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There are some things you need to carefully consider when choosing something as important as which social listening tool you use for monitoring your brand.
First of all, you should consider what kind of data you need and whether the platforms you are looking at will give that to you. For example, are you only looking for brand mentions or do you want to see how many impressions and engagement these brand mentions have received? Secondly, you should consider the kind of information the tools are capable of analyzing. Some tools only analyze text, however, as we’ve mentioned here before, social listening tools should provide a visual analysis if you are expecting to get a full picture (pun intended) of where and how your brand is being represented. Finally, you should consider the customer experience you’re likely to receive; something we often don’t think about until it’s too late!
Sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? Fear not! We have done some of the groundwork for you as we take a look at eleven of the best social listening tools.
1. Brandwatch
Brandwatch is more than just a social listening tool, it is a consumer intelligence platform.
It’s ever-evolving AI analyst, Iris, takes the labour out of social media monitoring by automatically bringing insights to the surface, saving its users a great deal of time. This, combined with auto-segmentation and the ability to analyse images gives Brandwatch a sizeable edge on many of its competitors. Considering that more and more of the content social media users post is visual-only, this image analysis is a big deal!
With Brandwatch, you are not just being given a feed with mentions of your brand to trawl through yourself, you are presented with helpful and insightful data that can help you craft your next big campaign, and even your brand messaging going forward. At the click of a button, you can have all the data you need to fully understand how people are not just talking about your brand, but how they are displaying it too.
Best for:
Brand Managers
Market Researchers
2. NetBase Quid
Consumer and Market intelligence platform NetBase Quid offers a variety of products, including a Social Listening tool. With historical and real-time social media analysis, their AI-driven platform gives insights into any topic or brand you wish to track.
Like Brandwatch, using NetBase Quid’s social tool takes the leg work out of gathering social data, whether for brand management or market research, meaning users can focus on the tasks that really matter. In an instant, this platform can uncover consumer insights, help to identify consumer trends and help the user to understand brand perception.
Best for:
Market Researchers
Marketing Professionals
Be Sure To Also Read ->Brand Monitoring Use Case Overview
3. Sprinklr
Although Sprinklr is billed as a Customer Experience platform on their homepage that offers a multitude of programs for marketers and customer success managers alike, among their most powerful products is “Modern Engagement”. This social listening tool is one of the most comprehensive available, giving users the ability to track 35 channels.
From one platform, you can monitor influencers, manage 1-to-1 relationships on social in person or using AI, analyse content trends, gather user-generated content featuring the brands you manage and so much more; as if all that wasn’t enough. On top of these features, Sprinklr users can create customized reporting dashboards, create presentation decks and monitor brand mentions and performance on social media. It’s a social media manager’s dream!
Best for:
Marketing Professionals
Customer Engagement Managers
4. Talkwalker
Another leader on the Forrester Wave, Talkwalker is widely celebrated, and awarded, as one of the most comprehensive social listening tools available. With its AI engine that not only analyses text but also images and video, the level of insights that users can get is incredible.
Talkwalker claims to save its users 40% of their time by automatically creating and distributing reports, which will be music to any communication professional’s ears!
Best for:
PR and Communications Professionals
Digital Marketing professionals
5. Digimind
Digimind is a social listening and market intelligence platform that enables users to understand and manage their brand reputation, identify influencers in their industry, gain consumer intelligence and much more. Through their AI-Powered social listening tool users are able to monitor, analyse and engage with social media posts that mention or reference the brands they manage. It also allows users to monitor the performance of their own content on various platforms, meaning you have a one-stop-location for all your social media management needs.
Not enough to sell it to you? Digimind also integrates with Zoho, Qualtrics, Salesforce and Pardot, so you can track your campaign performance right down to which leads it is generating. We don’t need to tell you how powerful that kind of integration can be when it comes to campaign intelligence.
Best for:
Brand Managers
Social Media Managers
6. Synthesio
Synthesio is, strictly speaking, a consumer intelligence and market research platform. An important part of their package is their social listening tool. Their social intelligence suite includes clean data which enables decision making, the ability to track and analyze brand sentiment on social media and trend detection. It truly is an intelligent tool, empowered by AI technology for smart and fast insights.
Best for:
Market Researchers
Digital Marketers
7. Linkfluence
Linkfluence has the full package when it comes to social listening, thanks to its use of machine learning and AI. Their Radarly and Search tools helps users monitor and manage their brand reputation online, track brand equity, spot trends, discover relevant influencers and report on campaign performance. They also offer
This platform has all you need for monitoring social media and understanding brand perception.
Best For:
Social Media Managers
Digital Marketing Managers
8. Meltwater
Meltwater is a well-regarded media monitoring and social listening tool that helps users monitor and understand consumers, enabling them to gather the data necessary to craft effective campaigns.
According to Meltwater, this platform solves problems faced by PR, communications and marketing professionals and data scientists working for brands, all powered by AI and Machine Learning. Combining social listening with social media monitoring, this is quite a powerful tool. Users can schedule social media, analyze brand sentiment on 20 different social channels and benchmark competitors. It’s one of the slickest looking platforms with a very intuitive user experience.
Best for:
PR and Communications professionals
Brand Data Analysts
9. Zignal Labs
Zignal is a slightly more complex system which might be better suited for data analysts and scientists, rather than comms and marketing managers. Providing data suited to the financial industry, sports, pharma and more, this platform delivers the kind of intelligence that can give a holistic understanding of a brand’s ideal customer, how their campaigns are performing and what their target audiences are talking about.
While it’s not strictly a social listening tool, its social media analysis solutions are quite impressive. If a user opts for their enterprise solution, they will have access to a platform that uses AI and Machine learning to mine social and broadcast media for signals relating to their brand and industry. It gives an excellent overview, scoring sentiment, consolidating media data, gauging news-making efforts and delivering simple but insightful reports.
Best for:
Brand Data Analysts
10. ListenFirst
ListenFirst was ranked as a contender by Forrester with good reason. This social media analytics platform is a great tool for brand and marketing managers who want to get simple insights into how their brands are being received and represented online. It provides useful insights, such as sentiment analysis as well as audience, campaign and influencer insights. While it may not be as comprehensive as some as the other platforms listed here, but it’s an excellent addition to any marketing management suite.
Best for:
Social Media Managers
11. Conviva
Conviva’s platform stands out from other social analytics solutions as they measure both social mediaandstreaming video content on your own apps and sites. Working with almost any organization that you wouldassociate the word ‘streaming’ with, they provide streaming video and social media analytics to help marketers increase engagement, acquire more viewers, measure their benchmark against competitors and optimize their business strategy.
Conviva’s Social Leaderboards provides robust public data set in social – Conviva measures every social post, image and video published by more than 50K public social media accounts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube across a number of categories including news, media, entertainment, sports, television, brands, athletes and public figures.Users can create lists and search for terms mentioning their brand, keyword topics, keywords, emojis and more to surface trends and measure public engagement.
Best for:
Content streaming platforms
Ad managers
Advertisement and market researchers
Other social listening tools
If you haven’t got the budget for a comprehensive social listening tool these alternative platforms can be almost as useful. While they don’t analyse images and have very limited features, they are free and will give you the bare minimum until you’re at a place where you’re budget allows for one of the ten social listening tools listed above.
Be Sure To Also Read ->Brand Monitoring Use Case Overview
If this list of top social listening platforms tells us anything, it’s that machine learning and AI, especially Visual-AI are the key things to look out for when choosing your social listening tool. With AI and machine learning, these social listening tools have the intuitive ability to mine channels for trends, influencer impact, mentions and so much more. What’s more is, these platforms gather and report the data so you, the user, don’t have to trawl through posts yourself, saving you hours and reducing the risk of missing important data. When it comes to renewing your media monitoring tool this year, be sure to check that it utilises AI and machine learning so that you are truly getting your budget’s worth.
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FAQs
How can I get free social listening? ›
- Followerwonk. Followerwonk is a free social listening tool and Twitter analytics tool used to find, analyze, and optimize for social growth. ...
- TweetDeck. ...
- Answer the Public. ...
- Hootsuite. ...
- Social Mention. ...
- Owler. ...
- Brandwatch. ...
- BuzzSumo.
A social media listening tool is a software that monitors and analyzes online conversations about your brand, a specific topic, your competitors or anything else that's relevant to your company. It pulls in mentions of specified keywords and helps marketers analyze these mentions.
What is social listening example? ›Social media listening helps you better understand what your audience wants from your brand. For example, an existing customer might tweet about how much they love your product. Or you might spot a conversation where people are looking for solutions your product or service could provide.
How much does a social listening tool cost? ›The pricing starts at $49/mo for the Small plan, which comes with 3 social media profiles and a single user. Large is their most popular option at $199/mo, with 25 profiles to manage and 6 users. Agorapulse's Enterprise solution is $299/mo with 40 profiles and 12 users.
Who uses social listening tools? ›- Customer requests, questions, and concerns: 86% (of businesses surveyed)
- Competition: 77%
- Brands and products: 75%
- Industry terms and trends: 61%
- Industry/brand influencers: 60%
- Company's name: 55%
- Company's executives: 44%
In other words, we could sum it up like this: social monitoring is about collecting the data, while social listening is about using it to inform your broader strategy and approach to business.
What is Zanroo? ›Zanroo is a Data Technology company which focuses on utilizing online, offline and real time data to overcome and enhance as well as strengthen the human engagement. Year by year, human and machine continue to generate a wealth of data.
What can Talkwalker track? ›Data created by consumers - comments, sentiment, likes, shares, retweets, etc. Data that'll help you target your social media marketing campaigns to big wins.
What is the 80 20 rule in social media? ›The 80/20 rule indicates that 80% of social media posts should be useful to your audience — meaning, it educates, entertains, or offers a solution to their problems — and only 20% should explicitly promote your business.
What are social listening strategies? ›A social listening strategy takes social monitoring a step further to gain a better understanding of brand-centric conversations on social networks. Social monitoring is a tactical, reactive technique, whereas social listening includes the analysis and insights needed to develop a social marketing strategy.
How do you start a social listening strategy? ›
- Understand the Value of Social Listening. ...
- Identify Goals. ...
- Choose the Best Channels. ...
- Use A Social Listening Tool. ...
- Create An Engagement Plan. ...
- Measure Results. ...
- Apply What You Learn.
Social listening is a two-step process: Step One: Track social media platforms for mentions of your brand, products, services, competitors, and keywords related to your business. Step Two: Analyze the data to gain insights and act on opportunities (or threats).
What is social listening answer? ›Social listening is the monitoring of your brand's social media channels for any customer feedback and direct mentions of your brand or discussions regarding specific keywords, topics, competitors, or industries, followed by an analysis to gain insights and act on those opportunities.
What is social listening sprinklr? ›Sprinklr's AI-powered social listening tool translates real-time, voice-of-the-customer data into actionable insights you can share across your organization to drive innovation, all on one unified platform.
Does buffer do social listening? ›To get started with social listening, choose a few brands (including your own) or keyword phrases that you want to listen to. Are you looking for customer service opportunities? Are you looking to identify influencers? Do you have a phrase or hashtag that you'd like to watch?
What is social listening in digital marketing? ›Social listening refers to analyzing the conversations and trends happening not just around your brand, but around your industry as a whole, and using those insights to make better marketing decisions.
What are the main limitations of social listening? ›- Failure to consider context.
- Limited access to some platforms.
- Requires extensive cleanup.
- Inability to interpret data into meaningful insights.
- Diving deeper into social listening data.
...
Once logged into Zapier, select Make a Zap.
- Step 2: Twitter Scrape. ...
- Step 3: Google Sheets Input. ...
- Step 4: Finishing Up.
Facebook social listening can be used for more than finding what people are saying about you. You can actually tune in to learn about what they have to say about your competitors as well. This insight can help you identify gaps in your offerings and where you fit in the marketplace.
What is social monitoring strategy? ›What is social media monitoring? Social media monitoring entails keeping an eye on your brand's mentions online and responding to any engagement around it. It's an immediately reactive strategy and pertains to all kinds of talk about your brand: reviews, product questions and even service repair complaints.
What is a social media monitoring tool? ›
Social media monitoring means tracking hashtags, keywords, and mentions relevant to your brand in order to stay informed about your audience and industry. By monitoring this data, you're doing research that is both quantitative (metrics and analytics) and qualitative (inspiration for posts and strategies).
How can social media listening increase customer advocacy? ›It helps you understand your customers better, which will help you create a better customer experience and develop more content that speaks to them. It gives you an opportunity to respond quickly and build trust with your customers by showing them that you're listening and care about their needs and concerns.
What kind of tool is Talkwalker? ›Talkwalker is a social media management tool that's laser focused on tracking a brand's global online reputation and sentiment through online, social, print, TV, and radio. The tool generates actionable insights and competitive metrics.
What is crowd tangle? ›CrowdTangle helps publishers identify great stories, measure social performance, and identify influencers. It's used by newspapers, television stations, digital media outlets, investigative journalists, entertainment companies, sports teams and nonprofits all over the world.
What is Talkwalker used for? ›"Our intensive use of Talkwalker allows us to collect & analyze real-time information in order to better monitor, engage & amplify social conversations around brands, markets, products or influencers. With all these information we help customers to make strategic live decisions."
What is the 4 1 rule? ›This rule says that for every six posts you create on your social media channels, four posts should entertain or educate, one post should be a “soft sell” and one post should be a “hard sell.” Let's take a closer look at how you might use the 4-1-1 rule.
What is the best time to post on Facebook for maximum exposure? ›The best time to post to Facebook is between 1pm – 3pm on during the week and Saturdays. However, other studies uncovered that the best time to post to Facebook is: Thursdays and Fridays from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. are the best times to post on Facebook [Hubspot] Thursday at 8 p.m. [TrackMaven]
What is the social media rule of thirds? ›Generally speaking, social media accounts want to abide by the rules of thirds: 1/3 promoting your product or services, 1/3 interacting with others, and 1/3 sharing industry news and tips you believe your followers could benefit from. It sounds simple, because that's exactly how it should be.
Which is the biggest social media app now? ›With nearly 3 billion monthly users, Facebook is inarguably the largest and most popular social media platform in the world.
What are the 6 type of social media? ›What Are the 6 Types of Social Media? The six types of social media, though this can be broken down in many ways, include social networking, bookmarking, social news, media sharing, microblogging, and online forum sites.
What are the 7 functions of social media? ›
In "Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media", researchers provide a framework that defines social media, which includes seven functional social media building blocks: identity, conversations, sharing, presence, relationships, reputation, and groups.
What is social listening brandwatch? ›What is social listening? Social listening is the process of monitoring online conversations and collecting data from social platforms and forums on a chosen topic. This could be a brand, an industry, or anything at all.
What are the benefits of social listening? ›- Discover key consumer insights & market trends. ...
- Design targeted campaigns. ...
- Track brand awareness and reputation. ...
- Develop an authentic, personalized brand experience. ...
- Conceive new product/service ideas. ...
- Leverage social influencer marketing.
Social media monitoring identifies brand mentions on a micro scale, while social media listening occurs on a macro scale to see how customers are talking about your brand, products, and industry — including competitors.
Does hootsuite have social listening? ›Hootsuite's Streams offer an easy way to engage with your audience, and keep track of social activities happening across all your social channels. In one place, you monitor things like conversations, mentions, keywords, and hashtags -- and respond right away, rather than visiting all your social profiles individually.
What is the role of listening in online and digital media? ›Social Media Listening is mostly concerned with customer-generated media which has revolutionized the digital industry. Benefit of Social listening is that it helps to know what customers are saying about your brand and its products at all times.
How can social listening helps a marketer? ›Social listening can help you collect loads of data about your brand's footprint. Not only can it help you make more informed decisions about marketing your brand and your products in the future, but you can also use this data to understand your customers, industry, and competitors better.
What is brandwatch tool? ›Brandwatch is a social media analytic tool that tracks billions of conversations happening online everyday, including blogs, news, forums, videos, twitter, reviews, image, Facebook…etc., and allow brands and companies to understand consumer insights, trends, influencers, and brand perception.
What is Instagram listening? ›Instagram listening is the process of tracking conversations related to your brand. This includes industry keywords, competitors, trends and hashtags. These conversations are invaluable to your social media content and engagement strategies.
What is an accurate description of social listening tools? ›What is a Social Listening Tool? A software application used to collect social media data including (but not limited to) social mentions, hashtags, keywords, images and urls.
What is social listening report? ›
A social listening report will help your team keep pace with online conversations and pay attention to customer questions, comments, complaints, and demographics. It's a simple way to boost customer engagement while building a more positive brand sentiment.
Does HubSpot do social listening? ›HubSpot Social Media Management Software
With HubSpot, you have the power to easily monitor interactions, conversations, and audiences on social media.
- Join relevant and active groups. Be on trend and learn which groups are out there. ...
- Build up your reputation. ...
- Create a customer persona profile. ...
- Follow your industry leaders. ...
- Follow influencers in your industry niche.
All Ears unique technology gives you the opportunity to track and analyze all social media channels (including TikTok) and podcasts. You will receive instant alerts when you, your competitors or anything else of interest is mentioned.
Does hootsuite have social listening? ›Hootsuite's Streams offer an easy way to engage with your audience, and keep track of social activities happening across all your social channels. In one place, you monitor things like conversations, mentions, keywords, and hashtags -- and respond right away, rather than visiting all your social profiles individually.
How do you conduct social listening? ›- Understand the audience. Learn which buyer personas are attracted to a brand and its products and services. ...
- Determine what to listen for. ...
- Use keywords to find data. ...
- Use a social listening tool. ...
- Develop a strategy.
Sprinklr's AI-powered social listening tool translates real-time, voice-of-the-customer data into actionable insights you can share across your organization to drive innovation, all on one unified platform.
Who is Molly from Allears net? ›Molly McCormack is a fairly prominent Disney influencer who has amassed a following of more than 50,000 people on Instagram. She used to work in Guest Relations at Disney World, and then devoted her time to reviewing and touring various aspects for Disney World for All Ears.
Does HubSpot do social listening? ›HubSpot Social Media Management Software
With HubSpot, you have the power to easily monitor interactions, conversations, and audiences on social media.
Brandwatch is a social media analytic tool that tracks billions of conversations happening online everyday, including blogs, news, forums, videos, twitter, reviews, image, Facebook…etc., and allow brands and companies to understand consumer insights, trends, influencers, and brand perception.
What is Talkwalker used for? ›
"Our intensive use of Talkwalker allows us to collect & analyze real-time information in order to better monitor, engage & amplify social conversations around brands, markets, products or influencers. With all these information we help customers to make strategic live decisions."
How do you develop social listening tools? ›...
Once logged into Zapier, select Make a Zap.
- Step 2: Twitter Scrape. ...
- Step 3: Google Sheets Input. ...
- Step 4: Finishing Up.
Many social listening tools, including Awario, offer sentiment analytics. Essentially, the tool uses language processing algorithms (NLP) to determine whether a social post expresses positive, negative or neutral emotions and then aggregates all this data to show the overall sentiment around your brand and products.
What is the difference between social monitoring and social listening? ›Social media monitoring identifies brand mentions on a micro scale, while social media listening occurs on a macro scale to see how customers are talking about your brand, products, and industry — including competitors.
What is a social media monitoring tool? ›Social media monitoring means tracking hashtags, keywords, and mentions relevant to your brand in order to stay informed about your audience and industry. By monitoring this data, you're doing research that is both quantitative (metrics and analytics) and qualitative (inspiration for posts and strategies).
What's the difference between social listening and Social Monitoring HubSpot? ›Social media monitoring is the reaction to what your customers are already saying, whereas social listening is a proactive approach to creating long-term solutions based on your customers' shared insights.
What kind of tool is sprinklr? ›Sprinklr is a cloud-based customer experience management solution designed for businesses of all sizes. It offers social experience core, content marketing, social media management, paid advertising, website management (first-party experience), and social listening functionalities within a suite.