or any other apps that limit social media time on your iPhone & Android and get through with it!
Conclusion
Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.
Check out other publications to gain access to more digital resources if you are just starting out with Flux Resource.
Also contact us today to optimize your business(s)/Brand(s) for Search Engines