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 20 best ones for small and medium businesses!
What is social media monitoring?
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 20 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:
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!
1. Buffer Reply
All your social engagement in one team inbox
Description: Buffer Reply organizes your Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram engagement into neatly-threaded conversations in one team inbox. You will have all the information you need to know about each customer to provide personalized responses. Oh, and you can easily add emojis and GIFs. 😉
Platforms supported: Twitter, Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram
Prices: Starting at $50 per month and $250 per month
Once you’ve researched all your options and if you think Buffer Reply might suit your needs, we would love for you to check out our webinar on engaging with your customers using Buffer Reply.
2. 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
3. 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
4. Agorapulse
Discover what people are really saying about your business
Description: Agorapulse 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. Agorapulse also allows you to monitor comments on your Facebook and Instagram ads.
Platforms supported: Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram
Prices: $49 per month, $99 per month, $199 per month, and $299 per month
5. 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, and $50 per month
6. 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
7. 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
8. 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
9. 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
10. 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
11. 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
12. 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
13. 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
14. 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
15. 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.
16. 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
17. 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
18. 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
19. 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
20. 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
100 more social media monitoring tools
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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The awesome featured image above is by Alex Blăjan and taken from Unsplash.