10 Best Social Media Monitoring Tools & Strategies in 2024

Social media monitoring is the process of watching and analyzing what is being said on social media platforms to understand your audience’s opinions, trends, and conversations about your, brand, products, topics, or industries.

This includes collecting and monitoring all the mentions and comments on platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter/X, and other major platforms.

Since tracking all the conversations online is impossible, you’ll need a social media monitoring tool to draw meaningful conclusions from your data.

In this blog post, we’ll go through all you have to know about this process including why you need a social media monitoring tool, what are the best tools in the market (along with features, pricing, pros and cons), and how you can choose the best one. Finally, we’ll talk about how to run a successful social monitoring campaign.

So, let’s start!

What is Social Media Monitoring?

Social media monitoring is the process of tracking mentions, hashtags, and conversations on social media to gain insights into what people say about your brand, product, service, or even a person.

Since there might be an enormous amount of information on your brand (business or personal) on popular social media platforms and the web. To monitor, categorize, and understand these huge data, you’ll need social media monitoring software to do these steps:

1. Gathering data from multiple sources like TikTok, X/Twitter, and Instagram
2. Analyzing these data to extract insights such as the sentiment of users or identify patterns to prevent crisis
3. Compile the findings into clear and concise media monitoring reports
4. Use the insights to grow your brand, reply to the audience, adjust strategies, or control your public image

To be honest, it’s almost impossible to do this manually. Today, an astonishing 4,8 billion people use social media, making it impossible to keep up with the loads of posts and comments they create. That’s why you need a good tool to automate this process.

 

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Now let’s jump to the juicy part and see some tools. We tried all the best social media monitoring tools in the market, and here are the best of them:

10 Top Social Media Monitoring Tools in 2024

Here you will find the 10 best social monitoring tools for you to take into consideration:

1. Mentionlytics

Best For: Monitoring all major social media platforms and web, Comprehensive analytics, businesses of all sizes

Pricing: Starts from $69/month

 

Approved by G2 users, Mentionlytics is one of the best social media monitoring tools for several reasons:

• Comprehensive Monitoring: You’ll get a notification not only when you get real-time social mentions from all major platforms, but also when someone uses your keywords on the web.
• Comparative and Careful Analysis: You get very neat and detailed reports on the share of voice, social engagement, sentiment analysis, world map, and word cloud.

 

• Advanced AI-Powered Insights: Mentionlytics’ unique feature SIA, will give you tips to improve your social media marketing, or give you a heads up when it senses a crisis is about to happen.

 

• Mention Clusters: This feature makes media monitoring easy by grouping similar mentions to save you time.
• Top Mentioners: You can easily find influencers in your niche sorted by mention, sentiment, reach, engagement, and platform.
• Competitor Analysis: You can be the first one to hear when someone mentions your competitor, perhaps a lead you can follow.
• Customizable Dashboards: You can build your own dashboard for different marketing goals using various widgets.

• User-Friendly Interface and Customization: You’ll find the app smooth to use with practical features like labeling, task assignment, and even dark mode!

Pros and Cons

✅ The customer service team is highly interactive and helpful, providing personalized support to users.
✅ The dashboard is intuitive and easy to navigate, making it effortless to access analytics and insights.
✅ Offers extensive social media and public website tracking capabilities, providing valuable insights into brand mentions and demographics.
✅ Provides comprehensive coverage of brand mentions across the digital landscape, with customizable alerts for monitoring.
✅ Highly accurate sentiment analysis compared to other competitors

❌ Occasionally, the tool may repeat mentions
❌ Some of the advanced features are only available in the higher plans

Mentionlytics offers a wide range of plans suitable for small, medium, and large organizations. You can also have Mentionlytics on Android or iOS.

P.S. You can have a 14-day free trial — no credit card required!

Try Mentionlytics for FREE

2. Hootsuite

Best For:  All-in-one social media management, especially suitable for large enterprises

Pricing: Starts from $99/month

With Hootsuite, you can monitor multiple social media accounts on one platform. This popular social media monitoring software offers valuable insights into a brand’s social media performance with comprehensive analytics and reporting capabilities.

Also, you can take advantage of Hootsuite’s integration with Mentionlytics which allows you to perform in-depth social monitoring for your brand. You can also use its scheduling features to streamline your content strategy and ensure consistent engagement with your audience.

Key Features

• AI-Assisted Caption Writing
• Multi-Platform Scheduling
• Social Listening Tools
• Advanced Analytics
• Unified Inbox

Pros and Cons

✅ User-friendly interface simplifies scheduling and content editing.
✅ Stays up-to-date in terms of trends and features
✅ Versatile tool suitable for businesses of all sizes and individual freelancers.
✅ Comprehensive scheduling capabilities across all major social media platforms.
✅ Additional features like a hashtag generator and mobile app add value.
✅ Efficient customer engagement through streamlined response management.

❌ Some users find the analytics and reporting lacking in depth.
❌ Quality loss in pictures uploaded directly through the platform.
❌ Limited functionality for direct story scheduling and post-sharing.
❌ Occasional connectivity issues with social media platforms require manual reconnection.
❌ Restrictions on integrating with certain platforms, such as Reddit, and a need for more detailed hashtag metrics.

Hootsuite is known for boosting user engagement. This tool is ideal if you’re looking to comprehensively manage your social media interactions, from scheduling posts to analyzing engagement metrics, all within a single platform.

3. Sprout Social

Best For: Advanced social media management and analytics, ideal for larger businesses and enterprises.

Pricing: Starts from $249/month

Sprout Social is an all-in-one social media management tool that empowers users to do more with their social media strategy. It helps brands better connect with audiences, streamline publishing workflows, and turn social data into meaningful insights.

Its features include social publishing, analytics, social commerce, and social listening. It gives organizations the ability to understand their audience, uncover current trends, and create campaigns.

Key Features

• Social Media Management
• Real-time Engagement Tools
• Customizable Reporting and Analytics
• Team Collaboration Features
• CRM Integration

Pros and Cons

✅ Intelligent Inbox for efficient management of customer interactions and mentions.
✅ Detailed analytics and reporting for monitoring social media engagement.
✅ Tagging capabilities for tracking conversations and trends.
✅ Easy platform synchronization for real-time monitoring.

❌ Social listening lacks depth for nuanced conversations.
❌ Real-time content updates on major networks sometimes lag.
❌ High-cost limits accessibility for smaller entities.
❌ Time investment is needed to utilize full media monitoring potential.

With Sprout Social, you get a comprehensive suite that manages all aspects of social media, enhancing your workflow efficiency significantly. However, you might find it expensive, especially if you’re a small business or an individual.

Bonus: Dive into a list of competitors and alternatives to Sprout Social.

4. Talkwalker

Best For: Monitoring and analytics across social media and the web, good for large businesses.

Pricing: Starts from $9,600/year

Talkwalker is an alternative social monitoring tool that combines a multitude of internal and external data sources. Its platform ingests billions of customer signals to form a live and complete picture of the audience and enables users to discover their brand mentions.

It helps brands fine-tune strategies. Talkwalker helps over 2,500 brands to maximize profits with actionable consumer intelligence.

Key Features

• AI-Powered Sentiment Analysis
• Image and Video Recognition
• Influencer Identification and Tracking
• Social Listening Capabilities
• Competitive Analysis and Benchmarking

Pros and Cons

✅ Email alerts save time by reducing the need to constantly check the platform.
✅ Utilizes Boolean logic for precise topic creation and exportation.
✅ Good at monitoring brand presence across the web.
✅ Offers advanced visualizations and dashboard customization for storytelling around trending topics and sentiment.

❌ High cost makes it less accessible for businesses with smaller budgets.
❌ Experiences glitches, such as slow updates in tagging and delays in filter section updates.
❌ Difficult account deletion process, with limited user control.
❌ Overinclusive alerts can result in irrelevant results, like excessive job postings for specific alerts.
❌ Limits on the number of topic mentions could restrict comprehensive monitoring efforts.

Talkwalker offers you advanced AI-powered analytics, excelling in image and video recognition, which is great for deep data insights. But, be prepared for a potentially steep learning curve, as its sophisticated features may be challenging for new users to grasp quickly.

5. BuzzSumo

Best For: Content research and analysis, influencer identification, for content marketers.

Pricing: Starts from $199/month

BuzzSumo is a content marketing tool that gives content research and performance insights. It offers large-scale content analysis, influencers, media alerts, social analytics, as well as data management and analysis. Furthermore, this platform has detailed reports and customized dashboards to visualize and share data effectively.

Key Features

• Content Discovery and Trend Analysis
• Influencer Identification and Outreach
• Social Media Engagement Metrics
• Content Performance Tracking
• Backlink Analysis for Content

Pros and Cons

✅ Features a content ideas generator for producing engaging content ideas.
✅ Useful in building backlinks and contributing to overall SEO efforts.
✅ Provides valuable brand and keyword monitoring tools, including email alerts for brand mentions.
✅ Equipped with various tools and dashboards for exploring specific topics or trends, enhancing social media presence optimization.

❌ The user interface is considered outdated and could benefit from an update to be more engaging.
❌ The topic explorer feature lacks precision and accuracy in displaying relevant information.
❌ Pricing is high compared to other analysis tools, making it less accessible for small businesses.
❌The platform’s content and trends are primarily guided by the English language, which may limit its usefulness for non-English language markets.

BuzzSumo is your go-to for content discovery and understanding content trends, making it a valuable tool for content marketers. However, you might feel limited if you’re looking for broader social media management capabilities, as it focuses more on content and influencer analytics.

6. Brandwatch

Best For: Social media listening and analytics, suitable for agencies.

Pricing: You have to contact Brandwatch to obtain current pricing.

Brandwatch is another tool to monitor social media providing access to data from over 80 million sources. Brandwatch Consumer Research is a “self-serve application”, that archives social media data to provide companies with information and the means to track their brands’ online presence.

Also, users can search data by using text and image search, charting, categorization, sentiment analysis, and other features for further analyses.

Key Features

• Image and Logo Recognition
• Demographic and Psychographic Analytics
• Crisis Management Tools
• Data Export and Integration Capabilities

Pros and Cons

✅ Easy navigation and powerful real-time analysis.
✅ In-depth monitoring of consumer sentiments and trends, including niche platforms.
✅ Quick and helpful responses from the support team.
✅ Effective sentiment analysis, audience segmentation, and AI integration for diverse source monitoring.
✅ Strong performance on X/Twitter, blogs, news, and forums.

❌ Some challenges with social media platform integration and the need for manual data collection.
❌ Difficulties with Meta’s location restrictions and nuanced sentiment analysis.
❌ High price points can be a barrier for smaller entities.
❌ Limited dashboard customization, sentiment tagging accuracy, and data export features.

Brandwatch provides detailed consumer insights with advanced listening tools, but its premium pricing might be prohibitive for smaller businesses or individual users.

Check out these Brandwatch Alternatives and Competitors.

7. Keyhole

Best For: Hashtag tracking, great for marketers and agencies.

Pricing: Starts from $99/month

Keyhole’s social listening, influencer finder, and social media analytics products help marketers improve their social media performance. Its dashboard allows users to build and share reports instantly and filter influencers based on geo-location and keywords in their bios.

Key Features

• Hashtag and Keyword Tracking
• Influencer Analytics and Management
• Campaign Performance Monitoring
• Sentiment Analysis
• Social Media ROI Measurement

Pros and Cons

✅ Visual and clean interface, with exceptional integration.
✅ Comprehensive reports offer detailed analytics.
✅ Tracks and captures a wide range of data, aiding in ROI evaluation.
✅ Simple to navigate, with effective listening insights and downloadable analyses.
✅ Offers metrics like engagement, reach, and impressions.
✅ The hashtag Tracking feature is useful for monitoring campaign performance.

❌ Costly compared to similar platforms, which may deter continuous use.
❌ Some users find the website difficult to navigate and the sign-up process cumbersome.
❌ Absence of instructional materials can hinder non-English speakers’ understanding.
❌ Costs can escalate quickly with successful campaigns due to data usage limits.
❌ Not as comprehensive in social listening compared to some competitors

Keyhole specializes in hashtag and campaign tracking, offering focused analytics, but it may not cover all aspects of social media management.

8. Mention

Best For: Monitoring of brand mentions, suitable for businesses of all sizes.

Pricing: Starts from $49/month

Mention is a social monitoring tool and also a social search engine enabling brands and agencies to understand audience perception. It helps monitor and analyze a brand’s performance with comprehensive reporting capabilities.

This tool allows you to streamline a brand’s social media management, monitor conversations, and analyze data for improved performance.

Key Features

• Customizable Alert System
• Competitor Analysis and Benchmarking
• Detailed Analytics and Reporting
• API Access for Data Integration

Pros and Cons

✅ Effectively keeps track of mentions across the web, ensuring no publication is missed.
✅ Simple and intuitive design enhances usability.
✅ Delivers immediate alerts for tracked mentions or results.
✅ Capable of uncovering unbranded mentions and hidden backlinks, aiding in outreach efforts.
✅ Responsive and helpful support staff, with straightforward training and software usage.

❌ The search feature lacks the refinement of Google’s, with room for improvement in accuracy.
❌ Considered too expensive for smaller-scale businesses, with some features behind a paywall.
❌ Missing functionality for emailing directly from the platform, which could streamline communication.
❌ Does not allow for the capture of historical data post-creation of a boolean search.
❌ Some users find the platform overly simple with limited customization options.

Mention is effective for real-time monitoring and quick response to mentions, but it’s less equipped for comprehensive content creation and scheduling.

Bonus: Explore our selection of Mention Alternatives and Competitors.

9. Sendible

Best For: Scheduling and reporting, best for agencies.

Pricing: Starts from $25/month

Sendible brings all social networks together into a centralized hub. It offers an easy way to execute a winning social media strategy for multiple brands at scale, with powerful social media engagement, monitoring, publishing, lead generation, and reporting features.

Also, its sophisticated compose box helps users schedule social media posts in bulk and at optimal engagement times.

Key Features

• Scheduling and Publishing
• Social Inbox for Engagement
• Content Recommendation Engine
• Advanced Social Media Analytics
• Client Management Tools

Pros and Cons

✅ Streamlines social media management, allowing users to track mentions and engagement across various platforms.
✅ Facilitates collaboration with team members and clients through secure sharing options and check-and-approval processes.
✅ Notable for responsive customer support, assisting with monitoring setups and troubleshooting.

❌ Some users have experienced an increase in post rejections, potentially due to issues with content or the receiving platform.
❌ Feedback suggests the mobile app could be improved for better monitoring on the go.
❌ Limited monitoring and measuring features

Sendible’s strength lies in its multi-platform integration and client management, but it might not offer as deep analytics as some of its competitors, which could be a limitation for data-driven decision-making.

10. NapoleonCat

Best For: Social customer service, useful for businesses focusing on customer interaction.

Pricing: Starts from $32/month

NapoleonCat is a social customer care and marketing solution. It enables agencies, marketers, and business owners to manage multiple social media channels, automate customer service, and schedule social media posts.

Additionally, it analyses marketing results, benchmarks against competitors, and automates reporting.

Key Features

• Automated Customer Service
• Multi-Platform Social Media Publishing
• Social Media Performance Analytics
• Competitor Analysis Tools
• Social Inbox and Engagement Tools

Pros and Cons

✅ NapoleonCat’s platform is easy to navigate, with a simple layout that facilitates efficient monitoring.
✅ Consolidates various functions into one platform, saving time and effort in managing social media tasks.
✅ Offers useful features like report creation, message moderation, tagging, and project management.
✅ Provides fast and reliable customer support, enhancing user experience and satisfaction.

❌ Users may experience occasional sudden logouts, which although infrequent, can be a minor inconvenience.
❌ Some users have noticed occasional lags in performance, particularly during peak times, impacting overall experience.
❌ Occasional integration challenges with social media platforms’ APIs, affecting stability and functionality.
❌ Challenges in moderating sponsored posts and delays in ticket handling, which can disrupt workflow.

NapoleonCat is strong in automated customer service, but its user interface might not be as intuitive or user-friendly, potentially requiring more time for users to adapt.

So, this was our list of tools to monitor social media like a pro and stay up-to-date with what’s being said about your brand.

Why Is Social Media Monitoring Important?

To start, social media monitoring can be beneficial for a wide range of groups, including:

• Businesses and Brands
• Public Relations (PR) Professionals
• Journalists and Media Outlets
• Researchers and Academics
• Individuals and Influencers
• Government Agencies

All these groups, especially brands and PRs, can get important insights and feedback about their business and campaigns using social monitoring tools. They can then use this info not only to improve their work and customer satisfaction but also revenues.

Moreover, people are already talking about almost everything on social media and giving their honest opinions on every subject. So, it’s easier to monitor these conversations rather than asking for feedback directly.

 

To be exact, social media monitoring can help you with:

 

Effective Reputation Management

Social media can make or break your brand’s online reputation in an instant. But if you monitor your social media regularly, you can always be prepared for any opportunity or thread.

Knowing who’s sharing positive or negative posts about your brand can help you celebrate praises, while quickly addressing criticism before it escalates into a full-blown PR nightmare.

One of the best features of social monitoring tools is sentiment analysis. You can use this feature to quickly separate negative sentiments and quickly reply to negative comments. We’ll get back to this later on.

Complete Competitor Analysis

You’re operating in a competitive market. Monitoring social media is like spying on your competitors and watching every step that they take.

This can help you with market research to spot new rivals and opportunities to expand your activities. By learning from other’s successes and mistakes, you can refine your marketing plan and keep your brand competitive.

Here are other things you can do:

• Identifying market and industry trends
• Steal their unsatisfied customers
• Benchmarking campaign performance
• Find gaps that you can fill

Increased Customer Satisfaction

Today, customers expect brands to listen, engage, and respond. That’s why social monitoring is necessary for your brand to be in tune with customer feedback and discussions.

This leads to a better understanding of your audience and better management of your community, resulting in increased customer satisfaction.

Don’t forget that people see social media not only as an entertaining medium but also as a tool for shopping. In 2023 only, total revenue in the social media market was $140 billion, estimated to reach $183 billion in 2027.

You should also consider that shopping behavior is different on social media. You should be fast in being responsive. 80% of online shopper expect brands to respond to their queries on social media within a day!

Well, you can’t possibly be 14/7 online to reply to these queries, but with a monitoring tool, you can be efficient and prioritize.

New Content Ideas

Most often, your audience is the best source of inspiration.

By using your social media tools to monitor popular topics and track hashtags in your niche, you can craft content that speaks to your audience’s hearts.

Sometimes, not only people can be inspiring, but also they might have pretty good ideas for your products.

Also, you can discover user-generated content for your brand efficiently and just repost it as a thank you. This shows you how much you care about your customers.

New Sales Opportunities Discovered

Social media isn’t just about brand awareness — it can drive sales too.

So, monitoring social media can help you identify potential customers looking for recommendations or expressing a need that your product or service can meet. In this sense, you can spot any opportunities for direct sales pitches and promotional campaigns.

For example, if you own a budgeting app and someone asks about the best budgeting apps on Reddit, wouldn’t you want to jump in the conversation and suggest your product?

Social Media Monitoring Best Tips and Practices

Here we collected some tips and best practices that can come in handy when monitoring social media.

Set up your social media monitoring process

Once you’ve selected your tool, set up your monitoring process by following these steps:

1. Create a list of keywords and phrases related to your brand, products, and industry. Include common misspellings and variations.
2. Establish a schedule for reviewing your feeds and responding to comments and mentions.
3. Assign specific team members to monitor each platform and ensure they’re familiar with your brand’s voice and guidelines for responding to customer inquiries.

Respond to negative comments

Perhaps, one of the best benefits of monitoring your social is being able to handle negative comments more effectively. In this case, follow these steps:

1. Respond promptly
2. Be empathetic
3. Offer a solution
4. Take the conversation offline
5. Do Follow up

Reward people who say good things about your brand

Imagine this: someone on Twitter just discovered your product and they can’t contain their excitement. However, they didn’t use any hashtags.

Now, without social media monitoring platforms, you might have missed out on this. But thankfully, with the right tools in place, you can catch these moments.

By being aware of this positive mention, you can show your appreciation and reward the person for becoming an unofficial brand ambassador.

Now, it’s time to dive deeper into what you can do with such tools practically.

In-depth Guide to Perform Social Media Monitoring for Your Brand

Let’s explore how you can use a social media monitoring tool, like Mentionlytics, to keep eyes of your brand online.

Step #1: Set up your keywords to monitor

First, you have to create an account in Mentionlytics and add the keywords you want to monitor across all social media and the web.

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These keywords can be anything like your brand name, campaign keywords, branded hashtags, or any niche-related topic.

Pro Tip: Stay up-to-date with new mentions of your keywords by creating an alert for each one of them. Then, the platform will send you a notification when there are any new mentions. Also, you can integrate Mentionlytics with Slack to keep your team in the loop.

Step #2: Get started with social media monitoring

As soon as you set your keywords into your account, the platform will start monitoring them online.

Then, all your mentions will appear in the Mentions Feature.

Step #3: Monitor metrics that matter

On the Mentionlytics platform, you can find a variety of KPIs to monitor your performance.

You should pay attention to the following:

• Total Mentions: It shows how many times social media and web users have mentioned any of your trackers (hashtags, brand name, etc.).
• Social Reach: It shows how many users have seen your mentions on all social media platforms and the web.
• Social Engagement: This is basically the total number of engagements (likes, comments, shares, etc.) of your mentions on social media.
• Sentiment Analysis: It uncovers the feelings of the audience toward your brand by filtering your mentions.

Step #4: Measure your Share of Voice

Next, you can go a bit further and check out your Share of Voice.

It captures how much buzz your brand is generating compared to your competitors and evaluates the effectiveness of your PR campaigns.

Step #5: Zoom in on your Top Mentioners

Top Mentioners helps you identify who’s talking about your brand online. It gives you fast information about their follower count, engagement metrics, and more.

 

Also, there you can find influencers to collaborate with.

Step #6: Create your report

The cool thing about Mentionlytics is that you don’t have to spend time creating massive reports yourself. You can have it done automatically through Mentionlytics Report Builder.

All you have to do is select the time frame and the keywords you want to generate data for and Mentionlytics will do the rest.

Bonus: Get actionable social media tips

We saved the best for the end. You can get actionable tips and insights for improving your social media performance from SIA.

Our AI-powered Social Intelligence Advisor continuously analyzes your data and provides you with useful advice on how to perform better online.

That’s it! Follow these steps and we guarantee you’ll make the most out of your social media monitoring tool.

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Now, in case you want to learn some more tips on this topic, keep reading!

 

Start Free Social Media Monitoring

In a nutshell, social media monitoring tools are your secret weapon for staying on top of the digital game. If you don’t want to lose the opportunity to leverage using this important marketing channel, sign up for a free trial to start monitoring your social media now!

Or, just enter your brand, product, competitor, or any other keyword you have in mind in the box below. Go!