How do you know if your customers (and potential customers) are talking about you on social media?
If they tagged your social media profile in their posts, you could check your notifications. If they didn’t, maybe you could search on each social media platform every time you want to find out. Sounds tedious? Here’s a better way:
Use social media monitoring tools.
There’s a great deal of wonderful social media tools out there. Among them are tools built specifically to help you pick out relevant conversations on social media — social media monitoring tools. Some of these tools allow you to monitor multiple social media profiles on the different social media platforms from a single place. There are even some that let you monitor social media trends and keywords.
There’s likely one that suits your needs. Let’s take a look at the 19 best ones for small and medium businesses!
Social media monitoring is the process of listening out for social media conversations that are relevant to your brand. Businesses engage in social media monitoring for several reasons, such as to connect with their customers, to provide customer support, to measure their social media reach, or to understand social media trends.
To “listen”, businesses use social media monitoring tools to collect social mentions and track keywords, hashtags, and URLs that they are interested in.
Social media monitoring is also sometimes known as social listening.
The 19 best social media monitoring tools for SMBs
All the social media monitoring tools listed below are not arranged in any particular order. They are all great in their own ways and will suit different social media monitoring needs.
For example, some are standalone monitoring tools while others have it as a feature within a social media management tool. Some gather individual social media mentions and messages while others analyze sets of social media content and trends.
Here’s an overview of all the tools in this blog post:
- Hootsuite
- Sprout Social
- Agora Pulse
- Zoho Social
- Brand24
- Mention
- Social Mention
- Keyhole
- Trackur
- Buzzlogix
- TweetDeck
- Iconosquare
- Tailwind
- Sendible
- Union Metrics
- HubSpot
- NUVI
- Falcon.io
- Talkwalker
I’m sure I’m missing some great tools out there, and it’ll be great to get your help. If you have tried and love any social media monitoring tools for small and medium businesses, I would love for you to share them in the comments section below, including why you love them. Thank you!
Compare the tools easily with this spreadsheet
To make it easier for you to compare the tools, I’ve created a spreadsheet with the following information of each social media monitoring tool:
- How much do the plans cost?
- Does it have a free plan, free trial, or free demo?
- Is it a standalone monitoring tool or is it part of a social media management tool?
- What platforms are supported?
- What are the main monitoring features?
- Can I reply directly through the tool?
1. Hootsuite
Effectively track topics that matter—then respond quickly
Description: Hootsuite’s monitoring tool is part of its entire package of social media management tools. If you were to subscribe to one of their plans, you can also enjoy other features such as scheduling and analytics.
With Hootsuite, you can set up unlimited streams of social media content based on your mentions, selected keywords, hashtags, or locations. Furthermore, Hootsuite integrates with more than a hundred apps to help you do more from its dashboard.
Platforms supported: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google+, blogs, forums, and more
Prices: Free, $19 per month, $99 per month, $499 per month, and enterprise pricing
2. Sprout Social
Intelligent, real-time social media monitoring with Sprout
Description: Similar to Hootsuite, Sprout Social’s monitoring and engagement tools are part of its social media management software. Sprout Social has two separate features for social monitoring and engagement.
In the Smart Inbox, you’ll get all your social media mentions and messages. With the discovery feature, you can search for particular keywords on Twitter or Instagram (for example when someone mentions your brand without tagging your social media profile).
Platforms supported: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Google+
Prices (per user): $99 per month, $149 per month, and $249 per month
3. Agora Pulse
Discover what people are really saying about your business
Description: Agora Pulse is also an all-in-one social media management tool, which comes with scheduling, monitoring, engagement, and analytics features.
Its inbox collects all your social media mentions while its listening feature allows you to search for keywords, URL, and handle on Twitter. Agora Pulse also allows you to monitor comments on your Facebook and Instagram ads.
Platforms supported: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube
Prices: Free, $79 per month, $159 per month, plus enterprise options
4. Zoho Social
Social media management software for growing businesses
Description: Zoho Social is a social media management dashboard where you can publish and schedule posts, monitor social activities, analyze your social media performance.
In the Zoho Social dashboard, you’ll get real-time updates of how people are interacting with your brands. I find this great for events, where I might want to monitor related social media posts and engage with the attendees.
Platforms supported: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Google+
Prices: Free, $10 per month, $50 per month, $1,000 per year, and $1,500 per year
5. Brand24
Smart social media monitoring for businesses of all sizes
Description: Brand24 is a powerful yet affordable tool for those who want to dive deep into social media monitoring. Besides the major social media platforms, Brand24 also monitors blogs, forums, and other sites for mentions of your brand.
Apart from collecting your mentions and allowing you to reply, Brand24 analyzes your social media reach, interactions, sentiment, and more.
Platforms supported: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, blogs, forums, and more
Prices: $49 per month, $99 per month, and $399 per month
6. Mention
Media monitoring made simple
Description: Mention is more than just a monitoring tool for social media; it also monitors mentions of your brand across the web such as on Yelp, Booking.com, Tripadvisor, and Amazon. On its custom company plan, you can get in-depth insights and reports of your brand mentions.
If you connect your social media profiles to Mention, you can reply mentions directly within Mention. (You can even add a Buffer account and schedule your social media posts.)
Platforms supported: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, blogs, forums, and more
Prices: $29 per month, $99 per month, and enterprise pricing
7. Social Mention
Real-time social media search and analysis
Description: Not to be confused with Mention above, Social Mention is a free social media search engine for user-generated content across the web. It lets you find and measure what people are saying about your brand and products on places such as Twitter, YouTube, and blogs.
Since an account is not required, I believe Social Mention doesn’t save your searches.
Platforms supported: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google, and other websites
Price: Free
8. Keyhole
Hashtag tracking for Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook
Description: Rather than finding individual mentions of your brand, Keyhole provides trends, insights, and analysis of your preferred hashtags, keywords, or accounts. This makes it better for gathering data and reporting results than replying your social media mentions.
If you want to test out its tools, it offers free hashtag, keyword, and account tracking.
Platforms supported: Twitter and Instagram
Prices: $165 per month, $349 per month, $599 per month, $999 per month, and enterprise pricing
9. Trackur
Simple, fast, and affordable social media monitoring
Description: Like Keyhole, Trackur is a monitoring and analytics tool. It can help you find mentions of your brand (or your keywords) on social media, blogs, forums, and more and then analyze the trends, sentiment, and influence level.
Platforms supported: Twitter, Facebook, Google+, blogs, forums, and more
Prices: $97 per month, $197 per month, and $447 per month
10. Buzzlogix
Social media monitoring and engagement made simple
Description: Buzzlogix helps you with both social monitoring and social engagement. For social monitoring, you can track content with your preferred keywords and get the statistics in easy-to-understand graphs. For social engagement, you can monitor multiple social media profiles and response to social mentions and messages.
Platforms supported: Google+, Twitter, YouTube, blogs, forums, and news sites
Prices: $19.95 per month, $49.95 per month, $99.95 per month, and $399.95 per month
11. TweetDeck
The most powerful Twitter tool for real-time tracking, organizing, and engagement
Description: TweetDeck is the official Twitter management dashboard, where you can manage multiple Twitter accounts and monitor mentions, keywords, Twitter lists, and more in separate columns. And it’s free!
Platform supported: Twitter
Price: Free
12. Iconosquare
Instagram analytics and management platform
Description: Iconosquare is one of the most popular Instagram analytics and management platforms. Besides its robust analytics and management features, Iconosquare offers custom feeds, which you can use to monitor specific Instagram content. For each feed, you can add up to 50 users and 20 hashtags.
Platforms supported: Instagram
Prices (per Instagram account): $9 per month, $29per month, $49 per month, and from $990 per month
13. Tailwind
Social media monitoring for Pinterest and Instagram
Description: Tailwind is built specifically for Pinterest and Instagram, the two visual social media platforms. Apart from its scheduling and analytics features, Tailwind enables you to monitor your content and your competitors. It also provides information about emerging trends so that you can tap into them.
Platforms supported: Pinterest and Instagram
Prices: $15 per month, $799.99 per month, and enterprise pricing
14. Sendible
Seize opportunities via social listening
Description: Sendible is a full social media management tool, built for agencies that manage multiple clients. On top of scheduling and collaborating on social media content, you can also respond to comments and messages from an inbox and monitor hashtags, keywords, and your competitors on social media and the web.
Platforms supported: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Google+, blogs, review sites (e.g. Yelp), and more
Prices: $49 per month, $199 per month, and $499 per month, and enterprise pricing
The remaining social media monitoring tools are more pricey than those above. I have not had the opportunity to try them out myself (as they do not provide free trials). I’ve selected them based on reviews and their brand name. If you have used any of them before, it’ll be great to hear your experience.
15. Union Metrics
Social intelligence. Designed for marketing teams.
Description: Union Metrics provides the social intelligence that can help you improve your social media strategy. With Union Metrics, you can track and analyze social media posts, monitor your competitors and trends, conduct research, and more.
Platforms supported: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr
Prices: $99 per month, $199 per month, and enterprise pricing
16. HubSpot
Connect with the people you care about
Description: HubSpot is a comprehensive marketing automation software that includes everything from social media and emails to SEO and lead management. The social media management features are included in the plans starting from $200 per month.
Because HubSpot integrates many parts of marketing together (such as customer relationship management and social media), it allows you to better monitor your leads and customers on social media.
Platforms supported: Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Google+, Xing, YouTube, blogging platform with RSS feeds, and Pinterest
Prices: Starting at $200 per month, $800 per month, and $2,400 per month
17. NUVI
Real-time social intelligence
Description: NUVI gathers all your social media data in real-time and displays it in insightful visualizations to help you make decisions quickly and effectively. Like most social media management tools, NUVI can help you publish and schedule posts, analyze your social media activities, and create reports.
Platforms supported: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, VK, blogs, and RSS feeds
Price: Custom pricing
18. Falcon.io
Manage your brand
Description: Falcon.io is a marketing platform that helps social media marketers with social listening, customer engagement, content marketing, and audience management. Its social listening features help you monitor your brand, stay on top of popular topics, and engage influencers.
Platforms supported: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google+, and YouTube
Prices: $1,000 per month, $1,750 per month, and enterprise pricing
19. Talkwalker
Put social data intelligence to work. Instantly.
Description: Talkwalker is one of the most powerful media monitoring tools. Besides being able to monitor social media platforms and websites, it can also monitor print and TV and radio broadcasts.
It even has image recognition technology to help you pick up social media posts of your brand or product even when your brand isn’t mentioned in the caption.
Platforms supported: More than 10 social platforms, websites, print, and broadcasts
Prices: $8,400 per year, $12,000 per year, and enterprise pricing
While the tools above are all social media monitoring tools, they are different in subtle and big ways and serve different needs. I hope you found one suitable for your company. Otherwise, do check out this comprehensive list by G2 Crowd:
Best Social Media Monitoring Software
Once you have picked your social media monitoring tool, I would love to hear which tool you decided on and what considerations you have made. I believe it can help others make the right decision for their company, too.
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FAQs
What is social media monitoring and analysis tool? ›
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).
Why use social media monitoring tools? ›Social media monitoring involves the tracking of online brand mentions and the subsequent responding of them. Monitoring keeps your brand on top of messages before they might become viral for the wrong reasons. They also help you maintain a positive brand image among consumers and identify potential influencers.
What is online monitoring tools? ›The system compiles all relevant information about every project in one system. These data can then be accessed by different users (beneficiaries, committees, controllers, the Joint Secretariat etc.) depending on the user rights of each user and what they need to know.
Is there an app that combines all social media? ›Hootsuite (Web, iOS, Android, Chrome)
If you're looking for a complete solution to all of your social media management needs, Hootsuite will cover all your bases. The app is compatible with over 20 social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and Pinterest.
- Document Your Social Media Strategy. ...
- Use Social Media Management Software. ...
- Create an Editorial Calendar. ...
- Monitor Social Media Activity and Engage. ...
- Analyze Your Social Media Strategy.
Crowdfire is a free social media management tool that makes it easy to monitor and manage your social media accounts. It is a tool that lets you handle multiple social profiles quickly. You can add, remove, schedule, and edit pages in seconds.
What are the examples of social media monitoring? ›For example, Facebook will let you monitor public pages, but personal accounts and closed groups are beyond your reach. Once an app got all the relevant data, it's able to analyze it through various categories starting with social engagement and ending with demographic insights.
What are social listening tools? ›A social media listening tool is a software that monitors and analyzes online conversations about your brand, a specific topic, your competitors or anything else that's relevant to your company. It pulls in mentions of specified keywords and helps marketers analyze these mentions.
What is the best social media monitoring tool for Facebook? ›...
Below you'll read about the following tools:
- Brand24.
- Agorapulse.
- Awario.
- YouScan.
- Zoho Social.
- Buffer.
- Loomly.
- Listen.
Media monitoring tools allow you to track topics across print, online, and broadcast media output. In PR and Comms it is important to measure the success of your campaigns, deal with a crisis quickly, and listen out for negative publicity. All of this can be achieved by effective media monitoring.
What is a social media tracker? ›
A social media tracker is basically an analytics tool that monitors the performance of your social media content. Its monitoring features provide marketing teams with key metrics to improve their social media strategy. As of 2021, there are currently 3.78 billion social media users worldwide.
What are the disadvantages of social media monitoring? ›But these tools come with their own set of problems: Social platforms are often noisy and overcrowded places – so it can be difficult to find the information you're after. Social Listening tools also cannot identify sentiment, which is a key factor that influences a brand's relationships with its consumers.
How can I improve media monitoring? ›- Keep an eye on the social platforms they use.
- Track their backlinks to create a potential outreach list for yourself.
- Find influencers they're working with.
- Set up alerts for their new mentions.
- Analyze sentiment in comments and reviews.
Provides a user-friendly means of understanding the current status of the relevant policy. Provides a rationale for how future performance targets are set. It must be computerized. It must make the decision making at management level easy and efficient.
What are the monitoring tools? ›Monitoring tools are used to continuously keep track of the status of the system in use, in order to have the earliest warning of failures, defects or problems and to improve them. There are monitoring tools for servers, networks, databases, security, performance, website and internet usage, and applications.
What is the #1 social media app? ›1. Facebook — 2.9 billion MAUs. Facebook is the largest social media site, with more than two billion people using it every month. This means that roughly 36.9% of the world's population are Facebook users.
Is Hootsuite still free? ›Yes, there is a free Hootsuite plan. To unlock the freemium tool, simply sign up for a Professional trial and downgrade within 30 days.
Is buffer better than Hootsuite? ›The simple answer is: Buffer is better for small organizations that are just looking for a scheduling tool with a few extra features; Hootsuite is for larger organizations that want a robust social media management tool, especially those that want conversation management.
How do small businesses manage social media? ›- Identify your social audience. ...
- Build relationships with engagement. ...
- Search social for new opportunities. ...
- Create a social content calendar. ...
- Post your content at optimal times. ...
- Find the best hashtags to use. ...
- Audit your social presence. ...
- Create great visuals.
This largely depends on the social media manager. Some can handle 10–20, whilst others can handle a few dozen and others can handle hundreds or even thousands if they have competent teams in place.
How do companies manage social media accounts? ›
- Understand your brand. ...
- Know your target audience. ...
- Set goals. ...
- Create accounts on multiple platforms. ...
- Engage with your audience. ...
- Create quality content. ...
- Develop advertisements. ...
- Analyze social media metrics.
- Hootsuite.
- NapoleonCat.
- Later.
- Crowdfire.
- SocialOomph.
- Tailwindapp.
- Zoho Social.
- Combin.
Some of the best free social media management tools are Buffer, Hootsuite, Agorapulse, Later, Canva, and SocialOomph. They are not completely free, but they offer a free plan.
What type of tool can be used to monitor and evaluate your social media audience actions? ›Google Analytics
While it's not solely a social media analytics tool, Google Analytics is one of the best ways to track social media campaigns and even help you measure social ROI.
Create, schedule, publish, and manage your content and ad campaigns across social networks from a single dashboard. We help maximize the impact of your social marketing by providing real-time insights, so you can focus on other areas of your business.
What is social media monitoring data collection? ›In general, the term refers to social media metrics and demographics collected through analytics tools on social platforms. Social media data can also refer to data collected from content people post publicly on social media. This type of social media data for marketing can be collected through social listening tools.
What are the 13 types of social media? ›- Social Networks. The primary goal of social networks is to help you connect with people, build communities and groups, share ideas, interests, and information. ...
- Messaging Apps. ...
- Photo & Media Sharing Apps. ...
- Blogging & Publishing Networks. ...
- Interactive Apps. ...
- Discussion Forums. ...
- Bookmarking & Content Curation. ...
- Review Networks.
- Always educate and give value to your audience.
- Create varied content.
- Leverage customer loyalty, reviews, and user-generated content.
- Focus on the best social media channel that works for your strategy.
- Connect with other influencers in your niche.
What is the 80/20 rule? The 80/20 rule indicates that 80% of social media posts should be useful to your audience — meaning, it educates, entertains, or offers a solution to their problems — and only 20% should explicitly promote your business.
What's the difference between social listening and social monitoring? ›In other words, we could sum it up like this: social monitoring is about collecting the data, while social listening is about using it to inform your broader strategy and approach to business.
What is a social media listening strategy? ›
A social listening strategy takes social monitoring a step further to gain a better understanding of brand-centric conversations on social networks. Social monitoring is a tactical, reactive technique, whereas social listening includes the analysis and insights needed to develop a social marketing strategy.
How do you monitor and measure social media activity? ›...
- Step 1: Determine Your Social Goals. ...
- Step 2: Create Metrics To Measure These Goals. ...
- Step 3: Measure. ...
- Step 4: Monitor And Report. ...
- Step 5: Adjust And Repeat.
KeyHole is a social media data reporting platform that measures realtime and historical data in an easy to use format using graphs, tables and various forms of aggregation. Features of KeyHole include: Influencer Tracking. Social Media Account Monitoring.
What type of monitoring tool can be accomplished over the Internet? ›Overall PRTG is great for monitoring internet availability and performance because it blends monitors for networks, servers, and applications. Websites involve every level of the stack and so problems with internet performance can have any of a long list of causes.
Why use social media monitoring tools? ›Social media monitoring involves the tracking of online brand mentions and the subsequent responding of them. Monitoring keeps your brand on top of messages before they might become viral for the wrong reasons. They also help you maintain a positive brand image among consumers and identify potential influencers.
How is media monitoring done? ›Media monitoring tools work by using machine learning tactics to continuously crawl and index sites, such as Twitter, Reddit, etc. Once the software has indexed all of the best media sites, it can search those media outlets for mentions, customer opinions, specific products, brands, people, and more.
Why do companies need media monitoring? ›Media monitoring builds better marketing strategies
When you are able to see in real time how your target audience, and potential customers, are reacting to your posts and press releases, it enables you to emphasise successful messaging, and also to amend and redirect those not hitting the mark.
- fenced.ai. fenced.ai is one of the most advanced, reliable, and trustworthy parental controls app out there. ...
- Qustodio. ...
- Norton family. ...
- Kaspersky Safe Kids. ...
- Bark. ...
- OurPact. ...
- Google Family Link For Parents. ...
- Kuukla Parental Control.
- Google Image Search. A Google search for the person's name is a good start, but an image search can be faster. ...
- PeekYou. You can also turn to a people search site like PeekYou. ...
- Username. Something not many people think about is that they use the same username for every account.
In other words, we could sum it up like this: social monitoring is about collecting the data, while social listening is about using it to inform your broader strategy and approach to business.
What type of tool can be used to monitor and evaluate your social media audience actions? ›
Google Analytics
While it's not solely a social media analytics tool, Google Analytics is one of the best ways to track social media campaigns and even help you measure social ROI.
Another way to view their text message is via parental control apps like AirDroid. AirDroid Parental Control app is an all-in-one app. It allows users to manage and monitor the target device remotely. It runs in stealth mode, so they wouldn't know you have it installed on their phone.
How can I monitor my child's phone without them knowing? ›However, the law permits tracking a child's phone without them knowing by installing a parental control app, such as mSpy, on their device. However, parents can monitor only their underage kids. mSpy monitoring app allows you to watch your kid's activity online secretly.
What is a monitoring app? ›It is a complete Android tracking app with many features from the basic GPS tracking, phone logs and call recording, SMS tracking, to a big list of social media apps tracking including Voip call recordings and notes recordings, browser logs, apps tracking and many live control features.
How can I see hidden Facebook profiles? ›One of the easiest things to do to see into someone's private profile on Facebook is sending the user a friend request. By default, if you are friends with someone, you can view their private Facebook account. After you send the request, all you can do is wait for them to accept it.
Can you tell if someone search you on Facebook? ›No, Facebook doesn't let people track who views their profile. Third-party apps also can't provide this functionality. If you come across an app that claims to offer this ability, please report the app.
Can you look up someone's Instagram by their phone number? ›You can find people on Instagram by their phone number. But the search will be successful only if the person's account is connected with the number. Besides, be ready to sync your page with the list of your contacts. It means you can be found in the same way.
What do we mean when we say you should post an 80/20 mix on social media? ›When you're posting on social media, we recommend an 80/20 mix: Only 20% of your social media content should promote your own brand, and the other 80% should be dedicated to content that really, truly interests your audience and engages them in conversations. For the most part, curated content will belong in that 80%.
What is a social listening tool? ›A social media listening tool is a software that monitors and analyzes online conversations about your brand, a specific topic, your competitors or anything else that's relevant to your company. It pulls in mentions of specified keywords and helps marketers analyze these mentions.
What Social Media Analytics should I track? ›The most common and often important metrics to pay attention to are engagement, impressions and reach, share of voice, referrals and conversions and response rate and time. These combined will give you a 360º view of your social media performance.
What is the most important social media metric? ›
- Reach.
- Impressions.
- Audience growth rate.
- Engagement Rate.
- Amplification rate.
- Virality rate.
- Video views.
- Video completion rate.
What is a social media engagement tool? A social media engagement tool is a platform that allows marketers to monitor conversations, respond to customer requests, publish and schedule content.