If you’re here, chances are your brand is on social media platforms and perhaps has some success with it.

Congrats!

But if you have not yet invested in social listening tools, you’re definitely missing out on valuable data about your brand. 

What are your customers thinking about your brand? Or what perspective do the prospective customers have about your product? 

Which influencers are using your brand product and creating content? Are their followers your target audience too? 

The answer to all these questions is: social listening tools.

Social listening tools capture valuable insights to help you understand how your customers feel about your brand by analyzing relevant conversations on social channels about you and your competitors. 

It’s a powerful real-time market research tool that tracks social media conversations. 

When leveraged in the right way, it can help you make data-driven, smarter decisions that can positively impact your brand. 

Importance of Social Listening

Social listening can help your business in many ways. Some of these are:

Knowing your audience

Social media listening removes all the scope of guesswork and helps you better understand your audience. 

For example, here’s a post from a dissatisfied customer. 

You can use this valuable feedback and capture customer sentiments with social listening tools to offer better service to your customers and build loyalty. 

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Product, business, and industry intelligence

Social media listening lets you take a peek at what customers are saying about your product or the industry as a whole? Are they liking any of your product? 

Here’s an example. This post from a happy customer lets Starbucks know about how a customer feels about one of their products. 

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Crisis management

Things, at times, can get bumpy. 

In the time of social media, news spreads faster than the speed of light. 

But staying vigilant of what your customers are saying, sympathizing with their sentiments, and acting on them can still send out a positive message about your brand. 

Here’s an example of how Slack does it.

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Identifying influencers

As we know, influencer marketing is on the rise. 

Consumers believe more in user-generated content than in the polished content of the brands. 

A 2023 report says influencer marketing has grown into a $21.1 billion industry, and it's growing. 

So, it's natural for businesses to invest more in influencer marketing. 

But with so many creators around, how do you know who is right for your brand? 

Social listening comes in handy here to identify the right influencers and analyze their content to determine whether it aligns with the brand requirement. 

If you’re ready to invest in your first social listening tool but are confused about all the options available, here are some recommendations of top tools. 

Now that you know what social listening tools are and why they're important, it's time to decide what type of tools you need. 

Your social listening tool should be able to perform the following tasks:

Broad insight

General social listening tools come in handy when you need to understand the general trends and customer sentiments.

Competitor analysis

General social listening tools are useful for tracking competitor mentions, monitoring their activities, and understanding how they are perceived in the industry. 

Social edia campaigns tracking

A general social listening tool can help track its performance when running marketing campaigns or launching a new product. 

It gives valuable insight into areas for improvement and gauges audience reactions. 

Best Social Media Management Platform for General Use

Phyllo

Phyllo’s social listening and monitoring API provides precise, real-time insights through comprehensive cross-platform coverage within a single social media management tool. It features customizable dashboards with a clean interface, enabling you to analyze audience sentiment using AI and seamlessly turn data into strategy. 

The API tracks social conversations, including hashtags, keywords, mentions, regions, and topics, helping you understand what works and what doesn't. Discover top-performing campaigns and uncover untapped topics to enhance your marketing efforts like never before.

Pros

Phyllo offers numerous advantages for social media management and data integration:

Comprehensive Cross-Platform Coverage: Phyllo aggregates data from multiple social media platforms, providing a unified interface for managing and analyzing social media activities.

Customizable Dashboards: Users can create tailored dashboards that present data in a clutter-free, user-friendly manner, making it easy to monitor key metrics and performance indicators.

Detailed Social Listening: The API allows for in-depth tracking of social conversations, including hashtags, keywords, mentions, regions, and topics, providing a clear picture of what’s trending and performing well.

Campaign Optimization: By identifying top-performing campaigns and discovering untapped topics, Phyllo helps optimize marketing efforts and uncover new opportunities for engagement.

Rate Limit Management: Phyllo helps manage API rate limits by optimizing data requests, ensuring smooth and continuous access to necessary information.

Pricing

Offers custom plans based on your usage, so you pay for what you use. 

Sprout Social 

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Sprout Social is an all-in-one social media management platform that helps you to connect better with your audience. 

With its powerful analytics feature, it helps streamline customer care and community management, plans and publishes social content, and drives strategic decision-making.

‍Pros

• Easy to use
• Great customer support

‍Cons

• Not-so-strong reporting features
• High pricing
• Sometimes, there are glitches with the mobile app

‍Pricing

There are four pricing tiers:

• Standard starts at $199/seat/month
• Professional at $299 /seat/month
• Advanced at $399/seat/month
• Enterprise has a custom-built plan depending on your needs

Brandwatch

Brandwatch is a complementary suite of specialized tools that helps you conduct deep research to understand consumer demand.

It monitors your brand, helps you create content, and engages with your audience.

Whether you need a solution for consumer intelligence, gather consumer insights, social media management, or influencer marketing —- Brandwatch has it all. 

Pros

• Valuable output for analysis
• Combine all social mentions in one hub
• Allows to search any topic across multiple content sources and segment in a very granular way

Cons

• Limited integration with third-party tool
• Limitations on platforms to gather data
• Limitations in customer sentiment analysis

‍Pricing

Contact Brandwatch for a custom pricing plan.

BuzzSumo

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BuzzSumo monitors your competitors, brand mentions, and PR campaigns and tracks new backlinks and industry updates. You can create alerts for key influencers, bloggers, and journalists and discover stories in your niche. 

Pros

• Comes with tons of tools and dashboards for easy tracking and monitoring. 
• It helps in producing great content.

Cons

• It is at a higher cost and is not suitable for SMBs. 
• The user interface can be improved. 

‍Pricing

The basic plan starts at $199 per month, while the enterprise version costs $999 per month. 

Keyhole

Keyhole has a social listening suite, especially for social media listening. It helps you to track mentions, hashtags, influencers, and relevant keywords.

It has advanced social listening tools like QuickTrends, similar to Google Trends, but for social media. 

Pros

• It generates a detailed report with all the valuable insights
• Provides all the basic features at an affordable price point
• The tool is user-friendly and easy to use.

Cons

• Important features like hashtag tracking come at a steep price
• A limited number of trackers
• Doesn't show the historical data 

Pricing

There are four pricing plans. The individual plan starts at $89 per month, while the advanced plan costs $399 per month. 

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Meltwater

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Meltwater offers a complete suite of social intelligence powered by smart AI and human intelligence.

From social listening and analytics to social media management to media intelligence and influencer marketing — Meltwater covers it all. 

Pros

• Seamless experience
• Supportive team
• Useful analytics dashboard

‍Cons

• Social media monitoring is limited
• Occasionally misses items of coverage
• Gets a lag at times

‍Pricing

This social listening tool has four plans:

Essentials (offering the basics to get started with monitoring), Advanced ( Advanced product features for more in-depth valuable insights and analytics), Suite ( an integrated product suite for deeper analysis at scale), and Enterprise ( a specialized solution with a 360-degree view of consumer and market analysis). 

Depending on the plan that works for you, you can request a quote. 

YouScan

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YouScan is an AI-powered social listening platform. The tool can analyze texts, images, and audience data from social media to help you better understand your customers. 

Pros

• Great integration of different video platforms
• Great customer support
• Segments user feedback automatically into different themes

Cons

• Need time to get familiar with the wide array of features of the tool.
• It’s costly.
• Lacks enough customization opportunities. 

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Pricing

This social listening tool has two pricing plans: 

The starter plan starts at $299 and is best suited for SMBs and startups. Unlimited plans are for agencies and enterprises. Contact the team for a customized plan. 

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Social Listening Tools for Instagram

Instagram Live is a powerful platform feature that helps you engage in real-time with brands to build trust and connect with your audience.  

Statista mentions that the photo-sharing app ranked third in terms of preferred social network among teenagers in the United States, second to Snapchat and TikTok in 2020. 

So, if your target audience is teenagers, you must monitor this major social media platform to gauge their pulse. Here are some popular social listening tools for Instagram-

Awario

Awario is a social media monitoring tool that tracks mentions of your brand across the internet, including Instagram. 

Pros

• Easy to use
• Generates reports in an easy-to-read dashboard

Cons

• Using advanced functionality would be easier with more hand-holding
• On-boarding process can be improved

Pricing

The tool has three different pricing plans; the starter plan starts at $29 per month for three topics to monitor with unlimited keywords per topic.

Digimind

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Digimind Social lets you monitor Instagram reels, social media posts, and stories for brand reputation, new products and services, or tracking industry trends. 

Pros

• Easy to use and configure
• Good sentiment analysis
• A powerful tool for real-time monitoring and gathering consumer insights 

‍Cons

• Difficult to navigate
• Lose access to the training after a certain time

Pricing

Available upon request.

Social Listening Tools for TikTok

TikTok’s influence is growing. According to Wavemaker data, in the UK, people spend 90 minutes per day on the app as compared to 29 minutes per day on Instagram. 

A similar scene can be seen in the US, too. As of February 2024, the US has the largest number of TikTok users, with almost 150 million users engaging on this social video platform. 

Indonesia followed, with around 126 million TikTok users. 

TikTok drives positive ROAS for paid media when compared to other digital channels. 

TikTok is building momentum, and if you’re not paying attention to audience analysis on TikTok, you’re surely missing out on some valuable dates. Here are some popular social listening tools for TikTok-

Agorapulse

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Agorapulse lets you create actionable searches about you and your competitor. Among many features, social listening is a powerful feature of the tool.

‍Pros

• Produces actionable insights
• The 'Saved Replies' lest you respond to your fans and followers easily. 
• Takes control of your social interactions. 

Cons

• Confusing and overwhelming user interface
• Does not support for Instagram stories

Pricing

The tool has four different pricing plans — the standard plan starts from $49 for ten social profiles. 

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Mentionlytics

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Mentionlytics lets you effortlessly track competitors’ TikTok moves and track all the mentions you receive on the platform. 

Pros

• Customizable reporting options
• Advanced Social Intelligence Advisor of the tool curates recommendations 

Cons

• Lack of sentiment analysis and hashtag tracking features is a limitation
• Loading mentions takes a while when dealing with numerous results

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Pricing

Price starts at $69 per month. 

Free Social Listening Tools

While it's good to invest in social listening tools to monitor your customers, competitors, and the industry in general, many SMB businesses are unable to do so because of their limited budgets. 

But that doesn't mean they need to stay behind. There are many free social listening tools that they can implement in their business to up their social game. Here are some free social listening tools-

Google Alerts

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Google Alerts is a simple and user-friendly social listening tool that works well for small and medium businesses. 

If you have a Google Account, you can easily set up Google Alerts and follow social conversations involving your company. 

All you need to do is set up the keywords that you can track, and the tool will bring up similar suggestions. You can filter your search by setting demographics, language, or region.

Although the tool works well for small businesses, enterprises, and large companies need a more in-depth tool. 

The tool doesn't monitor social media channels, lacks a reporting feature, and misses important features like sentiment analysis.

Metricool

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Metricool is a free social media management platform. The tool allows users to schedule social media content and monitor competitor and influencer performance. 

The free plan does not include all features. To fully utilize the tool's potential, you need a paid plan. For example, the free plan allows you to analyze only five competitor profiles, while the paid plan allows you to analyze 100 competitor profiles. 

Similarly, the free plan gives access to analytics with three months of historical data, while the paid plan gives access to unlimited historical data.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite lets you manage all of your social media from one place. It lets you improve your ROI with the best analytics, design, schedule, and publish content with AI, and control your narrative. 

Hootsuite's social listening tools monitor all critical mentions, keywords, and hashtags so that you’re always up-to-date with what people say about your brand—no last-minute surprises. 

However, the tool lets you explore it for free for only 30 days. After the 30-day trial period, you need to purchase a plan to continue enjoying the tool's benefits. 

Boost Your Influencer Marketing With Social Listening Tools

Social listening is a crucial part in data-driven influencer marketing. So, stop relying on your guts and start relying more on data. 

InsightIQ is a comprehensive, secure, and reliable API-based solution for influencer marketing. 

This social listening tool lets you take a peek at an influencer’s content and find relevance across various platforms with any and every filter you could need. You can now track your IM campaigns and optimize for ROI.

‍Schedule a call to learn more about how InsightIQ can empower your influencer marketing business with social listening.

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