Best Social Media Monitoring Tools

Our 5 best social monitoring tools are  Brandwatch, Agorapulse, Storyclash, RivalIQ, and Mention. These apps keep you updated on mentions that matter to your brand. They also provide analytics into your social media performance. Others help benchmark your strategy against competitors and industry standards.  

Social media platforms are not just for posting and engaging with your followers. They hold useful insights into what customers (other brands or influencers) say about your business. Here’s what you’re missing when you don’t monitor online conversations. You lose opportunities to improve your brand’s reputation and customer service.

But you can’t achieve these goals without a reliable tool. That’s why we’ve rounded up the best social media monitoring software.

Keep reading to learn how these monitoring tools improve your social media strategy.

The top 5 social media monitoring tools to use

#5: Mention: Best for brand monitoring

Mention is the best social tool for brand monitoring. It tracks online conversations, analyzing mentions related to your search query. Besides that, it provides helpful insights into the metrics you want to measure. These can include sentiment analysis and engagement rates (likes, comments, or shares) on your social posts.

But that’s not all!

Mention doubles up as a social media management tool. It helps you respond to follower (and customer) queries across your social media platforms.

In the sections below, we’ll discuss more Mention capabilities.

What is Mention used for? 

Mention is used for online monitoring, analytics, and social media management.

Here’s how Mention offers the three services:

The Monitor feature tracks keywords or topics on social media, online forums, and websites. It also analyzes the sentiments behind the mentions in real-time. 

Plus, Mention offers the following to help you refine your search:

• Assisted Query Builder lets you select specific keywords and web pages to track. It offers three types of alerts (basic, standard, and advanced alerts), depending on your monitoring level.
• Data Integrations: The Mention API lets you merge your collected data into your website or mobile apps. Plus, you can connect your Mentions account to Slack or Zapier to receive mentions on these platforms.
• Real-time tracking: You can receive updated mentions on the Mention Feed or instant mentions via email. Plus, Mention sends spike alerts when there’s a surge in your tracked mentions.

What’s more?

Mention’s Analyze feature offers actionable insights into your brand, competitors, and the market. It also generates social reports on metrics like mention volume, engagement, and ROI. Plus, it analyzes your competitors’ social media strategies and performance.

The Engage feature offers a unified social inbox to help you manage messages from your social media channels. Its content planning tools let you create, schedule, or publish social media posts. Besides that, you get AI hashtags and caption generators, and task management tools.

Supported platforms

Mention supports the following platforms:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• X (formerly Twitter)
• LinkedIn
• TikTok
• Pinterest
• YouTube
• Reddit
• WordPress
• Tumblr
• Public videos
• News sites

Why we chose Mention

We chose Mention for its powerful brand monitoring capabilities. It doesn’t only track but analyzes mentions from various sources. It also generates comprehensive reports, providing insights to improve your social media strategy.

Mention offers all-in-one social media management features. I especially loved the unified social media inbox. This feature helps you promptly respond to mentions as they stream in. You also manage customer or follower queries without leaving your Mention account.

Mention pricing

Mention offers 4 pricing plans:

• Solo: 49 USD/mo for 1 user, 2 basic alerts, 1 account (per social network), and 5k mentions
• Pro: 99 USD /mo for 10 users, 5 basic alerts, 10 social accounts, and 10k mentions
• ProPlus: 179 USD /mo for unlimited users, 7 basic and standard alerts, 15 social accounts, and 20k mentions
• Company Plan: Customized prices depending on the company’s needs. You’ll get 10+ alerts, 100+ mentions, unlimited users, and social accounts.

Mention use cases

Here’s how you can use Mention in your business:

• Brand management: Track people’s conversations surrounding your brand to manage your reputation.
• PR management: Monitor the impact of your campaigns and media presence.
• Crisis management: Spot and manage potential crises that could tarnish your brand name.
• Competitive analysis: Stay ahead of your competitors by tracking their social media strategies. 
• Market research: Study market trends to spot gaps and opportunities.
• Social media management: Manage all your channels from a unified platform and improve customer service.

Mention pros

• Excels in brand monitoring
• Flexible and pocket-friendly pricing plans
• Easy to set up and use
• Offers filtering options to refine results
• Offers all-in-one social media management services
• Reliable customer support

Here’s what customers love about Mention:

Mention cons

• Limited features in the lowest plan
• Email reporting could be improved
• You can only access the historical data from the date you start using the tool

Here’s what customers dislike about Mention:

#4: Rival IQ: Best for competitive analysis

Rival IQ (by Quid) is your one-stop shop for competitive analysis. It offers deep insights into your competitors’ social media strategies and performance. What’s more, you can use it to monitor your social media progress. Plus, it helps you understand what people feel about your brand.

You can also track potential influencers, measure their impact, and schedule performance reports.

We’ll discuss more Rival IQ features below!

What is Rival IQ used for? 

RivalIQ is used for social media analytics. From competitors to influencers, this tool gives insights into the performance of any social media account. Plus, it performs side-to-side comparisons on different social platforms.

Here’s how Rival IQ works:

The Social Reporting feature offers competitive landscapes that compare companies’ social media profiles. You can analyze their performance using metrics like engagement rates and follower growth. Plus, the Boosted post-detection feature uses machine learning to help you spot social media ads.

Rival IQ’s Social Posts Analysis feature helps you discover best-performing content and trending hashtags. You can use these insights to improve your content strategy and attract your ideal audience. What’s more, Boolean keyword research offers filters to refine your keywords, hashtags, or topics.

The Influencer Marketing feature offers advanced tools to monitor influencers. That’s not all! You can use auto-tags to track specific mentions on your influencer marketing campaigns. Plus, you generate automated reports to interpret the analyzed data.

Supported platforms

Rival IQ only supports these social media platforms:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• X (formerly Twitter)
• TikTok
• YouTube

Why we chose Rival IQ

We chose Rival IQ for its in-depth competitor analysis insights. It offers unique features to benchmark your social media performance against competitors.

For example, the Landscapes and company filters, compare social media data from various companies in the same industry. And the customizable dashboards let you measure your desired metrics from any social media platform.

I also love Rival IQ’s customizable reporting features. For instance, you get flexible formats (PNG, PDF, PPT, and CSV) to export data from your panel, pages, or dashboards. You can also customize the reports using charts or graphs. Plus, you can have scheduled reports delivered to your email at specific times.

Rival IQ pricing

Rival IQ offers three pricing plans:

• Drive: 239 USD/mo for 10 tracked companies, 1 user account, 6 months’ data history, and Drive plan features
• Engage: 349 USD/mo for 20 tracked companies, 2 user accounts, 12 months’ data history, 2 social listening saved searches, all Drive plan features plus more
• Engage Pro: 559 USD/mo for 40 tracked companies, 5 user accounts, 24 months’ data history, 10 social listening saved searches, all Engage plan features, plus more

Rival IQ use cases

• Competitive analysis: Measure your social media strategy against competitors and industry standards.
• Social media posts audit: Use your social media data to know what’s working and what’s not.
• Social analysis: Track and measure the performance of your social media channels.
• Influencer marketing: Identify influencers and monitor their marketing campaigns.
• Social listening: Understand consumers’ sentiments and perceptions of your brand.

Rival IQ  pros

• Intuitive and easy to use
• Excels in competitive and social media audits
• Powerful analytics and reporting capabilities
• Integrates with Google Data Studio 
• Reliable customer support

Here’s what other customers love about Rival IQ:

Rival IQ  cons

• Limited users in the basic plan
• Limited support for IG stories and TikTok reels
• Social listening could be improved
• Lacks custom reporting features

Here’s what customers don’t like about Rival IQ:

#3:Storyclash: Best for monitoring influencers

Storyclash is the best tool for monitoring influencers online. It helps you discover viable influencers in your niche and measure their social media performance. Plus, you get influencer management features to find relevant influencers and manage your partnerships.

There’s more you can do with Storyclash.

Let’s dig deeper into Storyclash’s capabilities in the sections below!

What is Storyclash for? 

Storyclash monitors influencer marketing campaigns. From discovery to impact, this tool gives insights to improve your strategy.

Here’s how Storyclash works:

The Influencer Discovery feature lets you search for brand-fit influencers to partner with. It tracks and measures influencers’ social media presence. For example, you’ll know their follower count and engagement rates on their posts. Plus, you’ll identify the brands they’ve worked with before and the impact of their campaigns.

And that’s not all!

You can contact influencers straight from your Storyclash platform and strike your deal (if they’re a great fit). And you’ll track your influencer marketing campaign using metrics like reach, engagement, and revenue.

The Brand Insights feature gives helpful insights into any creator’s social media presence. Here, you can analyze metrics like their social accounts’ performance and audience demographics. You can also measure their cross-platform data. For instance, you can measure their content performance across various social channels.

Storyclash’s Market Research features let you track top-performing content in your industry. That way, you’ll spot market trends or patterns. Plus, you can analyze other brands’ influencer strategies in your industry.

The Reporting and Analytics features measure the impact of your influencer marketing campaigns. Here, you can track your campaign’s cost, revenue, and the people reached.

Storyclash’s Collaboration and Relationship Management helps you manage influencer marketing campaigns. It offers calendars, spreadsheets, and customizable fields to plan and execute campaigns. Plus, you get real-time analytics to measure the impact of your influencer marketing campaigns. 

Supported platforms

Storyclash supports the following platforms:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• TikTok
• YouTube
• X (formerly Twitter)

Why we chose Storyclash

We picked Storyclash for its unique influencer monitoring features. For example, its Influencer Discovery feature offers AI lookalikes and natural language search. These tools help you refine your search results. 

That’s not all!

Storyclash’s Reporting and Analytics features offer 50+ performance metrics. These metrics help you measure the impact of influencer marketing campaigns. Here are some examples:

• Engagement rates
• Total likes
• Total video views
• Estimated media value
• Click-through rates
• Total link rates

What’s more, you can generate UTM tracking links in bulk to track campaign impact and measure influencers’ performance.

I also like the Storyclash-Shopify integration that tracks and measures campaign revenue and ROAS (Return On Ad Spend). For example, you can generate and track discount codes and revenue per campaign or creator (influencer). You can also identify the top-performing influencer partnerships in your campaigns.

Storyclash pricing

Storyclash offers two pricing plans:

• Business: 750 EUR/mo for 4 main services (Discover, Research, Manage, Analyze)
• Enterprise: Custom price for premium services

Storyclash use cases

Here’s how to use Storyclash:

• Influencer monitoring: Track potential influencers and contact them for collaboration. Then, monitor their campaign performance.
• Brand monitoring: Track and analyze mentions to spot viable influencers that talk about your brand.
• Market research: Get actionable insights into market gaps and opportunities in your industry.

Storyclash pros

• Intuitive and easy to use
• Vast database of influencers (creators) 
• Allows cross-platform analysis
• Accurate reporting and analytics tools
• Responsive customer support

Here’s what other customers love about Storyclash:

Storyclash cons

• Filtering options could be more refined
• The messaging feature could be more intuitive
• The Discovery feature lacks some country options

Here’s what customers don’t like about Storyclash:

#2: Agorapulse: Best for monitoring social media campaigns

Agorapulse is the best software for monitoring social media campaigns. It tracks conversations and posts across social media and other online platforms. What’s more, Agorapulse offers comprehensive analytics to measure the impact of your efforts. Plus, it gathers data from Google Analytics to calculate the ROI from your campaigns.

Agorapulse also tracks industry trends and patterns. These help you spot gaps and make data-driven decisions for your marketing strategies.

Let’s see how else Agorapulse can help you in the sections below!

What is Agorapulse used for? 

Agorapulse tracks and measures your business efforts in social media campaigns. It offers helpful insights into what brings engagement, conversions, and sales.

Here’s how Agorapulse works:

Agorapulse’s ROI tools track and measure your social media performance. For instance, you’ll get a breakdown of a platform’s total: 

• Visitors
• Transactions
• Revenue generated 

The Analytics Overview feature shows all analytics on mentions, leads, and conversions. It helps you understand which platforms get the highest engagement and sales.

There’s more!

The Funnel Reports track your business’ revenue, from social media to campaigns and team members. They also help you analyze specific social media profiles or accounts. 

The Content Reports help you understand top-performing posts and content types. Plus, you can integrate Agorapulse with Google Analytics. That way, you can monitor business results in all your social media campaigns.

Besides monitoring social media campaigns, Agorapulse helps you with:

• Social listening
• Social media management
• Content scheduling publishing

Note: We’ll discuss these under Agorapulse’s use cases.

Supported platforms

Agorapulse supports the following platforms:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Threads
• LinkedIn
• TikTok
• X (formerly Twitter)
• YouTube
• Pinterest
• Google Analytics

Why we chose Agorapulse

We picked Agorapulse for its ability to track leads and conversions, measuring the ROI from social media campaigns. Besides that, it pulls analytics from its social listening feature to generate custom reports. So you get comprehensive analytics and insights to help you improve your social media strategy.

And that’s not all!

Integrating Agorapulse with Google Analytics helps track your business goals. For instance, you can monitor if the traffic from your social media platforms is converting into sales.

Agorapulse use cases

Here’s how to use Agorapulse:

• Brand monitoring: Track specific mentions to discover what people say about your brand. Get insights into your competitors’ strategies and market trends.
• Social media listening: Measure the sentiment behind conversations to understand your audience’s pain points and unmet needs. Spot and analyze potential influencers to partner with.
• Social media management: Use Agorapulse’s unified social media inbox and automated replies to offer prompt responses to customer queries.
• Social analytics: Analyze metrics that matter to your brand and get actionable insights in custom, shareable reports.
• Website customization: Use Agorapulse’s Link in Bio tool to personalize your mini-website (a landing page with links and posts) to get more traffic and sales.

Agorapulse pricing 

Agorapulse offers the following four pricing plans:

• Standard: 99 USD/mo for 10 social profiles and standard features
• Professional: 149 USD/mo for 10 social profiles plus professional features
• Advanced: 199 USD/mo for 10 social profiles plus advanced features
• Custom: Personalized price depending on your needs

Agorapulse pros

• Great analytics features
• Detailed social media reports
• Intuitive and easy to use
• Flexible and transparent pricing plans

Here’s what customers love about Agorapulse:

Agorapulse cons

• Limited features in lower plans (e.g., no custom reports)
• Occasional technical glitches
• Could have more team-friendly features, especially in the lower plans

Here’s what customers don’t like about Agorapulse:

#1: Brandwatch: Best for consumer intelligence

Brandwatch is the best social media monitoring tool for consumer data. It tracks mentions across numerous sources for comprehensive analytics. These include social media platforms, online forums, websites, and news sites. Brandwatch also uses high-level technology (Iris AI) that combines AI with language models and human intelligence.

With Brandwatch, you’ll gather valuable insights into your customers’ needs.

Let’s dig deeper into Brandwatch’s capabilities in the sections below!

What is Brandwatch used for? 

Brandwatch is used for advanced social media monitoring and listening. It offers unique tools and features to help you understand, engage, and serve your customers.

Here’s how Brandwatch works:

The Consumer Intelligence features track millions of customer conversations for mentions related to your search query. For instance, the AI-powered search helps you find mentions that matter to your brand using keywords or topics. 

The Machine learning classifiers group these conversations into specific groups like opinions, feedback, or complaints. Plus, Brandwatch’s Iris (AI assistant) analyzes these mentions. Then, it exports actionable insights into shareable reports.

Brandwatch tracks consumer intelligence data dating back to 2010. So, you can study market patterns or trends to understand how consumer needs change with time.

The Influencer Marketing tools help you spot and analyze influencers that align with your brand. What’s more, they offer the influencers’ contact and payment information. Besides that, they help you manage, analyze, and report your influencer marketing campaigns.

Brandwatch’s Media Intelligence team, consisting of subject experts help you with:

• Integrating Brandwatch (the software) into your business activities
• Interpreting the data collected on your dashboards and using it in decision-making
• Identifying market opportunities 
• Understanding and implementing your business goals

Why we chose Brandwatch

We picked Brandwatch for its advanced consumer intelligence features powered by Iris (a hybrid human-AI model). The tool’s flexible interface lets you customize the metrics to analyze. It also offers comprehensive analytics to understand your customers, competitors, and the market.

And that’s not all!

You can personalize your reports using over 50 visual templates on Brandwatch’s Vizia tool. For instance, you can create live data reports and share them with your team via email or big screens. Plus, Brandwatch’s integration with Cision offers broad data coverage and media monitoring in 196 countries and 69 languages.

Supported platforms

Brandwatch supports the following platforms:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• X (formerly Twitter)
• LinkedIn
• YouTube
• WhatsApp
• TikTok
• Google Business Profile
• Salesforce
• Reddit
• Tumblr
• Twitch
• Dow Jones
• Blogs
• Forums
• News sites
• Review sites

Brandwatch use cases

Here are ways to use Brandwatch:

• Market research: Use consumer data to understand market gaps and improve your products (or services) to satisfy your customers’ needs.
• Brand management: Monitor and protect your brand’s reputation by tracking relevant mentions.
• Crisis management: Identify and manage issues that could tarnish your brand’s reputation.
• Social media management: Create valuable, engaging content to attract your ideal customers on all your social channels. Engage them and respond to their questions on a smart social inbox. 
• Influencer marketing: Spot and engage viable influencers. Then, manage and measure your campaigns to prove their impact.
• Customer service: Offer reliable customer support by prioritizing the most urgent queries and assigning tasks to your team.

Brandwatch pricing

Brandwatch offers three pricing plans, and you can choose the best one for your budget and needs. But, the prices aren’t displayed on their website. So you have to book a call with them to get the exact price of what you need.

I talked to one of the representatives on call, and here are the price ranges for the three packages.

• Consumer Intelligence: €1,250/month – €5,000/month
• Social Media Management: €1,250/month – €5,000/month
• Influencer Marketing: €750/month – €2,000/month

Brandwatch pros

• Powerful consumer research features
• Simple query builder
• Wide data coverage 
• Offers customizable dashboards and live reports 
• Helpful onboarding process
• Offers monitoring in multiple languages

Here’s what customers love about Brandwatch:

Brandwatch cons

• Data can be overwhelming
• Limitations when integrating with other platforms
• Pricier than most social media monitoring tools

Here’s what customers don’t like about Brandwatch:

Top features to look for in a social media monitoring app

Here are the top features to look for in a social media monitoring app:

• Real-time tracking: Choose a social monitoring tool that tracks keywords, hashtags, or URLs in real-time. It should also send regular alerts or notifications of the tracked mentions as they happen.
• Platform coverage: Go for a social monitoring app with wide data coverage. It should support social media platforms (like Facebook, X, LinkedIn, and Instagram), websites, online forums, and news sites.
• Analytics and reporting capabilities: An ideal social monitoring tool should analyze the tracked mentions using various metrics. Most tools measure metrics like follower growth, engagement rates, and share of voices. It should also let you export the data into detailed reports for interpretation.
• Sentiment analysis: Choose a tool that lets you analyze people’s sentiments toward your brand (or competitors). Most social monitoring tools measure three sentiment scores (positive, neutral, and negative).
• Competitor analysis: You can choose social monitoring software that lets you analyze competitors’ social media performance and compare it against yours.
• Integration with other tools: Pick a tool that integrates with other platforms. For instance, you can connect your social monitoring tool with Zapier or Slack for workflow management.
• Engagement features: An ideal social monitoring app should let you engage your audience across your social media channels from a centralized point. For example, you can set automated replies to specific queries.
• Customizable dashboards and reports: You can choose a social monitoring tool that allows you to customize the metrics you want to track. Plus, it can let you choose specific templates or visuals to personalize your reports.

What is social media monitoring?

Social media monitoring is the process of tracking specific words (keywords, queries) in online platforms. It lets you know what people say about your:

• Brand
• Products or services
• Competitors
• Industry/niche

Social media monitoring helps you gather customer’s feedback, complaints, or queries. It also lets you spot crises that could affect your brand’s reputation. That way you can promptly respond to them to protect your brand image.

For example, if you’re a phone manufacturer, you could monitor mentions of your latest model. That way, you’ll know if your customers love the product, have any issues, or have suggested better features in future releases.

Importance and benefits of social media monitoring

Social monitoring helps brands manage crises and their reputation by tracking online conversations about their products or services. It allows them to respond to feedback and address customer concerns proactively. It also helps identify market gaps and trends by analyzing industry conversations and historical data

We’ll discuss more social monitoring benefits below:

Social monitoring helps brands manage their reputation

Monitoring specific mentions (like your brand’s name) in online conversations helps you know what people say about your brand. For instance, you can spot a spike in brand mentions after releasing a new product. If most of the mentions are positive, that could mean your customers love the product.

But, if most mentions are negative, customers could be complaining about the product. So analyzing these mentions helps you understand:

• What product features they don’t like
• If they have difficulties using the product
• If your product has adverse side effects

By responding to these mentions and acting accordingly, you’ll protect your brand’s reputation and maintain your customers.

Brands can identify market gaps and patterns

Social monitoring keeps you updated on what’s happening in your industry. Plus, you understand market patterns by studying historical data.

You can spot a gap in your niche by analyzing mentions related to your niche. For instance, you might find a gap in electric bikes as a bicycle manufacturer if consumers keep talking about green energy. 

It helps with competitive analysis

One of the best marketing strategies is studying what’s working for your competitors. Most social monitoring tools have competitive analysis features. That means you can use them to track your competitors’:

• Marketing strategies
• Social media performance
• Influencer partnerships

Brands can monitor influencer marketing campaigns

Besides tracking the influencers your competitors have partnered with, you can also use social monitoring to:

• Spot influencers that align with your brand for partnerships
• Validate their genuineness and measure their social media performance
• Identify brands they’ve worked with before
• Monitor the impact of their campaigns

It improves a brand’s customer support services

Tracking mentions relevant to your brand lets you spot customers’ queries and feedback. Plus, most tools send real-time alerts or notifications once they detect these mentions. Plus, some have unified social inboxes where you directly respond to these mentions.

That way, you’ll offer prompt customer service and improve your relationship with your customers.

Social media monitoring tips

Social media monitoring is important. But it helps you meet your goals when you have the right strategy.

Here are some tips to implement in your social media strategy:

• Set clear goals and define your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators): If you want to protect your brand’s reputation, you can use KPIs such as sentiment score and share of voice.
• Choose a reliable tool: Go for a social monitoring tool with all essential features. It should also align with your goals, needs, and budget.
• Use advanced keyword filtering features (like Boolean search) to refine your search results. 
• Set up automated alerts to get real-time updates on your mentions. That way, you’ll offer prompt responses to customer queries.
• Monitor your competitors to study their strengths and weaknesses. You’ll also identify gaps in their strategies that could give you a competitive advantage.

FAQs

What’s the Difference Between Social Monitoring and Listening?

Social media monitoring tells you “what” people say online while social listening helps you understand the “why.”

Here are more differences between social media monitoring and social media listening:

What is the best social monitoring tool? 

Brandwatch is the best social monitoring tool. It excels in consumer intelligence, helping brands understand customers’:

• Unmet needs
• Pain points or challenges
• Interests and preferences
• Favorite social channels
• Online buying behaviors

Besides that, Brandwatch offers unique features like Custom classifiers to group your mentions in specific groups. Plus, it uses smart AI technology to analyze mentions and generate helpful insights.

And that’s not all!

Brandwatch helps you identify brand-fit influencers to collaborate with. Plus, you get all-in-one social media management tools so you can engage your customers and respond to their concerns.

Can social media monitoring be free?

Social media monitoring can be free if you use a free tool like Google Alerts. Also, some tools offer free plans and trials.

Plus, most social media platforms (like Facebook) have free analytics tools to help you track and measure your performance. The only downside is that these tools have limited features compared to premium ones.

Here are tools with free plans or tools you could consider:

• Buffer (free plan)
• Google Alerts (free)
• Meta Business Suite (free)
• Talkwalker’s Social Search and Alerts tools (free)
• Twitonony (free)

Check out some more reviews on Quorage.com:

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