Social media monitoring tools are the life-blood of anyone in PR and social media. With dozens of different platforms, hashtags, keywords, user handles etc to keep track of, you need a monitoring tool. It’s quite common for some of the more prevelant social media monitoring tools to have certain access restrictions. You might also be using multiple social media monitoring tools. This can lead to so much confusion regarding which stories are being posted where and by whom. At a glance it can be hard to determine if you should get in touch with the person behind the story or someone else — that’s where my latest review comes in. I’ve been testing 6 social media monitoring tools over the last 2 months and have put together an honest report on their strengths and weaknesses
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is one of the best media monitoring tools to use for Social Media tracking. In addition to monitoring functions, you can schedule, publish and analyse posts straight from the dashboard.
Price: Pricing starts at just under €40/mo, with a 30-day free trial option.
Google Rating: 4.1 ⭐️ (3,180 votes)
The tool is limited to Social Media, so you won’t be able to see other mentions on the internet. However, you can still customize your keywords and search terms according to your brand name and product criteria.
If your main focus is on monitoring Social Media activities, this tool is great to use. It is user-friendly and will help you to collect valuable data in terms of consumer research. This way you can learn more about your target audience.
Anewstip
Maybe not the most widely known tool, but Anewstip is a unique media intelligence tool. It acts as a tracker and database where you can store contact information of over a million journalists, editors, bloggers and news outlets. For public relations, this is a great feature to have when it comes to writing media pitches.
Price: Free+, standard paid plans start at around €173,30.
Google Rating: 4.8 ⭐️
This tool is great for entrepreneurs, marketers and PR specialists who need to find and connect with relevant media agents. Moreover, the tools allow you to track what your contacts publish about you.
Anewstip helps you to track journalists on Twitter, via your keyword matches. This way you can build your media list and send personalised pitches, as well as track how many are opened or clicked on.
The tool helps you to track what type of outreaches work best, so you can customize your angles to find the most effective approach.
SocialSearcher
The tool has been described as one of the most powerful Social Media monitoring helpers to access against low pricing.
Pricing: Paid tool with a 14-day free trail. Pricing starts at €3,49/mo.
Google Rating: 3.4 ⭐️
Since this is a social-digital tool, you are able to track real-time conversation where your key search terms show up across social networks and the web.
The tool is able to crawl Twitter, Google+, Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, Tumblr, Reddit, Flickr, Dailymotion and Vimeo. All the information it collects is available in a single dashboard, with a friendly layout, for your convenience.
Covered Press
Covered Press uses smart learning to grow alongside you and is highly rated among press monitoring tools. This tool is an automatic press tracker, with reporting and analytic software designed to make PR data collection and management easier.
Price: Packages start at $99/mo.
Google Rating: 4.7 ⭐️
As a PR agency, this tool offers you the support you need to create a well-rounded media report for your clients. With Covered Press, you can monitor critical mentions across the media spectrum.
BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is a well-loved tool among marketers and publicists, as well as listed among the best media monitoring tools. The tool helps you to find trending content, deep dive into research and data points, connect with influencers and monitor mentions, trends and links.
Price: When you sign up for a paid package, you also receive a 7-day free trail. Pricing starts at around €85/mo.
Google Rating: 4.5 ⭐️
You can set up real-time alerts for mentions of your own brand, your clients, products, competitors and relevant trends. You can do the same for relevant influencers, journalists and bloggers to stay up-to-date with what they publish.
With relation to your PR activities, you can track new backlinks to your clients sites and activities related to organic growth and new traffic.
Brand24
Brand24 is one of the leading media monitoring services for PR pros out there.
Easy to use, used by companies of all sizes, it’s been battle tested both by large brands like IKEA and small companies alike. The sources Brand24 monitors include:
- Online news sources
- Social media platforms
- Review sites
- Blogs
- Video platforms
- Podcasts
- Discussion forums
- Newsletters
- Other publicly available sources
Apart from online and social media monitoring in real time, Brand24 offers a handful of data and analytics about collected mentions:
- Their social and non-social reach
- Sentiment analysis
- Comparisons
- Influential authors
- Hashtag analytics
- Most active sites profiles
- Context of discussion
- Popular hashtags
Importantly, Brand24 has a few convenient ways to keep you notified about the topics you monitor:
- Daily and weekly reports on email
- Storm Alerts on email are sent when sudden changes in metrics happen
- Slack notifications arrive directly to one of your Slack channels
- Push notifications from mobile app
Once you set them up, there’s no need to use the media monitoring tool as all mentions come to you.
When it comes to affordable news monitoring services, Brand24 offers a wide media coverage and robust analytics for a reasonable price.
Price: Free trial, prices start at $49
Brandwatch
Brandwatch is probably the biggest news tracking tool here. It’s a huge social media monitoring tool companies use to analyze the online presence of their brand.
Among many features, Brandwatch offers typical news monitoring:
- Keyword monitoring
- Rules
- Sentiment analysis
- Categories
- Context of discussion
Apart from reputation management, Brandwatch is also a good choice if you’re interested in consumer insights. The tool has a unique AI platform that digs deep into insights collected in mentions.
Prices: Starting at $800
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is another social media monitoring service that has been on the market for a long time now.
At a first glance, it looks like a social media scheduling tool, but there’s more to it. Hootsuite is great for monitoring various news sources.
It’s a powerful tool with lots of features ranging from social media scheduling, social media analytics to monitoring, and more. Another cool thing about it is that you can integrate it with many other tools.
Price: Starting at $19
Sprout Social
Sprout Social is one of these news tracking tools that is a good fit for small businesses, agencies, and enterprises alike. The tool is mostly a social media management tool, but some features make it great for online news monitoring as well.
Sprout Social’s social listening platform is rich in features that go beyond news monitoring and into in-depth analytics:
- Audience analysis
- Customer feedback
- Consumer research
- Influencer recognition
- Sentiment research
- Campaign analytics
- Competitor comparison
- Trend identification
Price: Starting at $99
Cision Communications Cloud
Cision Communications Cloud is an all-in-one news monitoring tool that covers both digital and traditional media sources.
Cision Communications Cloud makes it easy to collect media mentions from news articles, radio broadcast, or online media.
Cision Communications Cloud offers other features that might be useful for PR professionals:
- Relationship Management: The tool offers an influencer database that allows outreach and improves establishing PR relations
- Audiences & Attribution: Cision Communications Cloud helps you analyze whether or not your PR campaigns reach your target audience
- Analysis and reporting: The tool has some great reporting features so that users can easily build the story around data and draw insights
Price: Contact sales
Meltwater
It’s another news monitoring tool that covers traditional and digital media. Meltwater tracks online news, social media platforms, print media, broadcasts, and podcasts. Apart from media monitoring service, Meltwater offers comprehensive media analysis:
- Customizable dashboards to share results with other stakeholders
- AI-powered reporting
- Translations
- Social measurement
- Sentiment scoring
- Influencer identification
- Meltwater simplifies real-time data monitoring with revamped tool | PR Week
Price: Not provided
SentiOne
It’s a social listening and customer service automation tool that allow news monitoring across social media, portals, forums and blogs.
SentiOne offers also insights into various metrics connected to the online performance of the keywords you monitor: conversation volume, engagement, share of voice, sentiment analysis, influencer identification, and more.
Price: Starting at $229
TVEyes
Contrary to other tools, TVEyes is able to do news monitoring only in traditional media. The platform allows users to monitor, report, analyze, and archive news from the biggest international markets.
The tool has been highly appreciated by the United States Department of Defence as their sole provider of their news monitoring.
Price: Contact sales
Critical Mention
Critical Mention is another news monitoring tool which covers TV, radio, social media, news sites, and the Internet. The monitoring service supports broadcast monitoring, online news monitoring, and social media monitoring, too.
It has been praised for quick and easy access to monitored news. Critical Mention makes it easy to share the most critical online news with your team.
Price: Contact sales
Conclusion
Social media monitoring tools are a necessity in today’s fast-paced, news-driven world of content marketing, public relations, and advertising. Do you have a comprehensive social media monitoring tool set? If not, it’s time for you to review your choices.