In today’s advanced world, renowned brands like Shopify and Starbucks have garnered immense popularity with their social media antics.

Ever wonder how they did it?

It was not only a dynamic social media marketing strategy but consistent monitoring of their social media spaces and digital trends that made them rule over the top. This was made possible by introducing the use of social media monitoring tools to the marketing workflows of any business dynamics. An efficient social media monitoring tool will help you automate the tracking procedures around your business and make better decisions.

Several tools available are available in the marketplace that you can choose from. However, to make the best choice, you must know in depth about social media monitoring and how the concept works.

Social Media Monitoring – Basics

The concept of social media monitoring refers to the process of actively tracking and analyzing social media channels for mentions of specific keywords, phrases, or brands. In general, it involves tracking all the activities taking place around your brand in the social media landscape.

For businesses, a major objective of social media monitoring is to gain insights into customer sentiment, monitor brand reputation, and identify opportunities for engagement. Social media monitoring can help businesses and individuals understand how their brand is perceived online and adjust their social media strategy accordingly.

What Are the Benefits of Monitoring Social Media?

As a business manager, you must consider monitoring your social media and keeping track of all the activities to evaluate progress and improve the results accordingly timely. This might appear as a time-taking task, but mind you; it has some great benefits you must ponder.

1. Generates Feedback

   By monitoring social media, businesses can gather feedback from customers in real-time. This feedback can be used to improve products or services or address customer issues or concerns.

2. Enhances Customer Feedback

   Social media monitoring allows businesses to engage with customers and promptly respond to their queries, concerns, and complaints. This enhances customer satisfaction and helps build brand loyalty.

3. Maximizes Profit

   Social media monitoring helps businesses to identify trends and topics that are popular among their target audience., This can help businesses develop marketing campaigns that resonate with their audience and maximize their profits.

4. Keeps You Updated With New Trends

   Social media is constantly evolving, and new trends are emerging every day. Monitoring social media helps businesses to stay up-to-date with these trends and incorporate them into their marketing strategies.

5. Competitor Analysis

   Monitoring social media platforms allows businesses to keep an eye on their competitors. By tracking their competitors’ activities, content, and customer interactions, organizations can identify industry trends, benchmark their performance, and find opportunities to differentiate themselves in the market.

6. Lead Generation

   Social media monitoring can help identify potential leads and sales opportunities. By monitoring relevant conversations and keywords, businesses can identify individuals who are actively looking for products or services they offer. This allows them to engage with prospects, provide helpful information, and convert leads into customers.

16 Best Social Media Monitoring Tools for Brands and Agencies

1. Social Champ

   Social Champ is a powerful social media management tool with cutting-edge scheduling and monitoring capabilities. With Social Champ, users can monitor their social media accounts across multiple platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Mastodon, YouTube, Google Business Profile, TikTok, and Pinterest.

   Social Champ also offers an efficient “Monitoring Analysis” feature that allows users to monitor their performance and generate comprehensive PDF/PPT reports with graphs for clients and stakeholders.

   Moreover, users can evaluate top-performing posts and repost them directly from the dashboard. The best part, Social Champ can also help you track the number of times your brand was mentioned on a specific social channel.

   In addition to its monitoring capabilities, Social Champ offers various other scheduling features, including a Social Media Calendar for post-scheduling, content curation with AI Champ Suite, Content Suggestions and Auto RSS, a Social Inbox to manage conversations, Bulk Upload, Best Time to Post,  instant Reels, Shorts  & Twitter Thread scheduling, preview for Insta Grid with drag and drop functionality and advanced Team Collaboration feature. This makes it a comprehensive solution for businesses and individuals looking to streamline their social media management and get the most out of their online presence.

   Hence, Social Champ is an excellent option for anyone looking for a powerful and user-friendly social media monitoring tool supporting all the mainstream platforms tha with an exclusive  FREE plan.

   Pricing

   The pricing starts at $29 per month.

2. KeyHole

   Next on our list of social media monitoring tools is KeyHole, a rising tool for social media monitoring analytics. The tool helps business managers measure profile analytics and improve their strategy for better results. It also allows users to know what their competitors are up to and adjust their marketing tactics to stand out among all.

   Moreover,  you can also get an insight into the real-time performance of your campaign, including engagement and key metrics, and evaluate wins and failures quickly. However, a significant pain point of using this tool is its expensive pricing plans that small businesses and individuals can not generally afford.

   Pricing

   The pricing starts at $99 per month.

3. Cyfe

   Cyfe is another social media monitoring dashboard that offers business owners various social media management features to elevate their social media presence. This tool lets users create a dashboard where they can integrate pre-populated widgets of Google Analytics, Facebook Analytics, SERP, Moz, Twitter, etc, and visualize data for analysis.

   Hence, you can easily monitor all the social media analytics, reviews, essential performance, etc, within any dashboard of your choice.

   Pricing

   The pricing starts at $19 per month.

4. Digimind Social

   Another tool from our picks of social media monitoring tools is Digimind Social. This tool offers various business monitoring features, such as campaign analysis, to keep track of the overall progress of your efforts and identify any areas of improvement. You can also identify your best-performing campaign and replicate it bigger and better.

   You can also make use of their Top Reputation module to analyze your social media presence and upgrade your social media strategy accordingly.

   Pricing

   N/A

5. Agorapulse

   Rising among the monitoring social media tools is Agorapulse, an all-rounder social media platform equipped with diverse features for monitoring, publishing, reporting, and managing conversations.

   This tool ensures a captivating social media monitoring workflow by allowing you to know what content performs best where and when. You can also create custom reports across multiple social profiles, compare time periods, and set automatically scheduled reports to your email. However, the tool offers a FREE plan but advanced features can also be accessed within the pricing plans that are quite heavy on the pocket and can cost you loads.

   Pricing

   The pricing starts at $69 per month. It also has a FREE plan.

6. Synthesio

   Synthesio is a credible AI-enabled consumer intelligence platform among useful social media monitoring tools. The tool is capable of allowing users to explore the market by tracking consumer behavior and competitors in real time. Its uniqueness lies in the fact that it leverages AI technology to detect patterns and identify leads for innovation.

   Furthermore, you can also learn about the audience’s persona and what they like or dislike about your brand with Synthesio by your side. However, it is only centered on social media monitoring activities. Hence, if you are looking for other scheduling or curation features, you might need another tool to automate these tasks.

   Pricing

   N/A

7. Sendible

   Next, in turn, Sendible is a social media monitoring tool tailored for social media management activities. The tool offers features for monitoring and analyzing brands, competitors, and industry-related keywords, allowing users to respond promptly to comments and messages.

   Moreover, publishing content on social media platforms, collaborating and approving social media posts, and monitoring analytics can also be done using Sendible.

   Pricing

   The pricing starts at $29 per month.

8. Iconosquare

   Another considerable option among social media monitoring tools is Iconosquare. It allows users to monitor their progress and social status on the digital landscape with the help of its social analytics features. You can monitor the performance of your brand with its easy-to-understand metrics.

   Moreover, after executing a thorough analysis of your performance, you can generate reports and export them for your record. However, Iconosquare supports monitoring five social media platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and TikTok. Hence, if your business marketing strategy involves any other platforms, this limitation can prove to be a major pain point.

   Pricing

   The pricing starts at €59 per month.

9. Tailwind

   Tailwind is another social media monitoring tool that supports extensive monitoring and tracking for Pinterest. It allows business managers to monitor all pinning activity from their site, track how users share their content, and discover conversations about their brand happening across the platform.

   Moreover, the tool also tracks which images are grabbing the most highlight and where the most useful conversations are happening so that you can create marketing campaigns accordingly. However, since Tailwind, you need another monitoring tool to support the rest of the platforms.

   Pricing

   The pricing starts at $19.99 per month. It also offers a free plan.

10. Brandwatch

    Next on the list is Brandwatch, a social media management suite with monitoring features. The tool allows businesses to collect relevant instances and conversations with the brand and strategize their marketing moves accordingly. In addition, you can also monitor your brand across a million resources and adapt the best techniques to grow ahead of your customers.

    However, you might find Brandwatch’s user interface a bit complicated and difficult to understand, with a lot of features scattered here and there.

    Pricing

    N/A

11. Talkwalker

    Talkwalker is one of the rising free social media monitoring tools allowing users to monitor every conversation related to their brand, along with tracking hashtags and competition on social media.

    Additionally, this tool also possesses the ability to track trending topics and hashtags in real time. This helps businesses stay on top of the latest social media trends and identify opportunities to join in relevant conversations.

    Pricing

    The tool is free to use.

12. Atribus

    Atribus is a social media monitoring SAAS tool. It allows users to identify trends and your audience’s relationship with the brand. You can easily monitor and compare your profiles with your competitors to make informed decisions accordingly.

    The tool also offers extended features for market research purposes. Using this Atribus, you can easily discover your audience’s persona in the digital ecosystem and make adjustments to your tactics.

    Pricing

    NA

13. Meltwater

    Meltwater is another social media monitoring tool that is capable of providing efficient monitoring and analysis tracking to users. It offers a media intelligence suite that has key features of spike detection, sentiment analysis, and social echo. Using this tool, you can easily analyze where the performance of your brand is heading and which are the areas that need any improvement.

    Moreover, you can also create automated reports generated by the tool in order to get a clear picture of your best-perfroming content and performance across your owned social media platforms.

    Pricing

    NA

14. Reputation

    Another competent option among the best social media monitoring tools is Reputation, an online platform allowing users to monitor insights and oversee performance across all channels.

    The tool offers users a customizable analytics dashboard in order to access data across all social media platforms, and identify top-performing content and the best time to post. You can also track engagement metrics and follower counts to know in-depth about the reach.

    Pricing

    NA

15. Zoho Social

    Zoho Social is another diligent social media monitoring tool with advanced analytics and monitoring features. You can view engagement metrics and the best time for posting across five social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google Business Profile.

    Moreover, the tool also allows you to create custom reports based on the analytics of each social media channel. You can set your preferred date ranges and automate and schedule them to go out automatically to be shared with your team and stakeholders.

    Pricing

    The pricing starts at $15 for businesses and $320 for agencies.

16. Awario

    Last on our list of notable social media monitoring tools is Awario. The tool is in-built with a powerful analytics feature that allows users to analyze how their social media strategy is performing so far. You can easily view the big picture of all your social media efforts using this tool.

    Pricing

    The pricing starts at $39 per month.

    Related article: 17 Social Media Analytics Tools for Instant Results in 2023

Tips for Effective Social Media Monitoring

With the best social media monitoring tool by your side, here are a few tips that can help you use these tools most effectively.

1. Monitor in Different Languages Relevant to Your Audience

   It is important to monitor conversations in all languages that your target audience speaks. This tip will help you get a complete picture of what people say about your brand or industry on social media, ensuring that you don’t miss out on important discussions.

2. Identify Relevant People for Partnerships

   Identifying relevant influencers or other key people in your industry can help you expand your reach on social media and build partnerships that can be mutually beneficial. Monitor social media conversations to identify those who are influential in your industry and engage with them on social media to build relationships.

3. Monitor Using a Keyword Strategy

   Using a keyword strategy when monitoring social media is important to ensure you capture all relevant conversations. This means identifying key terms and phrases related to your brand or industry and monitoring for mentions of those keywords on social media platforms.

4. Get Notified in Case of Unusual Activity

   To stay on top of any potential issues or opportunities on social media, set up notifications to alert you in case of unusual activity. This might include sudden spikes in negative sentiment or an increase in mentions of your brand on a particular social media platform.

5. Share Your Results

   To keep your team or clients informed and aligned on social media goals, be sure to share your monitoring results. This can help everyone understand what’s working and what’s not and can inform decisions about future social media strategies.

Choose Your Ideal Tool!

In conclusion, social media monitoring tools have become essential for businesses to manage their online reputation and stay competitive in today’s digital landscape. There is literally a lot that a social media monitoring tool can do for you in terms of time-saving and task automation.

As a business manager, you must remember that the key to effective social media monitoring lies in selecting the right tool for your business needs. A variety of options are available, each with its own features and benefits. When evaluating different tools, your choice should be based on factors like budget, platform integrations, and analytics capabilities.

Frequently Asked Questions