What are Social Listening Tools? Discover the Top 10 Tools for Social Listening

Most businesses today embrace social media to advertise to and reach their target audience. Unlike print and television marketing, social media is fast-paced and sensitive to trends and engagement from consumers. One element of an effective social media marketing campaign is the right social listening tool. 

Social listening tools are an essential way for businesses to understand their market reach, their brand image, and their competition. In today’s socially engaged world, businesses need to connect with and understand their audience more than ever. 

This article is a great introduction to social listening for anyone in digital marketing, as well as small businesses and influencers looking to make the most of their social media presence. In this article, we’ll break down the best social listening tool and introduce its many benefits, as well as what to look for when choosing the tool. You’ll also find a review of 10 different social listening tools, to help you pick the perfect software for your needs.  

What is a Social Listening Tool?

Social listening involves monitoring online conversations and trends and gathering data-based insights to understand consumer sentiment and needs. This social listening data comes from user content created on major social media platforms and is essential when it comes to staying engaged and competitive.

Social listening tools use technology and AI to gather historical data, monitor conversations, perform sentiment analysis, and more. The data from social listening tools will help you gain valuable insights into your brand reputation, your competition, and consumer trends. This will inform your social media marketing strategy and help you make informed decisions about your business.

What's the Difference between Social Listening and Social Monitoring?

It’s easy to confuse social listening and social media monitoring, and the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably. Social monitoring is a shorter-term, reactive strategy that involves engaging with consumers by responding to their questions or comments. To do this effectively, social media monitoring involves tracking brand mentions and hashtags as well as creating keyword-monitoring streams. This will help you respond in real time to both positive and negative mentions. 

Social listening goes beyond the short-term scope of social media monitoring. While the focus of monitoring is to respond to consumers, social listening is meant to understand customer sentiment by analyzing social media conversations and trends for deeper, more valuable insights over time. Social listening aims to gather actionable data that will help inform your marketing strategy and meet consumer needs long term.

The Benefits of Social Media Listening Tools

There are many benefits to using social listening tools as part of a well-rounded social media marketing strategy. Here are just a few good reasons to invest time in social listening: 

Understanding customer sentiment

Today’s digital landscape is increasingly interconnected, making it easy for businesses to connect with and understand their consumers. Social listening tools can help businesses gauge their customer opinions through sentiment analysis and other social media analytics like feedback and social mentions. 

Identifying trends and opportunities

Social listening tools are a great element of market research, helping businesses find early opportunities by monitoring social channels for things like trending topics. When businesses engage in social listening over time, they are in a better position to predict trends and uncover insights and market opportunities. 

Enhancing brand reputation

Social listening tools are an essential element of brand monitoring, as they help track mentions and sentiment over time. The insights gained from social listening will help businesses shape their brand image, allowing them to make adjustments in order to address negative sentiment. What’s more, businesses can address consumer concerns and issues in real-time, improving their brand’s online presence and therefore, reputation. 

Competitive analysis

Social listening tools are great for more than just your brand analysis – they can also track brand mentions for other companies. Competitor analysis is an important part of any business’s marketing strategy, and social media listening tools can help. They provide insights into your competition’s strategy, their online interactions with customers, and their market positioning. 

Factors to Consider When Choosing a Social Media Listening Tool

Choosing the right social listening tool can feel daunting. Here are a few things to consider when researching and selecting social listening platforms:

1. Check out its features and functionality

The right social listening tools should deliver actionable insights, while still providing a user-friendly interface. The features you need will depend on your social listening strategy, but look for functions like third-party integration, sentiment analysis, and real-time monitoring. It’s also not a bad idea to seek a social listening tool with a customizable interface to better suit your needs.

2. Check out its scalability and integration 

The social listening tool you choose should ideally be scalable, so you can continue to use it as your business and goals grow. Make sure your social listening tool has a degree of scalability to accommodate changes in data volume, user requirements, and advances in technology such as AI. The top social listening tools also offer compatibility with third-party apps and APIs, making it easy for you to integrate with your existing tools. 

3. Check out its accuracy and reliability

A social media listening tool is only as good as the accuracy of its data and algorithms. Doing some research comparing different social listening tools to assess their data’s reliability. This might involve looking for recommendations and customer testimonials, word of mouth among other industry professionals, as well as any industry recognition and awards.

4. Consider your budget

Social listening tools can be pricey, especially as your business and needs grow. An important consideration for any social media listening software is its cost. Try some free trials and shop around for the social listening tool that offers the most functionality for your budget. Most companies offer a sliding scale, subscription-based program, so you can always look for ways to scale down your needs. 

10 Best Social Listening Tools

Given the benefits of using listening tools to track performance and connect to consumers on social media platforms, businesses shouldn’t waste time getting started. Here are some of the most popular social media listening software available. 

Awario

Awario is a social media listening platform with several applications. Their website monitoring covers billions of sites every day, including social channels like YouTube and forums as well as all major social networks.  

Their alerts feature can help you choose keywords to monitor in social conversations and add excluded keywords to their filtered results. Their advanced alert settings let you choose locations and multiple languages. 

Awario’s Starter plan is available for $45 per month and includes 30,000 mentions and unlimited keywords. Their Pro plan is available for $137 per month, and Enterprise for $339, with each tier offering more mentions and topics to monitor. 

Brandwatch

Brandwatch is a social media monitoring tool that’s perfect for sentiment analysis and finding key influencers. 

One of their social listening features is Brandwatch Analytics, which monitors conversations from online sources like blog posts and news sites along with social media posts. 

Brandwatch has different pricing plans for researchers, social media managers, and influencer marketers. Their pricing options aren’t listed but instead are available after a free demo. 

BrandMentions

BrandMentions is a social listening tool for monitoring everything from hashtags to negative mentions. BrandMentions scours the web and social media for mentions of your brand, competition, and industry. 

One of their features is instant alerts, which gives users email notifications for every mention online, allowing users to respond to comments and questions in real time. It also helps users discover trends and influencers, which is a great way to identify new business opportunities. 

BrandMentions costs $79 per month for their Growing Business plan, which includes 1 month of historical data access and 2 users. Their Company plan is $279 per month and includes more tracked keywords and mentions. For $399, their Enterprise plan includes 50 keywords, 100,000 mentions, and unlimited projects. 

Brand24

Brand24 is a social listening tool that offers analyzing and monitoring. This platform is organized into projects, each with a set of keywords to track. 

One great social listening feature of Brand24 is the Discussion Volume Chart, which shows users any decrease or increase in online social conversations about their chosen keywords. Brand24 also uses AI to automatically detect sentiment analysis. 

Brand24 costs $79 for an Individual plan, which allows access for one user and is meant for small brands. Their Team plan is $149 and includes 7 keywords and unlimited users. Their Pro plan is $199 and has advanced AI features. Each plan has a 14-day free trial. 

Emplifi

Emplifi, previously Socialbakers, is social media management software with in-depth social listening tools. Users employ Emplifi to create content, manage online communities, and collaborate with influencers. 

One of their features is a consumer intelligence platform. It includes real-time alerts and access to your CSAT and NPS. Emplifi has AI social listening tools to track trends and feedback, and users can route messages to team members for action. 

Emplifi has different tiered plans for different needs and with lower tiers offering fewer users and social profiles. Their pricing options aren’t listed but instead are available after a free demo.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a social media management platform that’s popular with many businesses for a good reason. Hootsuite can plan and automate social media posts in addition to its social listening capabilities.  

Their Streams feature lets you monitor different social media channels at the same time, helping you manage multiple social media platforms. This unique feature also lets you create alerts for changes in brand sentiment online.  

Hootsuite costs  $149 per month for a Professional plan, which covers 10 social accounts. For larger businesses, the $399 Team plan includes 3 users and 20 social accounts. Both plans come with a free 30-day free trial. 

Keyhole

Keyhole is a social listening tool used to track mentions, keywords, and hashtags, and perform sentiment analysis. Their Profile Analytics lets you add social media pages and track your brand performance and engagement, as well as your competition’s. 

One key social listening feature of this platform is QuickTrends, which allows users to get an instant review of current trends and see a visual map of their popularity changes over time. Users can apply the same tool to see how their competition’s popularity has changed. 

An Individual Keyhole plan costs $89 per month and includes 3 profiles for social media analytics. AT $189 per month, the Team plan includes 5 profiles and additional features like watched acts and competitive analysis. Both plans come with a 14-day free trial. 

Mention

Mention is a social media listening platform you can use to track mentions of your brand online, as well as mentions of your industry and competition. 

Their conversation analysis monitors social media conversation related to your brand and provides a report based on its audience insights. The Mention dashboard can be viewed in multiple languages, and it also offers crisis management tools and influencer identification. 

Mention is a subscription-based platform with several different pricing options. Their Solo plan starts at $41 per month and offers 2 alerts and 5,000 mentions. Their Pro plan is $83 per month, and ProPlus is $149, with additional features, alerts, mentions, and users. Each plan offers a free trial. 

Synthesio

Synthesio is a social media management platform that’s great for managing online marketing campaigns.  Their analytics include keywords, mentions, engagement, reach, and more.

One unique social listening feature of this app is the Synthesio Beam, which allows users to see their real-time customer satisfaction graphics, as well as the predictions on whether a post will go viral. The Beam dashboard includes analytics like influence scores for your competition as well.

While there is no pricing information available on the Synthesio site, users can request a free demo and more information. 

Talkwalker

Talkwalker is a great tool used for social media analytics. It helps users track their brand’s online presence and image using AI-powered social listening and in-depth sentiment analysis. 

One key social listening feature of this platform is its crisis management tools, which allow users to search for crisis terms and assign team members to respond. This social listening tool can track social media engagement in the form of shares, likes, and comments.  

Talkwalker offers a free demo, with pricing available on request. Their plans are curated for user needs, and their business and premium plans offer more functions. 

Conclusion

Social listening tools are a crucial element of social media marketing, as they give comprehensive insights into everything from trends to engagement, sentiment, and more. Some of the other benefits of using social listening tools include improving your brand reputation and understanding your competition. When choosing the right social listening tool for your needs, make sure you consider elements like cost, reliability, and scalability. 

By using the power of social listening, businesses can unlock valuable insights, improve their marketing strategy, and stay ahead of their competition in a constantly evolving social media landscape. For more marketing tips, career advice, and resume and cover letter tools, check out Cake’s articles.

— Originally Written by Tiffany Quinn —