Social Media Listening
The process of identifying and evaluating online discussions about a company, individual, product, or brand.
Curious about the buzz around your brand, but you don’t have the time to look through hundreds of comments across multiple social media platforms? That’s where social media listening tools come into play.
Social media listening, also referred to as social listening, analyzes online conversations to paint a clearer picture of what your audience is thinking. This is done by sifting through social media for mentions and keywords that matter to you.
What Is A Social Listening Tool?
A social listening tool is a software that scans social media channels for your chosen keywords, phrases, or brand mentions. It takes data from different social platforms and analyzes it to find out what people are saying. We highly recommend using some kind of social media marketing software as it allows businesses to keep happy customers and stay ahead of their competition.
Social Listening Methods
There are a number of different ways to approach social media listening. By using a mix of strategies and tools, businesses can gain valuable insights into their audiences’ opinions and behaviors. Here’s a glimpse at some effective methods that companies use for conducting social media listening:
- Platform Monitoring: Track mentions, comments, and hashtags on platforms like Twitter, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, and LinkedIn.
- Reading Reviews and Feedback: Examine reviews on sites like Yelp, Google Reviews, and Amazon to gather customer feedback.
- Follow Competitors: Observe discussions and mentions related to competitors to understand their strategies and audience reactions.
- Community Engagement: Participate in forums, discussion boards, and community groups related to the industry.
- Social Listening Tools: Use software like Iconosquare, Quintly, or Brandwatch to analyze online mentions and conversations.
Benefits Of Social Listening Tools
Why invest in a social listening tool? Understanding the benefits can help you make better marketing decisions based on data driven information. Revolutionize your approach to customer engagement and brand management by considering these benefits:
- Track brand health: Quickly identify any current or potential issues and maintain a positive reputation.
- Understand audience needs: Follow what your customers love and hate so that you can change your content strategy accordingly.
- Save countless hours: Let the automation do the heavy lifting so that you can focus on other important parts of your business.
- Monitor competitors: Keep an eye on what your competitors are doing and what their customers are saying. Know their strengths and weaknesses and adjust your game plan to keep a competitive edge.
- Identify influencers: Find what key influencers are driving conversations and shaping options. Engage with them so you can amplify your brand message and reach a wider audience.
Instagram Listening Tools
Iconosquare
Price: Plans start at $49 per month
Use Iconosquare to transform your Instagram marketing game. Iconosquare is an analytics and management platform that will give you in-depth insights into your Instagram activity. Iconosquare is available across Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn; however we believe it performs best on Instagram.
Pros
- Provides in depth information on engagement, hashtag performance, comment tracking, growth, and community structure
- Track up to 10 hashtags and 10 competitors per social profile
- Reasonably priced compared to other listening tools
Cons
- Conversations feature could support more social networks. Platform does not appear to work well on Twitter.
- Listening tool has no keyword monitoring
Sprout Social
Price: Plans start at $199 per month
Sprout Social is a software company that provides an all-in-one social media management platform. They provide analytics for multiple social profiles such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Google+; however, we suggest using them mostly for Instagram. We also recommend this listening tool only for larger businesses due to the price.
Pros
- Provides audience insights that help businesses understand what their target audience is saying about their brand and industry.
- Detailed marketing strategy feedback to help create content that resonates with the audience.
- Consolidates all conversations in one place along with messages.
Cons
- Instagram limits the amount of data Sprout can collect.
- Cannot collect historical data from Instagram.
- It can be expensive If you are only using one account.
TikTok Listening Tools
TikTok Analytics
Price: Free
TikTok analytics is a tool by TikTok that is built-in for business accounts. TikTok built this to help creators optimize their content and help it reach new audiences. TikTok analytics collects data from your content and helps you measure the success of your videos so that you can make necessary changes and get your videos to go viral.
Pros
- Gives insights to basic things such as views, likes, and comments, as well as your audience’s gender, location, and age.
- More specific data such as how viewers discover your content, average watch time, total play time, and what videos are doing good or bad.
Cons
- Not as in-depth or sophisticated as other listening tools which can make it difficult to track ROI and evaluate marketing efforts.
Exolyt
Price: Starting plan is free
Exolyt is a short video analytics tool that presents insights to help your business prosper on TikTok. This up-and-coming software company specializes in TikTok, but plans to eventually expand to Youtube and Instagram. It is mostly used by brands, social media agencies, influencers, marketers, product managers, and creators.
Pros
- Help users identify current trends, sounds, and hashtags
- Influencer marketing campaign monitoring
- Monitor performance through video growth tracking
- Presents audience demographics and behaviors
Cons
- Exolyt is a very new company, so technical issues can be expected
Twitter Listening Tools
Brandwatch
Price: Schedule a demo for pricing
Brandwatch is a social media management software that can be used as a listening tool for Twitter. Brandwatch has a very wide reach as it scans data from all across the web including blogs, image sites, video sites, forums, and news sites. It is also on multiple social platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, and LinkedIn. Brandwatch is one of our favorite tools for Twitter as it not only allows you to view insights and data, but also shows you how to improve your marketing strategy.
Pros
- Quickly identify customer research and find influencer connections
- Up to 12 months of data history
- Metrics that measure likes and comments
- Features to assess how well your campaigns are doing
- Easily export and customized graphs and charts
- Easy to use interface
Cons
- Geared more toward big businesses due to high price points
- Data pull is not always very comprehensive
X Pro (TweetDeck)
Price: $84 per year
X Pro, formerly known as TweetDeck, is a listening tool specifically for Twitter. Due to this tool being owned by Twitter, it integrates seamlessly into your profile. We highly recommend this software for a Twitter listening tool.
Pros
- Identify activity such as timelines, mentions, messages, and trending topics
- Manage multiples accounts, making it easy to switch between them and manage your social presence
- Advanced search features that narrow down your Twitter feed to specific keywords, hashtags, and users.
Cons
- Can be laggy and sometime crash unexpectedly
- May have a steeper learning curve compared to other listening tools
Facebook Listening Tools
Quintly
Price: Minimum of $315 per month
Quintly is a software that specializes in social media analytics, making it a great tool for Facebook. Quintly offers their services on a multitude of platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and Snapchat. Of these, Facebook and Instagram are the most popular options as it performs best on these social platforms.
Pros
- Provides specific demographics of your followers and insights into how they discovered your page.
- Monitors both your content and interactions.
- Track and analyze key performance indicators, such as engagement and conversion rates.
Cons
- Can’t analyze individual posts or A/B splits
- Not great if you are trying to track paid posts
Keyhole
Price: Plans start at $157
Keyhole is a social media analytics platform that monitors and analyzes your mentions. This listening tool software is primarily used for Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram; however we believe its best to use for Facebook. We also recommend this to bigger businesses due to the complex interface and price.
Pros
- Excels in hashtag tracking, real-time monitoring of campaign reach, and audience engagement.
- Provides detailed insights into influencer performance, helping identify and assess the right influencers for campaigns.
- Offers comprehensive, easy-to-understand reports that are effective for presenting data to stakeholders.
Cons
- Steeper learning curve for new users
- Can be relatively expensive for small businesses compared to other listening tool options
YouTube Listening Tools
Tubular Labs
Price: Request demo for price
Tubular Labs is a social media insights tool that specifically specializes in social video, making it perfect for Youtube. It is on multiple platforms such as Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitch; however, it seems to work best on Youtube specifically. This listening tool is great for media companies, brands, agencies, and small to medium businesses.
Pros
- Provide metrics to help you know how frequent and the duration that a viewer watches a video
- Evaluates and analyzes your content to help you understand what your audiences are interested in and what they shop for
- Identify relevant influencers
Cons
- Features are limited and inaccurate on other platforms such as TikTok
- Interface can be overwhelming at first
TubeRanker
Price: Plans start at $19 per month
TubeRanker is a Youtube specific SEO tool that analyzes content to help you optimize your videos. This listening tool is great for creators, marketors, and businesses trying to get more views and subscribers.
Pros
- Analyze factors such as views, watch time, engagement, and video metadata like titles and tags.
- Features include channel audits, keyword research, tag generation, rank tracking, tag extraction, title generation, and description optimization to enhance your YouTube content and improve search visibility.
Cons
- This software is fairly new and technical issues can be expected
LinkedIn Listening Tools
Brand24
Price: Plans start at $79 per month
Brand24 is an AI social listening tool that can be used for platforms such as LinkedIn. They specialize in tracking publicly accessible mentions across all major social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, and Twitch. However, it is important to note that you must have access to an administrative account to track mentions from your companies page.
Pros
- Record mentions, analyze them, and give you feedback by explaining reasons for a spike in mentions.
- Display the volume, reach, emotional tone, date, sentiment, and influencer score of a mention.
- Warn you of a brand reputation crisis and help you discover important topics and trends.
Cons
- Doesn’t allow customization
- User has to make connections between their business’ social metrics and ROI
Meltwater
Price: Fill out their form to see pricing
Meltwater is a social listening platform that provides insights into LinkedIn. It offers access to a wide range of sources, including social media, online news, print media, broadcast, and podcasts. It also provides insights for social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.
Pros
- Helps you filter out irrelevant information and discover key insights relevant to your brand.
- Captures historical data to help you track and analyze trends over time.
- Provides a comprehensive view of your audience, allowing you to assess their sentiment.
- Enables real-time monitoring of brand mentions to manage potential crises promptly.
Cons
- Poor customer support
- Some customers find their media monitoring to be lackluster
