Although you can’t use all these social media monitoring tools at once, they’re definitely worth checking out.
What Is It That We Need to Monitor?
In case you’ve spent the last 15 years in a class-5 nuclear shelter with no means of communication and have come out just recently, here’s the main news for you:
- Donald Trump is the President of the USA
- Your neighbor is still a pain in the a*s as he has always been
- A hugely popular TV series about dragons and medieval stuff “Game of Thrones” Season 7 is out now
- the world runs pretty much on social media.
Although not as important and far-reaching as the first three, the latter is of most interest to us.
Everyone and everything is on social networks, and that includes businesses as well. Social media shapes and molds public opinion about anything be it Kim Kardashian or your business.
Investments in social media have the highest ROI around and it’s only a matter of time until we will officially be able to advertise and sell weed through Facebook.
General Public vs. Professional Writers
People are keen to express their opinions on social media commenting on the things they’ve experienced – partly due to the honest intention to share the experience but mostly to get hype and amass as many likes and shares as possible. That is the way the general public is.
There are, however, people who make a living out of writing about products and services – they are called reviewers/bloggers. Some of them do run very respectable blogs with quality content and well-balanced opinions.
Both general public and professional writers can make a difference for your online business if they mention it properly. And – who knows? – they might actually be doing it right now unbeknownst to you.
Why Should Businesses Care About the Way They’re Mentioned on the Social Media?
Every mention means an extra point to or off the reputation. If someone says something good about your business, it’s being promoted – subtly, but nevertheless. If someone talks sh*t about your brand, it can definitely hurt its reputation (initial reaction) and can point you in the right direction for improvement (afterthought).
But most importantly, these mentions can help you come up with ideas on further brand development and marketing opportunities. As I’ve mentioned in the previous article called “What Are Brand Mentions and What Do They Mean for Your Business?”, there are three main benefits of uncovering brand mentions online:
- An opportunity to build reputation online
- An excellent way of getting honest customer feedback
- A perfect way to understand your customer experience
Therefore, the more mentions you track and read the better off your business will be. To get those, you need to monitor social media.
What Does It Mean – “To Monitor Social Media”?
Monitoring social media doesn’t mean you should spend countless hours on Facebook or Instagram browsing people’s feeds and scrolling through pages.
Social media monitoring (aka social listening) is the process of tracking online conversations and other content matching certain URLs, keywords, or other instances of online mentions.
This process can be heavily simplified and enhanced if proper tools are used – like the one that we’re going to list below.
Before we actually do that, take a look at this nice piece of infographics courtesy of KISSMetrics. It provides a great glimpse into what’s going on in the world of social media management and monitoring.
Top 15 Social Media Monitoring Tools
This is the best of what the Internet has to offer you as of 2017.
1. HootSuite
One of the most popular tools out there, HootSuite allows you to monitor and post to multiple social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.
Custom reports, brand sentiment tracking, and follower growth data are also featured. You can integrate Facebook Insights and Google analytics to get even more possibilities with this one.
2. Social Mention
Social Mention is a real-time social media search and analysis tool that allows you to search for your brand mentions across blogs, microblogs, bookmarks, images, videos, and questions.
That’s one extremely helpful service.
3. Reddit Keyword Monitor Pro
Just so you know, Reddit is one of the Top-10 Most Visited Websites in the World with over 114.5 million unique views monthly, according to the Alexa rank.
Ignoring the Internet’s busiest “front page” would be a shame for your business.
4. Streamview for Instagram
Another tool developed by HootSuite team, Streamview allows you to monitor posts on Instagram by location, hashtags, or username – to see what impact your brand makes on Instagram, especially after a proper marketing campaign or a presentation or a public event.
5. Klout
A tool that measures influence on Twitter to identify the biggest influencers at a given moment by analyzing the content.
Must-have for those who have an account on Twitter.
6. Keyhole
A nifty tool that tracks hashtags, mentions, accounts, and URLs online in real-time across two platforms – Instagram and Twitter.
7. Brandwatch
A highly respectable and powerful tool that allows social listening and collecting data from 80 million sources all across the Internet.
Unlike some other entries on this list, Brandwatch is not limited to social networks only as it searches through blogs, forums, review websites, and news portals.
A special touch – you can set up notifications and get one every time your search item is mentioned.
8. Buzzsumo
Although not strictly a social media monitoring tool, Buzzsumo focuses on content and provides reports on what content is performing best at the moment for any given topic.
I would definitely recommend this for anyone who has or about to have a blog. Buzzsumo will always show you what is hot currently – must-have if you want to capitalize on trending topics.
9. Digimind
That’s a serious toll right there. Digimind allows you to track keywords from major news websites and social media in real-time.
It also measures sentiment – to give you an idea of what kind of reception your brand is getting out there: positive, neutral, or negative.
10. Howsociable
Quite an unusual tool, Howsociable helps its users to measure something they call «magnitude score» as applied to a keyword – on a scale from 0 to 10, across the most popular websites and forums including Reddit and 4chan.
11. Mention
A social media monitoring tool with a name that could be more appropriate. In fact, this might one of the best universal monitoring tools as it allows online tracking of brand mentions on all major social media platforms.
Not only that but it also has the functionality that makes it possible to interact with posts that contain the tracked keywords and assign the posts to various members of your team.
A well-rounded and balanced tool that is highly versatile and multi-functional. Probably, one of the best out there.
12. Falcon.io
This mighty tool helps businesses to keep a balanced, consistent brand presence across all social media platforms, including Instagram.
Among the functionality features are:
- simultaneous publishing across various social media accounts
- social listening
- rich analytics tools and data analysis
Worth checking out if you’re striving to be equally present on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
13. Boardreader
Quite a specific tool, Boardreader, as the name suggests, allows its users – businesses – to find out what people are saying about their brand on various message boards.
Yes, it’s not exactly a social media monitoring tool but helpful nonetheless and very easy to use.
14. Sysomos
Apart from having a cool name, this service scans all major media platforms as well as blogs and news portals to track your brand mentions.
However, where it got me was «hearbeat» dashboard that shows up to 2 years of historical data, which may prove quite useful at times.
15. Talkwalker
Another well-rounded and universal platform for social media monitoring.
In addition to what you’d already expect from a tool like that, Talkwalker also measures the «share of voice» – a metric that shows how much a brand is contributing to online discussions about a given set of keywords.
Conclusion
Thanks for making it to the end of the «Top 15 Effective Social Media Monitoring Tools to Track Your Brand» list. I hope it was a useful read.
The right thing to do would be share this article with your friends on the social networks – just click on one of the icons of social media, it’s that easy.
If you have further questions on the subject, please write them in comments – I’ll be glad to answer.
If you’re interested in more good stuff, there’s always some on my blog:
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