Picture this: You’re in 2015. As a marketer, you’re reaching out to customers with feedback forms or organizing meetings to interview them and find the gaps in your product/service.
Your customers hate completing surveys, and getting honest feedback via asynchronous online conversations in formal settings is challenging.
Fast forward to today, and the same is true for most brands.
Now, customers vent their emotions and share product feedback on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram through stories, tweets, or comments. Is there a way to streamline gathering customer feedback based on social conversions?
With billions of conversations happening on social media, marketers look at social listening tools to gather customer intelligence, spot trends and relevant conversations, and respond to customer queries.
A social media monitoring tool allows brands to monitor conversations related to them or a topic of interest and uncover rich insights for a data-driven social media engagement strategy.
In this article, we share our list of the 10 best social media listening tools to boost your social media strategy.
Top 10 Social Listening Tools to Boost Your Social Strategy in 2024
Summarize this article for me pleaseWhat Should You Look for in Social Media Listening Tools?
Here’s what you should look for in a social listening tool.
- Holistic insights: A social listening tool goes beyond keyword tracking, offers sentiment analysis, identifies key influencers, and surfaces upcoming trends. The best social media management platform ensures you don’t just listen to your audience but truly understand what moves them to craft your social media strategy
- Compatibility with major social media platforms: The brand monitoring tool should be able to monitor conversations on all social media platforms as well as track your brand online over forums, news and review sites, and industry forums
- Sentiment analysis: Choose social listening platforms that can auto-detect customer sentiment and categorize online conversations into positive and negative buckets without any manual input
- Intuitive interface: The web monitoring tool you pick should have customizable layouts, filters, and an easy-to-use interface to make social media listening a breeze
- Robust social media analytics dashboard: Opt for social media listening tools with detailed analytical capabilities such as in-depth reports about marketing OKRs with engagement metrics, brand mentions, and social campaign performance
- Integration capabilities: Seamless integration with your digital marketing apps, including your social media management tool, is a must-have capability for accurate social listening. The social media monitoring tool should integrate with your analytics platforms to create marketing campaigns that are data-driven
- Data security: The social media listening tool should adhere to country and industry-specific privacy laws to maintain the confidentiality and integrity of your customer feedback or social listening data
Summarize this article for me pleaseThe 10 Best Social Listening Tools to Boost Your Social Strategy in 2024
1. Sprout Social
Sprout Social’s social listening tool helps you track conversations about your brand, understand your audience, and identify other influencers in your niche. Sprout’s hashtags and social media monitoring solution, along with sentiment analysis, provides customer, brand monitoring, competitor, and industry insights.
For example, an ed-tech platform would use social listening tools to track social media conversations around its social media promotions around a new course they’ve launched.
The social listening capabilities allow the brand to measure the audience response over social media, trending hashtags, and the overall audience sentiment analysis.
Equipped with a social listening strategy, the brand knows how to boost social media presence and engagement.
Sprout Social best features
- AI Assist recommends alternative replies to enhance the tone of voice or build a more elaborate response as per the comment
- Use SproutLink as your link-in-bio solution to increase traffic to your website or landing pages by including it in your social profiles
- Share your content calendar with external stakeholders, work in collaboration with calendar notes, and interact in real-time with internal conversations
Sprout Social limitations
- Social media accounts get unlinked despite regular usage
- No free trial for first-time users
Sprout Social pricing
- Standard Pricing: $249/month
- Professional: $399/month
- Advanced: $499/month
- Enterprise: Custom pricing
Sprout Social ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.4/5 (2,600+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.4/5 (570 reviews)
Check out these Sprout Social alternatives!
2. Brandwatch
Every minute, there are about 510k comments posted on Facebook, 66k posts made on Instagram, and 575k tweets sent on X! Keeping track of everything said on social media is a brand marketer’s nightmare.
Marketers rely on top social listening tools to analyze all these conversations and gain valuable insights. They use Brandwatch’s social listening platform to manage multiple social media channels in one place by tracking conversations from a database of 1.6 trillion historical conversations and real-time social media monitoring.
Track key social listening metrics such as brand awareness, social sentiment, and social share of voice to boost your social media presence and reputation management across all platforms.
Brandwatch best features
- Segment analysis enables you to categorize your conversation by feedback, complaints, opinions, and more
- Easy-to-use interface with social listening features to manage your organic and paid content across all social channels
- Influencer marketing tool with a database of over 30M creators to run, measure, and report on multichannel influencer marketing campaigns and measure the performance using influence score
- Intuitive in-depth analytics dashboard with competitor analysis tools to understand your performance against your competitors
Brandwatch limitations
- Brandwatch doesn’t allow scheduling the same post across all platforms
- Slow download and dashboard updating time
Brandwatch pricing
- Custom pricing
Brandwatch ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.1/5 (789 reviews)
- Capterra: 4.3/5 (224 reviews)
3. Mention
Mention is a social listening tool that allows you to track more than a billion data sources across the web, including Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, and create and save filters to find what you’re looking for, easily.
One of the best social listening tools, Mention enables brand marketers and digital marketing agencies to conduct in-depth sentiment analysis, track mentions of your brand’s social media mentions or any topic for up to two years, and set up alerts in case of any unusual activity.
Mention best features
- Track whenever you get mentioned to understand brand reputation with real-time alerts with social listening features
- Comprehensive social listening tool with analytics with filters to deep dive into a competitor, brand, product, or industry-level topics
- Schedule detailed reports for different stakeholders to receive them in email periodically
- Engage with your audience across major social media platforms (such as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook) and draft, schedule, and publish posts from multiple channels
Mention limitations
- Does not capture historical data after the creation of a Boolean search
- Misses out on predictive analytics tool
Mention pricing
- Solo: $41/month (billed yearly)
- Pro: $83/month (billed yearly)
- ProPlus: $149/month (billed yearly)
Mention ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.3/5 (439 reviews)
- Capterra: 4.7/5 (286 reviews)
4. Agorapulse
Agorapulse is an alternative to Hootsuite which allows marketers to take full control of their social media management.
With an intuitive publishing interface, social listening tools, and insightful analytics, Agorapulse as a social media management platform ensures you never miss any mentions of your brand, be it from your audience or industry peers.
Agorapulse best features
- Manage your social media, publishing, reporting, social media monitoring, and team collaboration from Agorapulse’s unified social inbox
- Access to Agorapulse social listening tools over the mobile app on Android and iOS
- Project management features to put your publishing workflows in place, share notes, track action items, and assign the content to be approved
Agorapulse limitations
- Inability to export scheduled posts for client sharing
- The character limit is set to 300 characters for LinkedIn posts, while the platform itself allows the use of more characters
Agorapulse pricing
- Standard: $49/user/month (billed annually)
- Professional: $79/user/month (billed annually)
- Advanced: $119/user/month (billed annually)
- Custom solutions as per your business needs
Agorapulse ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.5/5 (919 reviews)
- Capterra: 4.5/5 (706 reviews)
5. Digimind
How easy would your life as a marketer or brand owner be if you could be on top of customer conversations on different social media channels in real-time?
Digimind’s social listening tools provide you with a comprehensive understanding of your audience and your competitors’ social posts.
For example, an online food delivery startup would use social listening tools like Digitmind for their social media marketing teams to monitor social conversations on Facebook and Instagram and create a marketing campaign based on viral trends. This customer data also helps identify gaps in customer experience and expectations.
Digimind best features
- AI-powered engine, AI Sense helps with automated curation and recommended actions for marketers
- Digimind Social Analytics to analyze and benchmark as many social accounts as you want
- The proprietary Top Reputation module enables you to follow what your customers want to know about your brand, products, and those of your competitors
- Create reports using Digimind Social’s predesigned social media templates to evaluate key metrics
Digimind limitations
- The UI is not easy to use and requires training to understand the platform
- The depth of the data isn’t comprehensive
Digimind pricing
- Custom pricing
Digimind ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.6/5 (180 reviews)
- Capterra: Not enough reviews
6. Emplifi
Emplifi’s social listening tools offer content creation and publishing, analytics, UGC, influencer marketing, community management, live commerce, reputation management, and care.
Emplifi best features
- Receive automated alerts for sudden changes and anomalies in social media activity directly in the platform or via email
- Social listening features and a customizable dashboard with dynamic real-time key listening data and consumer insights
- AI tools for automated labelling, sentiment analysis, and advanced routing
Emplifi limitations
- The tool doesn’t capture key metrics such as TikTok views for competitors or IGS swipe-ups
- Cumbersome and frustrating to edit scheduled posts
Emplifi pricing
- Essential: $2400/year (10 profiles)
- Standard: Custom pricing
- Business: Custom pricing
- Enterprise: Custom pricing
Emplifi ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.3/5 (202 reviews)
- Capterra: 4.2/5 (38 reviews)
7. YouScan
YouScan is an AI-powered social media listening tool that comes with image recognition technology, helping businesses analyze consumer opinions, discover actionable insights, and manage brand reputation.
Case in point: suppose a skincare company is looking to understand how customers perceive the brand, and traditional research methods aren’t making the cut.
A social listening tool such as YouScan helps the brand get feedback based on social conversations, track untagged mentions, and include user testimonials in their social media promotions for the best results.
YouScan best features
- YouScan’s AI-powered Visual Insights detects logos, objects, scenes, activities, and demographic information on images
- Auto-categorization of incoming mentions and comments into categories such as compliments, praise, or complaints
- Custom tags for segmentation and filters to categorize mentions into categories
- Real-time alerts for spotting potential threats, detecting unwanted product use, and discovering negative visual mentions to protect your brand image
YouScan limitations
- Limited hashtags available in the word cloud view
- Sentiment analysis is not always accurate
YouScan pricing
- Starter: $299/month (billed annually)
- Unlimited plans: Custom pricing
YouScan ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.8/5 (92 reviews)
- Capterra: 4.9/5 (61 reviews)
8. BrandMentions
Have you ever been in a situation where an unhappy customer complains about your brand online, but you do not get notified and hence miss out on addressing the issue?
Social media monitoring tools track brand mentions, even when the customer forgets to track your brand over social media platforms. Especially when an unhappy customer vents out, you need to be on top of your game, and social listening tools like BrandMentions are useful.
BrandMentions searches all the digital corners for mentions of your brand, relevant keywords for your business, and competitor hashtags and keywords to ensure your social media marketing strategy is at the top of the game.
BrandMentions best features
- The social media listening tool tracks mentions across various social media channels, forums, news sites, news, and other web sources, including reviews
- Real-time brand monitoring notifications via email about key mentions and if any fresh link is driving traffic to your site
- Automatic tone detection and negative sentiment analysis for conversations that mention your brand
- Schedule white-labelled reports about mentions of your brand for different stakeholders
BrandMentions limitations
- Unable to track conversations on closed Facebook Groups
- You’ll reach the monthly tracking limits quickly if you don’t set up your keywords properly
BrandMentions pricing
- Growing Business: $79/month (billed annually)
- Company: $249/month (billed annually)
- Enterprise/Agency: $399/month (billed annually)
BrandMentions ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.6/5 (42 reviews)
- Capterra: Not enough reviews
9. Hootsuite
As per a McKinsey report, brands that do not respond to customers on social platforms have a 15 percent higher churn rate when compared to businesses that do respond. You want to be on the winning side. For that, you need a social media listening tool like Hootsuite.
Hootsuite is an all-in-one social media management suite to enable brands to schedule posts across multiple social media channels, manage organic and paid social content, monitor brand mentions, stay on top of customer conversations, track brand mentions, and gain insights– all from one intuitive dashboard.
Hootsuite best features
- Hootsuite’s Streams monitor’s mentions, keywords, and hashtags
- Reply to, save, and like public comments right from the Hootsuite dashboard
- Integrates with the top social listening tools such as Brandwatch and Talkwalker
Hootsuite limitations
- Analytics reporting is not realtime
- There are limits on the number of competitors you can track for each pricing tier
Hootsuite pricing
- Professional: $99/month (billed annually)
- Team: $249/month (billed annually)
- Enterprise: Custom pricing
Hootsuite ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.1/5 (4102 reviews)
- Capterra: 4.3/5 (3620 reviews)
10. BuzzSumo
When posting content on different social media platforms, are you still relying on guesswork to understand what’s resonating with your target audience?
Start discovering trending content ideas in your niche across Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and YouTube, and identify key influencers for your social media strategy with Buzzsumo’s social listening platform.
BuzzSumo is a content marketing software that monitors your competitors and analyzes social media posts, mentions, and industry updates. One of the top social listening tools,
Buzzsumo provides alerts to spot important events that don’t get lost in millions of conversations happening on social media platforms. Filter and study shares, links, and trends to check what type of content resonates with your audience and how to build an edge over your competitors.
BuzzSumo best features
- Track mentions on content feeds related to your industry to understand your users and stay updated with the latest news and trends
- Integration with communication tools like Slack to get alerted for brand or keyword mentions
- Sort stories by Trending Scores to spot upcoming viral trends and act on them. Compare trends by scanning the past five years of content performance data
- Real-time notification alerts to track new links and mentions as they happen
BuzzSumo limitations
- The alerts on the listening tool can get repetitive
- Expensive for small business owners
BuzzSumo pricing
- Content creation: $199/user/month
- PR & Comms: $299/5 users/month
- Suite: $499/10 users/month
- Enterprise: $999/30 users/month
BuzzSumo ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.5/5 (102 reviews)
- Capterra: 4.5/5 (141 reviews)
Summarize this article for me pleaseOther Social Media Management Tools
ClickUp
While social media listening tools focus on social listening and monitoring, ClickUp is a workflow management software for marketing teams that enhances your overall output. ClickUp supports your marketing strategy by helping you manage social media projects, campaigns, and tasks.
Want to keep track of your social media calendar or creative ways to build effective social media campaigns? ClickUp will get the job done.
Use ClickUp to host all your social media promotions and initiatives in one place. This social media management tool allows team members and stakeholders to collaborate in real-time.
Whether you’re brainstorming campaign ideas, building team goals, or working on the new quarter’s content calendar, ClickUp helps at every stage of the process.
Use ClickUp to manage responses to social posts and collect feedback found with social listening tools.
ClickUp best features
- Automate your social media processes with ClickUp’s pre-built social media campaign templates
- Brainstorm content ideas, build your content calendar, and write your social media captions using ClickUp’s AI
- Add priority flags and alert notifications to keep the team posted and updated on changes instantly
- ClickUp’s Social Media Strategy Workflow Template takes away the grunt work of building a social media promotions strategy from ground up
- The Competitive Analysis Whiteboard Template allows you to monitor your competitor’s marketing campaigns and your product satisfaction levels
- Collate social and online data from social media monitoring tools to draw insights
ClickUp limitations
- The free version limits access to advanced features such as ClickUp AI
ClickUp pricing
- Free Forever
- Unlimited: $7/user/month
- Business: $12/user/month
- Enterprise: Custom pricing
ClickUp ratings and reviews
Summarize this article for me pleasePick the Right Social Listening Tools to Boost Your Social Strategy
Choose a social listening tool that allows you to track conversations and monitor brand mentions for all your social media channels in a consolidated dashboard.
ClickUp’s social listening capabilities and social media project management tool have key features such as content templates, AI features, and team collaboration capabilities to enable your social team to manage social media campaigns, projects, and tasks in one place.
From tracking customer feedback and social conversations in real time to creating marketing campaign templates, ClickUp does it all.
The best part is that ClickUp integrates with top social listening tools for data flow between different sources, eliminating the manual work of exporting data across multiple channels.
Instead of juggling between different social listening tools, use ClickUp to manage your social listening and insights projects easily. Plan, manage, track, and collaborate on all your social media strategies on ClickUp with pre-built customizable templates.
Get started on ClickUp for a free trial.
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