13 Top Social Media Monitoring Tools to Use in 2024

Claire Beveridge

May 17, 20247 min read
Contributors: Martha Vassallo and Connor Lahey
Social Media Monitoring Tools
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Social media monitoring helps you protect your brand’s image on social platforms. And the right tools make it even easier.

We’re about to cover 13 social media monitoring tools you can use to raise your brand’s profile.

But first, let’s go over what social media monitoring actually is.

What Is Social Media Monitoring?

Social media monitoring is the process of tracking mentions, conversations, and activities related to your business, your product or service, or relevant topics on social media.

It involves observing social media platforms for brand mentions, hashtags, and keywords. And using that information to actively respond to users’ messages, comments, etc.

This is slightly different from social media listening. Which involves analyzing audiences’ behavior, sentiment, preferences, and perceptions concerning your brand with the intention of making changes going forward.

So, social media listening is more about gaining insights you can use to inform your social media marketing strategy.

What Are the Benefits of Social Media Monitoring?

Social media monitoring helps you engage with audiences on social media and take action when needed. 

And it can help with:

  • Brand reputation: Respond to user feedback or concerns to maintain a positive brand image
  • Crisis management: Identify and respond to negative comments and misinformation before they escalate further
  • Trend identification: Find out what audiences talk about online
  • Influencer sourcing: Identify marketing influencers you may want to work with in the future

13 Social Media Monitoring Tool Recommendations

1. Semrush Social

Semrush Social is a comprehensive social media management solution that helps businesses with everything from post scheduling to analyzing performance. 

Use the Social Inbox feature to stay on top of user communications across platforms. And enable notifications so you never miss a mention or an opportunity to engage.

The setup is simple. Open Semrush Social, choose the “Social Inbox” option, and click the “Connect profiles” button.

Semrush's 'Social Inbox' home with the 'Connect profiles' button clicked.

Choose a platform and follow the prompts to connect to Semrush Social.

Message you see right before connecting your Instagram account with 'Semrush Social'.

Repeat this process for each platform you have a presence on. 

Now, you can monitor all mentions, comments, and messages directly from the Social Inbox dashboard.

'Social Inbox' showing messages from different social media channels like Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

To check brand mentions, click the “Messagetype” box and check the box next to “Mention.”

Checking brand mentions on 'Social Inbox' by clicking the 'Message type' filter and selecting 'Mention'.

Try using the “Quick Replies” feature to streamline responses. Which reduces the time spent answering individual messages manually.

Semrush social offers even more ways to manage your social efforts as well. Including options for monitoring rivals’ accounts, evaluating campaign performance, and creating and scheduling posts. 

Key Features

Social media monitoring, competitive analysis, social media analytics, and social media scheduling

Pricing

There’s a seven-day free Semrush Social trial. The paid plan costs $29.99 per month.

2. Media Monitoring

Semrush’s Media Monitoring app lets you quickly track what people say about your brand online. Allowing you to intervene when needed.

The tool lets you see whether the sentiment is positive, negative, or neutral. And allows you to set up automated email notifications, so you know when your brand gets an online mention. 

You can even track mentions of your competitors to understand how audiences feel about them.

Enter your brand name or another relevant keyword and click the “Create Project” button.

'Media Monitoring' tool-start with 'Wendy's' entered as the keyword and the 'Create Project' button clicked.

The app will look for mentions of your keywords and generate a report. 

The “Summary” tab shows your latest brand mentions and a graph of mentions by date.

'Summary' tab in 'Media Monitoring' tool showing the latest brand mentions and a graph of mention volume by date.

Click the “Mentions” tab to review all your mentions sorted by date.

Mentions sorted by date on the 'Mentions' tab of the 'Media Monitoring' tool with filters for category, sentiment and importance.

Filter the list by category, sentiment, and importance using the relevant checkboxes.

Filters for categories, sentiment and importance on the 'Mentions' tab of the 'Media Monitoring' tool.

Go to the “Analysis” tab to learn more about your brand’s reach, how people feel about your business, and the most influential websites that mention your brand.

'Analysis' tab of the 'Media Monitoring' tool showing ratio of positive to negative mentions, changes in brand reach, etc.

Key Features

Brand monitoring, reputation management, and crisis management

Pricing

There’s a seven-day free trial. Paid plans start at $39 per month.

3. Brand Monitoring

The Brand Monitoring app tracks mentions of your brand (and your competitors’ brands) across the web—including on news sites and social media. 

You can set up custom alerts to ensure you always know when your brand gets attention online. And even measure whether the mention contained a backlink—a link from another site to yours that can improve your organic search rankings.

The tool also includes analytics to help you understand your overall visibility.

Set it up by clicking the “Get started” button.

'Brand Monitoring' tool-start with the 'Get started' button clicked.

Then, select “Brand.”

Options for 'Brand Monitoring ' tool including brand, competitor, keyword, person, author, and backlink etc. with 'Brand' selected.

Next, create a brand query by entering one or more brand keywords. And keep the “Exact match” box checked to reduce the chances of receiving alerts for irrelevant mentions.

Create brand query in 'Brand Monitoring' tool with a box to enter brand keyword while the 'Exact match' box is selected.

Configure the rest of your settings and click the “Create query” button at the bottom. 

The app will then display all your brand mentions in a list.

Brand mentions appearing in a list format in the 'Brand Monitoring' tool.

To select a specific date range you’d like to review mentions from, click the arrow next to “Date range.”

'Date range' in the 'Brand Monitoring' tool showing different time periods to review mentions for last 1, 7, 30, or custom days.

Or, click the arrow next to “Filters” to filter the list by language, sentiment, author, etc.

Filters available in 'Brand Monitoring' tool with options including title, keywords, language, sentiment, backlinks, reach, etc.

Key Features

Brand monitoring, share of voice analysis, backlink monitoring

Pricing

There’s a free seven-day trial. Then, it costs $59 per month. 

4. Brandwatch

Brandwatch monitors brand mentions across social media to help you gain insights into audience sentiment. And respond promptly to positive and negative user feedback.

Brandwatch's dashboard showing key insights like total mentions, unique authors, trending topics, and category share of voice.

The platform lets you gather insights on emerging trends. And enables you to respond to users with automated replies. Which allows you to react to social media trends.

There’s also information on audience demographics and psychographics. 

Key Features

Social media monitoring, audience sentiment analysis, and audience insights

Pricing

Pricing isn’t publicly available. You’ll need to reach out for a quote.

5. Rival IQ

Rival IQ is a social media analytics platform for tracking brand mentions, monitoring hashtags, and identifying industry trends.

Social listening report in Rival IQ tool showing positive and negative posts by day, sentiment drivers by type, sources and domains.

The tool lets you set up custom queries and create data visualizations—like dashboards and charts.

And you can track mentions of other companies in your industry to understand customer sentiment about them.

Key Features:

Social media monitoring, competitive benchmarking, and customizable reporting

Pricing

Rival IQ offers a 14-day free trial. Paid plans start at $239 per month.

6. Mention

Mention’s suite of tools helps you monitor and manage your online presence. 

The platform shows mentions and keywords from social media, news sites, forums, and blogs. 

Mention's social monitoring dashboard categorizing mentions by recency, alert tendance, and sentiment.

There’s a sentiment analysis feature—categorizing mentions as positive, negative, or neutral. To gauge consumer perception.

You can also use the tool to draft, schedule, and publish social media posts across multiple platforms. And create reports.

Key Features

Social media monitoring, sentiment analysis, and social media scheduling

Pricing

Mention offers a 14-day free trial. Paid plans start at $41 per month for a single user.

7. Keyhole

Keyhole is a tool for monitoring brand mentions, hashtags, and keywords. And can be used for exploring competitors. 

Keyhole's social listening dashboard showing posts, impressions, reach and engagement for a branded search term.

The platform integrates with third-party tools like Slack and Google Analytics.

There’s also an influencer marketing feature to help you measure its impact on campaign goals.

Key Features

Social media monitoring, influencer tracking, and sentiment analysis

Pricing

Keyhole offers a 14-day free trial. And paid plans start at $89 per month for one user.

8. Agorapulse

Agorapulse is a social media management platform that supports publishing, monitoring, reporting, and post scheduling. 

Its social media monitoring feature lets you listen to online conversations about your brand and respond. 

You can use filters to separate important posts or mentions from spam.

And you can view and respond to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube messages from the inbox. To streamline communication. 

Social media inbox in Agorapulse showing connected channels, messages, message threads and user profile information.

Key Features

Social listening, social media scheduling, and reporting

Pricing

Agorapulse has a 30-day free trial. Paid plans start at $49 per month.

9. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo lets you analyze content on the web and social media to uncover trending topics and identify outreach opportunities.

Brand monitoring report in Buzzsumo showing total web mentions over time and mentions compared to a selected competitor.

The platform’s social media monitoring feature can be used to set up alerts for brand mentions, topics, or keywords related to your niche. So you can respond quickly if needed. 

Key Features

Brand monitoring, trend discovery, and outreach

Pricing

Buzzsumo offers a 30-day free trial. Pricing starts at $199 per month.

10. Meltwater

Meltwater has a social media monitoring feature that captures brand mentions across social media channels, news sites, blogs, forums, and review sites. And it sends alerts to help you respond quickly.

'Conversations' tab from social media monitoring tool Meltwater showing messages and mentions from different social channels.

You can customize alerts and dashboards and also automate monthly reporting. 

Key Features

Brand monitoring, sentiment analysis, and analytics

Pricing

Pricing isn’t indicated. You’ll need to reach out for a quote.

11. Sendible

Sendible is a social media management platform agencies can use to schedule, plan, and monitor social media content. 

Different social media accounts you can connect on the 'Profiles' tab of social media management tool Sendible.

The social media monitoring feature can be used to observe mentions and hashtags. As well as keywords related to your brand, competitors, and industry. 

The platform also lets you reply directly to users.

Key Features

Social media monitoring, post scheduling, and sentiment analysis

Pricing

Sendible has a 14-day free trial. Pricing starts at $29 per month for one user.

12. Sprinklr

Sprinklr is a customer experience platform for audience targeting and segmentation, social media advertising, social listening, etc. 

'Voice of Customers' report in Sprinklr showing total mentions, popular hashtags, top phrases and sentiment distribution.

The media monitoring feature lets you set automated alerts on brand mentions. And enables you to benchmark yourself against the competition.

And the social listening feature makes it possible to analyze customer conversations across different channels. 

Key Features

Social media management, reputation management, and competitive benchmarking. 

Pricing

Sprinklr has a 30-day free trial. Paid plans begin at $249 per month per user. 

13. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a social media management platform for planning, scheduling, etc. 

You can use it to manage a social media content calendar, monitor online conversations, respond to comments, and look at campaign analytics. 

Hootsuite Insights dashboard categorizing mentions by total over time, by hour and day, and by sentiment.

You can also track keywords and hashtags related to your brand from one dashboard. 

Key Features

Social media monitoring, paid social management, and analytics

Pricing

Hootsuite has a 30-day free trial. Pricing begins at $99 per month for one user.

Monitor and Engage with Your Social Media Audience

Keeping tabs on conversations relevant to your brand is key for managing your reputation. 

While it’s possible to do it manually, having the right tools makes it far easier. 

If you’re ready to streamline your social media monitoring efforts, try Social Inbox in the Semrush Social app. You’ll also get access to an array of other tools that can support your social media efforts. 

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