8 Best Social Media Monitoring Tools Compared (2024)
If you want to monitor the web for mentions of your brand or competitors, you’ll need a social media monitoring tool to help you.
In this post, we’ll show you the best social media monitoring tools and software for businesses, online marketers, and agencies.
We’ll break down what each tool can offer, who it’s for, and how much it costs. You’ll have a better idea of what features they include so you can determine which one matches your needs.
The best social media listening software – TL;DR
- Choose Brand24 if you want the best dedicated social media monitoring tool.
- Focused on Instagram? Iconosquare is the best Instagram monitoring tool and the best social media analytics tool in general.
1. Brand24
Brand24 is, in our opinion, the best dedicated social media monitoring tool on our list. It comes packed with features that will take your social media strategy to the next level. It has social listening tools to help you keep track of what people are saying about your brand or website.
The Mentions Feed tells you what people say about your brand online. And if you find that you’re suddenly getting a ton of mentions, the Discussions Volume Chart gives you an idea of whether the sudden spike is positive or negative in nature.
You can set Alerts to notify you via email or in-app notification whenever there’s a change in your mentions.
Data Exporting is available so you can download reports in PDF, XLS, or even infographic format so you can process data away from the tool.
There’s also Slack integration to help you respond and collaborate with other team members.
Brand 24 has a 14-day free trial period.
Pricing: Plus ($49/month), Premium ($99/month), Max ($299/month)
Read our Brand24 review.
2. Awario
Awario discovers brand mentions from articles, blogs, forums, news, and social networks. This makes it easier to track conversations and respond to user-generated content. It also allows you to talk with your customers on social media which can only help your customer engagement.
It’s also a wonderful lead generation tool, allowing you to find potential clients who need the services you offer. You can answer lead queries and hopefully convert them into paying customers.
You can also use Awario to get in touch with influencers, work with them on promotional content, and establish working relationships.
Awario offers non-stop monitoring so that you’re never out of the loop about your own social media presence. Backed by powerful analytics, you’ll have the historical data you’ll need to determine if you have generated positive, neutral, or negative sentiment among your audience.
There’s also an option to generate white-label reports so it’s a good option for marketing agencies.
Pricing: Starter ($39/month), Pro ($119/month), Enterprise ($399/month). Discounts available for annual subscription.
Read our Awario review.
3. Iconosquare
Iconosquare is fantastic software, especially for Instagram users. It also keeps things simple which is great for those of you who are new to social media management tools.
Social Media Scheduling lets you manage your accounts under one roof. As we said, this tool’s main focus is Instagram but it does have the capability to post on other mainstream social networks like Facebook and Twitter. There’s also a media library where you can store images for future use.
The Social Media Analytics features will help you assess the success of your social media campaigns. It provides crucial metrics like impressions and reach which helps social media marketers adjust their strategy. There’s even an analytics tool for monitoring Instagram Stories.
Then there’s the Social Media Monitoring feature that lets you react to all comments and tags. Not only that, you can use the same feature to spy on your competitor’s social media performance.
Pricing: Single ($59/month), Teams ($99/month), Custom (contact) – annual discounts available
Learn more in our Iconosquare review.
4. Mention
Mention has the features you need to publish, listen to, and monitor your social media channels.
Alerts let you enter keywords that you want Mention to keep its eye out for. It uses a query builder that allows you to combine keywords and operators so that you can narrow down your alerts to only show data that you care about.
The Monitor feature is also quite useful. Mention will scan over a billion sources to find mentions of your brand. Once you start using it, you’ll never miss out on what others are saying about your company. It’s a great way to find social media mentions from other sources.
Mention also uses Listen to filter and analyze posts from other users. This is crucial for audience management. You’ll be able to measure the impact of your online marketing efforts.
The Publish feature keeps you on top of your social media activity. You can plan posts and schedule them ahead of time — all from under one roof. It also lets you create content based on relevant social insights. Use the Mention mobile app to stay connected wherever you are in the world.
Pricing (Billed Annually): Solo ($25/month), Pro ($83/month), ProPlus ($167/month), Company ($450+/month)
5. Sprout Social
Sprout Social is another all-in-one social media management platform that also has a built-in monitoring feature.
The Publishing Tools are simple to use. It can let anyone jump right in and schedule posts right away. It even comes with training and education materials to help its users publish more effectively. It also tells you the optimal time to schedule your posts. You can also schedule posts from the mobile app.
The Social Media Analytics feature gives you the freshest data about your social activity so you can make informed decisions about your social media accounts.
It also has an Engagement tool that lets you manage your social media inboxes conveniently from one location. This improves customer engagement and audience behavior.
Finally, you have Listening Tools that inform you how your target audience perceives your brand across different social media sites. It can even monitor activity on Reddit and YouTube.
Sprout Social offers a 30-day free trial which is longer than what most social media monitoring tools offer.
Pricing (Billed Annually): Standard ($199/month), Professional ($299/month), Advanced ($399/month)
Learn more in our Sprout Social review.
6. Talkwalker
Talkwalker is another great option for those that want to focus on online reputation management. It uses AI to look at all of your social media platforms to determine if there are issues or complaints that you need to address immediately.
It also goes beyond social platforms since it can also go through blogs, news sites, forums, and even offline databases to give you a picture of how users see your brand.
It covers 187 languages, can monitor about 150 million websites, and listen to discussions on more than 10 social networks. It also claims to be the only platform with fully integrated visual listening.
Talkwalker does an impressive job of covering all bases to give you actionable insights that can help your brand succeed. However, its pricing might give startups and small businesses a reason to look into more affordable social media monitoring tools.
Pricing: Listening ($9,000/year), Analytics (Available on Request), Research (Available on Request)
7. Google Alerts
Google Alerts has two things going for it — it’s both simple and free. All you need is a Google account. From there, you can enter keywords that you want Google to send alerts about. You’ll see a list of all the articles, blog posts, forums, and other resources that talk about you.
You can specify which sources to get alerts from, the language, and the region. You can have the alerts delivered to your email or through an RSS feed.
Granted, it’s not nearly as powerful as the other social media monitoring tools in this list. But if all you need is a quick look at different outlets that talk about your brand, it’s not a bad alternative especially considering that you can use it for free.
Pricing: Free
8. Semrush
Semrush is more popular as an all-in-one SEO solution. However, it does a bang-up job as far as social media monitoring as well. It has a ton of features that can help your brand grow not only on social media but on search engines too.
Let’s focus on its Brand Monitoring tool.
Like the other tools in this list, Semrush can track your brand mentions online. However, it can do so for your competitors as well. It can check for brand sentiment, track referral traffic, evaluate your PR’s effectiveness, and show you your estimated reach.
It will show you the weak points of your social media marketing strategy and help you find new growth opportunities.
If you’re serious about optimizing your site and improving your social media game, you should seriously consider getting Semrush.
Pricing: Pro ($129.95/month), Guru ($249.95/month), Business ($499.95/month)
Read our Semrush review.
Final thoughts
Technology has come a long way in recent years. As such, social media monitoring is easier than ever.
These tools take several forms. You can either choose a dedicated tool such as Brand24 or a more platform specific tool like Iconosquare. It’s incredibly well suited to Instagram.
Related Reading:
- 13 Best Social Media Scheduling Tools: Tried & Tested
- 42 Top Social Media Statistics: Usage, Demographics, Trends
- The Best Social Media Analytics Tools To Generate Reports Fast
- The Best Social Media Management Software For Small Business
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