27 Essential Social Media Monitoring Tools for 2024!

Social media monitoring tools are an essential element of your social media marketing strategy.

Adopting a social media strategy allows your brand to meet its audience in its comfort zone.

It also means customers, brand advocates, and audiences can follow and engage with your brand as they deem fit.

These exchanges occur in real time across different platforms.

So, it’s essential to set up a social media monitoring tool that ensures you stay on top of these conversations.

In this piece, we share our top picks for social media monitoring tools to think of as you plan your digital marketing.

But before that, let’s get some basics down.

What is Social Media Monitoring?

Social media monitoring is the process of following, engaging with, and planning conversations around important brand awareness keywords on different platforms.

Social media makes it easy for brands to monitor conversations around keywords relevant to their product or business.

These tools take this functionality further by allowing users to track those conversations on one convenient social media monitoring platform.

When finding the best social media monitoring tools, the key things to look out for are flexible features.

These features allow your social media team to set and follow keyword activity, track brand sentiment, and overall social content performance.

Social Media Monitoring Tools

☝️Pricing plans are listed in monthly pricing (unless otherwise noted); most tools offer a discount if billed annually.

1. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a social media management tool for planning, scheduling, and monitoring social media performance and task management.

Key features:

• Create and schedule social media posts
• Track and respond to incoming messages
• “Streams” for following conversations
• Social media analytics
• Create and assign tasks
• Allows integrations with 3rd party apps

Supported platforms:

Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, and Pinterest.

Price:

Pricing plans are based on annual billing.

• Professional: $99/month
• Team: $249/month
• Business: $739/month
• Enterprise: custom pricing

2. Buffer

Buffer is a complete suite social media marketing tool that initially started as a tweet scheduling platform.

The social media platform segments its features into three core functions: publishing, analytics, and user engagement.

Key features:

• Plan, queue, and schedule multi-platform social posts
• Customize posts for each platform
• Monitor social conversations on Instagram
• Browser extension
• Content analytics and performance for different platforms

Supported platforms:

Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest.

Price:

• Free
• Essentials: $6/month
• Team: $12/month
• Agency: $120/month

3. Zoho Social

Zoho is a social media monitoring software and scheduling tool focusing on content management functions.

Zoho also allows marketing teams to track revenue and justify ROI.

Key features:

• Drag and drop publishing calendar
• SmartQ publishing time
• Content curation
• Brand review, mentions, and keyword monitoring
• Social media post engagement live-stream
• Workflows and task management
• Analytics and custom reports
• Zoho CRM and 3rd party integrations via Zapier

Supported platforms:

Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+

Price:

Contact for pricing.

4. Talkwalker

Talkwalker is a cloud-based consumer intelligence and influencer marketing platform.

Brands can use the tool to monitor mentions on social media, print, and radio.

Key features:

• Social listening and keyword monitoring
• Follower analysis
• Influencer tracking
• Supports 198 languages
• Social analytics and audience activity
• Customized reports

Supported platforms:

Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Mixcloud, Flickr, Foursquare, and Soundcloud

Price:

Contact for pricing.

5. Iconosquare

Iconosquare focuses on content marketing and social channel management.

It enables brands to follow conversations around identified keywords in real time.

This social media tool is great for agencies and businesses with multiple platforms.

Key features:

• Content scheduling and library
• Keyword tracking and trends
• Competitor tracking and industry metrics
• Follower analysis
• Post optimization and engagement
• Analytics and reporting

Supported platforms:

Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and TikTok.

Price:

• Pro: 59€/month
• Advanced: 99€/month
• Enterprise: 179€/month

6. Audiense

Audiense is a cloud-based “audience intelligence” platform for brands to monitor their consumers and interact with them based on marketing segmentation data.

Key features:

• Competitor monitoring
• Keyword tracking
• Influencer discovery and tracking
• Media planning
• Trend analysis
• Analytics and reporting

Supported platforms:

Twitter and web sources

Price:

• Free plan
• Twitter marketing: £39/month
• Audience Intelligence: £1199/month
• Enterprise: custom pricing

7. Digimind

Digimind is a dynamic social listening and competitive analysis platform.

It's best used by brands and agencies that need actionable insights for managing digital marketing strategy.

This tool is also great for justifying social media marketing ROI.

Key features:

• Competitive analysis
• Social media conversation tracking
• Data collection and insights
• Influencer marketing
• Analytics and reporting
• 3rd party integrations

Supported platforms:

LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram

Price:

Contact for pricing.

8. Sprout Social

Sprout Social‘s suite includes brand social media mentions, messages, and branded keyword monitoring.

The Sprout platform’s UX is so intuitive. This is one reason it’s a firm favorite of lots of social media marketers.

Key features:

• Smart inbox
• Competitor and follower analysis
• Campaign optimization
• Audience measurement
• Influencer tracking
• Hashtag performance
• Marketing analytics and reporting

Supported platforms:

Twitter, Instagram, Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Pinterest

Price:

• Standard: $249/month
• Professional: $399/month
• Advanced: $499/month
• Enterprise: custom pricing

9. Mentionlytics

Mentionlytics is a social intelligence monitoring tool for web and social media. It’s a great marketing tool for startups and agencies.

Key features:

• Influencer marketing
• Competitor monitoring
• Brand reputation and sentiment tracking
• Campaign management
• Lead monitoring and research
• 3rd party integrations

Supported platforms:

Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, LinkedIn, Reddit, and all web sources

Price:

• Basic: $49/month
• Essential: $99/month
• Advanced: $199/month
• Pro: $299/month

10. Keyhole

Keyhole‘s features focus on social media listening and influencer marketing. You also get the added advantage of market research and competitor analysis.

Key features:

• Hashtag and keyword tracker
• Influencer tracking
• Competitor analysis and tracking
• Trend analysis
• Account tracker
• Social media automation
• Demographic analysis

Supported platforms:

Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube

Price:

• SMB & Freelancers: $99/month
• Corporate: $299/month
• Agency: $599/month
• Enterprise: custom pricing

11. HubSpot

HubSpot is a popular social media marketing tool.

It has a broad suite of social media marketing, business development, and customer relationship management functions.

Key features:

• Build social media campaigns and schedule across platforms
• Keyword “streams” monitoring across social media
• Lead monitoring
• Brand mentions and social inbox
• Content suggestions by following what prospects are interested in
• Competitor analysis

Supported platforms:

Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, and Twitter.

Price:

• Professional: $890/month
• Enterprise: $3,600/month

12. Google Alerts

Google Alerts is a free keyword monitoring tool that sends email notifications for saved keywords from web pages, newspaper articles, blogs, etc.

Key features:

• Set alerts for keywords and automate when to receive emails
• Track keywords on any site Google tracks
• Online reputation monitoring
• Competitor research
• Monitor content plagiarism

Supported platforms:

All web sources and RSS feed

Price:

• Free

13. AgoraPulse

AgoraPulse is your go-to social media management tool for post scheduling, post engagements, analytics, and social listening.

It allows its users to search for relevant keywords and URLs on Twitter while monitoring comments on Ads.

Key features:

• Social listening
• Automated inbox assistant
• 24/7 customer support through chat and email
• Content queuing
• UTM code generator

Supported platforms:

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube

Price:

Pricing plans are billed annually.

• Standard: $49/month
• Professional: $79/month
• Advanced: $119/month
• Custom: custom pricing

14. Mention

Mention is a brand listening tool that monitors social media and the web for brand keywords. You can also get it to send automated daily summary alerts.

Key features:

• Automated keyword alerts
• Assign alerts to key team members for action
• Filter mentions according to relevant social site
• Competitor analysis
• View mentions on their native sites/apps
• Influencer scores

Supported platforms:

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, TikTok, and blogs.

Price:

• Solo: $49/month
• Pro: $99/month
• ProPlus: $179/month
• Company: custom pricing

15. Reputology

Reputology is a review management platform that allows you to manage reviews from one place.

Its users can monitor, analyze, and respond to online reviews from the social platform.

Key Features:

• Review monitoring
• Customer behavior analysis
• Analytics and reporting
• Text analytics
• User-friendly interface

Supported Platforms:

Google, Facebook

Price:

• Partner: $25/month
• Agency: $40/month
• Professional: $60/month
• Solo: $110/month

16. Sprinklr

Sprinklr, like other similar social media tools, helps you benchmark social media performance.

In addition, its Modern Research feature allows its users to follow trends and get real-time views on relevant topics.

Key features:

• Performance benchmarking
• Crisis tracking
• Social listening
• Comment/message moderation
• Campaign management

Supported platforms:

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn

Price:

Contact for pricing

17. Brandwatch

Brandwatch is a social listening tool that acts as a ‘WatchGuard’ for your brand.

It helps find relevant data from the web and social media platforms on what people say about your brand.

You also get an overview of your social mention volume compared to your competitors.

Key features:

• Manages social media advertising
• Brand sentiment monitoring
• Marketing automation
• Report Customizability
• Influencer Identification
• Follower analysis

Supported platforms:

Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit

Price:

Contact for custom pricing.

18. Reputation

Reputation manages brands’ customer journeys. Its multi-language feature makes it an excellent choice for multinational brands.

With industry-leading accuracy, Nuvi enables brands to plan, publish, listen, analyze, engage, and review their customer experiences.

Key features:

• Competitive analysis
• Buyer personas
• Multi-account management
• Impact measurement
• Brand reputation management
• Trend analysis

Supported platforms:

Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter

Price:

Contact for custom pricing.

19. TweetDeck

Tweetdeck is a free browser extension for managing and posting to Twitter. The tool has undergone several evolutions.

It presently exists as a web desktop app, as Twitter discontinued the mobile app version in 2016.

Key features:

• Schedule and manage tweets for multiple social accounts
• Unlimited columns to monitor several activity streams for different keywords on the same Twitter account
• Follow multiple tweet interactions and updates
• Keyboard shortcuts
• Chrome browser extension

Supported platforms:

Twitter and Web

Price:

• Free

20. SocialMention

SocialMention is a free, simple search tool under BrandMentions.

With SocialMention, you can view and monitor all your social activity across any supported social network.

Brands can monitor their social mentions and other important keywords.

Key features:

• Keyword monitoring
• Brand mentions and sentiment analysis
• Customer insights
• Online reputation management
• Influencer monitoring

Supported platforms:

Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

Price:

• Free

21. Brand24

Brand24 describes its primary service as “media monitoring.” But that’s one phrase for a full suite of social media monitoring features.

Key features:

• Brand mentions feed and analytics (media monitoring)
• Discussion volume and brand sentiment analysis
• Brand influencers
• Brand discussion alerts
• Hashtag performance
• Marketing segmentation
• Slack integration

Supported platforms:

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, and Twitch

Price:

• Individual: $39/month
• Team: $149/month
• Pro: $199/month
• Enterprise: $399/month

22. ZoomSphere

ZoomSphere is a suite of different apps/features with social listening as its primary function.

Other functionalities, such as project management and social media content management, are perfect for agencies.

Key features:

• Content scheduling
• Community management
• Meeting notes and task management
• Team and client chats
• Content approval workflows
• Facebook leads manager
• Competitor comparison and analytics

Supported platforms:

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, or YouTube.

Price:

ZoomSphere has different prices for particular features, while customized quotes are available for customers who want to purchase the full suite of features.

• Notes: Free
• Leads Manager: €29/month
• Workflow Manager: €29/month
• Social Media Analytics: €89/month
• Social Media Benchmarking: €89/month
• Social Media Scheduler: €149/month

23. Tailwind

In addition to Tailwind‘s analytics and scheduling features, it has monitoring features that come in handy on Pinterest and Instagram.

Users can monitor their content and competitors and get information about emerging trends.

Key features:

• Monitors social media channels for brand mentions
• Streamlined workflow
• Hashtag optimization
• Competitor analysis
• Keyword tracking

Supported platforms:

Instagram and Pinterest

Price:

• Free plan
• Pro: $19.99/month
• Advanced: $39.99/month
• Max: $79.99/month

24. Awario

Awario is a web monitoring tool that crawls web pages to get keyword mentions in real time.

In addition to gaining essential data about your audience, they offer prompt customer support service.

Key features:

• Multilingual keyword tracking
• Alert system for conversations with high traction
• Daily/Weekly summary of new mentions
• Sentiment analysis
• Lead generation
• Social selling

Supported platforms:

Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Reddit, the web

Price:

• Starter: $49/month
• Pro: $149/month
• Enterprise: $399/month

25. Sendible

Sendible is a social media management tool that caters to agencies that manage multiple clients.

In addition to its management features, users can improve their social media marketing strategy with its brand monitoring features.

Key features:

• Multi-user collaboration
• Customer engagement
• Brand tracking
• Engagement monitoring
• Lead attribution

Supported platforms:

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and YouTube

Price:

• Creator: $29/month
• Traction: $89/month
• White Label: $240/month

26. Meltwater

Meltwater enables brands to listen to relevant social media conversations and mine audience insights.

It also has social media management features that allow users to schedule posts and engage with their audience.

Key features:

• Audience insights
• Social listening
• Social influencer marketing
• Press distribution
• Custom reports

Supported platforms:

Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn

Price:

Contact for custom pricing.

27. Followerwonk

FollowerWonk is an excellent tool for social listening for Twitter audiences.

It allows users to analyze their and the competition’s social media presence on the social media platform.

Key Features:

• Updated twitter bio search
• Twitter performance benchmarking
• Social authority rank tracking
• Tweet time optimization
• Tweet engagement monitoring
• Followers tracking and sorting

Supported platforms:

Twitter

Price:

Contact for custom pricing.

Choose The Best Social Tool For Your Business

As social media evolves and new platforms emerge, so too will social monitoring tools.

You will likely find yourself using a combination of tools to suit your social channels – different tools will excel in different areas.

So, whichever social media monitoring tools you choose to use, be sure to find the ones that work best for your business.