Social listening is the process of keeping an eye on social media sites for mentions of your company, brands that compete with yours, and similar keywords. You can follow every mention of your business on social media in real time by using social listening. This will provide you with useful information on how customers feel about your products or services, what their pain points are, and what they would like to see from you in the future.
Nevertheless, social listening is more than just tracking brand mentions. You may also use it to monitor competitive brands, trending content, and sentiment analysis on business-related themes. This information can help you make decisions about everything from marketing and product planning to customer service and support. It can help you make better, more informed decisions that will help your company’s bottom line.
Social listening technologies allow you to watch many social media channels from one location. You may monitor brand mentions, relevant keywords, and direct feedback via tags and DMs. Several of these applications allow you to publish straight to your social media accounts from the dashboard. Also, if you can link all of your social media accounts together, you can see all of your metrics in one place.
Social Monitoring vs. Social Listening
These two concepts may appear to be synonymous. They do, however, differ. “Social monitoring” is the process of collecting mentions on social media that are available to the public. It is the practise of tracking social media analytics in order to assess the success of your campaign. Although social media listening is a proactive method of tracking, analysing, and responding to online conversations, social media monitoring is a more reactive one.
When your brand is discussed online, social monitoring looks for particular brand references and gives warnings. Brand monitoring is another term for it. It can be beneficial for rapidly responding to any bad sentiment or complaint, but it does not provide you with a comprehensive picture of what people are saying about your brand or business.
Social listening, on the other hand, gives you a full picture of everything being said online about your brand, products, industry, and competitors. This comprehensive method gives you significant information that can assist you in making smart marketing and social media decisions. In short, you need a social listening strategy if you want to keep on top of the current trends and monitor what people are saying about your business over time.
Best Social Listening Tools Free & Paid In 2023
Checkout best Social listening tools free and paid in 2023, take a look please:
1. HubSpot
When it comes to social media management, HubSpot is an all-in-one marketing tool. The HubSpot interface’s main goal is to determine the best approach to developing your business using social media. HubSpot allows you to publish and share new content, reply to comments, develop marketing campaigns, construct landing sites, set up marketing automation, and much more. The ability to nurture leads is one of HubSpot’s most powerful features. If your main goal with social media is to get more customers, HubSpot has some interesting ideas for you. You may set up keyword monitoring streams in HubSpot.
Key Features:
- Keep an eye on Twitter mentions.
- Creating and scheduling posts
- Develop marketing initiatives
2. Brandwatch
Brandwatch is a social listening platform for businesses. It has a vast variety of features but is rather pricey. Brandwatch is a comprehensive social media monitoring platform. It includes major social media networks including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, and Twitch, as well as blogs, forums, review sites, and news sites. Prices begin at $1,000 per month for 10,000 mentions. Pricing details are available upon request.
Key Features:
- Picture recognition using geolocation
- API access to powerful demographic data Industrial trends
- In addition, Brandwatch provides a data visualisation tool called Vizia.
Vizia lets you see data in real time and turn complicated information into insights that are easy to understand.
3. Tweetdeck
Tweetdeck is a Twitter-specific social media listening tool. Only social media mentions from this platform are collected and analysed by the programme. Tweetdeck assists you in maintaining your social media presence, especially if you handle many social media platforms. Tweetdeck aggregates all tweets and Twitter feeds into a single dashboard. You can quickly browse your news feed, private messages, and trending topics. Listening tool for social media for free.
Key Features:
- Mentions, hashtags, and users are all tracked.
- Creating and scheduling posts
- Using direct messaging
Tweetdeck is a fantastic tool, but it lacks sophisticated metrics such as social media reach and Twitter sentiment analysis. And this tool is only available on Twitter.
4. Awario
Awario is internet monitoring software that includes analytical and reporting capabilities. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, YouTube, blogs, forums, and news are all monitored by the tool. Sadly, it does not monitor Telegram or TikTok. Awario serves the most significant monitoring objectives. It will assist you in increasing brand recognition, identifying sales possibilities, engaging with customers on social media, and identifying influencers. Awario is one of the most cost-effective tools. At the same time, it is pretty simple. So, it’s a great choice for small and medium-sized businesses that want to keep track of online mentions. 7-day free trial. The starting package is $39 per month.
Key Features:
- Continuous monitoring in real time
- analysis of feelings
- Email notifications
- Reports bearing a private label
5. Buffer
Without Buffer, no list of social listening tools would be complete! Buffer is a platform for managing social media. You may use the program to simply schedule social media postings and interact with your followers. It also provides a single inbox for all of your social media communications. Buffer integrates with popular social networking platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. It also includes an audience behaviour unit to assist you in creating more targeted social media ads. The function of social media monitoring is not included in the basic product. You must also buy Buffer Respond, which costs $39 per user per month, in order to get access. The monitoring tool is currently only available for Twitter. Listening is only possible on Twitter, which is unsatisfactory in my view. Instead of paying for Buffer Replies, we may utilise Tweetdeck for this purpose for free.
Key Features:
- Creating and scheduling posts
- Examining the effectiveness of social media
- Twitter keyword, phrase, or hashtag tracking Email alerts
6. Keyhole
Keyhole is another social listening tool that includes both monitoring and social media management functions. Keyhole allows you to track the success of your accounts across many social media platforms (including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and TikTok) and gives the data you need to make educated decisions.
The platform also has social media analytics, which let you look at your comments’ sentiment, term clouds, and location data. One of Keyhole’s strongest features is hashtag tracking. You can monitor the performance of your hashtags across various social media platforms. The data may be used to assess the effectiveness of your social media marketing. On request, a free trial and comprehensive pricing are available.
Key Features:
- Keyword and hashtag monitoring
- Analysis of feelings
- Comparisons of brands
7. Hootsuite
The monthly fee for the professional plan is $49 USD. Hootsuite bills itself as a social media monitoring tool that allows you to focus on certain trends, topics, and social media profiles. This manner, you can readily understand what is going on in your market specialty. Hootsuite collaborates with Brandwatch, another social media listening platform. When you sign up for Hootsuite, you’ll have access to audience insights that can help you make better decisions.
Key Features:
- Make use of a strong collection of filters (date, demographics, location).
- Determine industry leaders
- Learn how your brand is perceived online.
- Get quick notifications whenever a term is mentioned online.
Conclusion
We always recommend thoroughly researching the product and price pages for any tool you’re considering adding to your team. Also, don’t be hesitant to try out many social media tracking tools to see which one best meets your demands and helps you reach your goals.