Social media monitoring tools are a dime a dozen, but we’ve brought together the cream of the free social media monitoring tools based on user best reviews. You’ll find a variety of free tools here to help you monitor mentions of your brand and engagement across dozens of social channels.
Monitoring your client’s social media can be very important. Followers will give you the inside scoop on how your business is doing, and the tools mentioned in this article will make this task a lot easier. When you have thousands of people following your company on multiple social media platforms, it can seem like an impossible task to check each one manually. These tools provide a great way to keep up with what’s going on in your clients’ world.
We’ve researched the market and put together this list of the best free social media monitoring tools to make it easier for you to choose one that meets your needs. The list includes free tools, such as Hootsuite, Sendible, Sproutsocial and other options.
If you want to monitor any brand’s social media activities, it can be quite challenging to go through the sheer amount of free resources, rankings, charts and reviews available online. With so many options available, how do you find out which social media monitoring tool is best? That’s why we’re here, as your guide and so you don’t have to worry about it.
What is social media monitoring?
Social media monitoring is the process of monitoring what people say about your business on different social channels.
You can use the information you gather to keep your finger on the pulse when it comes to customer relationships and inform your marketing campaigns. To monitor mentions of your brand, you’ll need one of the social media monitoring tools listed above.
BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo aggregates data about the number of links to your domain and pieces of content receive — on social media, and via backlinks. These insights can help you determine which content formats perform best on each network, giving you ideas for web pages and pieces of content to replicate again. It’s freeup to a certain number of links, but after that, you have to pony up some cash for the Pro version.
Google Alerts
You can set up Google Alerts to see where people are mentioning you or your brand in search results, too. Enter specific terms that might be included in news story titles, and you’ll receive regular emails updating you to mentions from around the internet.
Native Analytics Tools
A few social networks provide free analytics to users — or, sometimes, analytics viewing is included in a business subscription for brands. Above is an example of what Twitter Analytics looks like for individuals, with more data and insights provided for business accounts.
Sentiment
Sentiment is a social customer service platform. Sentiment helps brands and contact centers communicate with customers on social media, and provide the best social customer service. [Free 30 day trial]
SharedCount
Track your shares, likes, tweets, and more. Enter a web address of a page and find out how much it has been shared in different social networking and bookmarking sites. Currently includes Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google+, and StumbleUpon.
Shared Counter
The social media counts checker gets the social count from popular social networks. This social checker fetches the socially shared count from Facebook, Google +, Linkedin, Pinterest, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Buffer and Delicious.
Hootsuite
Effectively track topics that matter—then respond quickly
Description: Hootsuite’s monitoring tool is part of its entire package of social media management tools. If you were to subscribe to one of their plans, you can also enjoy other features such as scheduling and analytics.
With Hootsuite, you can set up unlimited streams of social media content based on your mentions, selected keywords, hashtags, or locations. Furthermore, Hootsuite integrates with more than a hundred apps to help you do more from its dashboard.
Platforms supported: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google+, blogs, forums, and more
Prices: Free, $19 per month, $99 per month, $499 per month, and enterprise pricing
Sprout Social
Intelligent, real-time social media monitoring with Sprout
Description: Similar to Hootsuite, Sprout Social’s monitoring and engagement tools are part of its social media management software. Sprout Social has two separate features for social monitoring and engagement.
In the Smart Inbox, you’ll get all your social media mentions and messages. With the discovery feature, you can search for particular keywords on Twitter or Instagram (for example when someone mentions your brand without tagging your social media profile).
Platforms supported: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Google+
Prices (per user): $99 per month, $149 per month, and $249 per month
Agora Pulse
Discover what people are really saying about your business
Description: Agora Pulse is also an all-in-one social media management tool, which comes with scheduling, monitoring, engagement, and analytics features.
Its inbox collects all your social media mentions while its listening feature allows you to search for keywords, URL, and handle on Twitter. Agora Pulse also allows you to monitor comments on your Facebook and Instagram ads.
Platforms supported: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube
Prices: Free, $79 per month, $159 per month, plus enterprise options
Zoho Social
Social media management software for growing businesses
Description: Zoho Social is a social media management dashboard where you can publish and schedule posts, monitor social activities, analyze your social media performance.
In the Zoho Social dashboard, you’ll get real-time updates of how people are interacting with your brands. I find this great for events, where I might want to monitor related social media posts and engage with the attendees.
Platforms supported: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Google+
Prices: Free, $10 per month, $50 per month, $1,000 per year, and $1,500 per year
Brand24
Smart social media monitoring for businesses of all sizes
Description: Brand24 is a powerful yet affordable tool for those who want to dive deep into social media monitoring. Besides the major social media platforms, Brand24 also monitors blogs, forums, and other sites for mentions of your brand.
Apart from collecting your mentions and allowing you to reply, Brand24 analyzes your social media reach, interactions, sentiment, and more.
Platforms supported: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, blogs, forums, and more
Prices: $49 per month, $99 per month, and $399 per month
Mention
Media monitoring made simple
Description: Mention is more than just a monitoring tool for social media; it also monitors mentions of your brand across the web such as on Yelp, Booking.com, Tripadvisor, and Amazon. On its custom company plan, you can get in-depth insights and reports of your brand mentions.
If you connect your social media profiles to Mention, you can reply mentions directly within Mention. (You can even add a Buffer account and schedule your social media posts.)
Platforms supported: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, blogs, forums, and more
Prices: $29 per month, $99 per month, and enterprise pricing
Social Mention
Real-time social media search and analysis
Description: Not to be confused with Mention above, Social Mention is a free social media search engine for user-generated content across the web. It lets you find and measure what people are saying about your brand and products on places such as Twitter, YouTube, and blogs.
Since an account is not required, I believe Social Mention doesn’t save your searches.
Platforms supported: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google, and other websites
Price: Free
Keyhole
Hashtag tracking for Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook
Description: Rather than finding individual mentions of your brand, Keyhole provides trends, insights, and analysis of your preferred hashtags, keywords, or accounts. This makes it better for gathering data and reporting results than replying your social media mentions.
If you want to test out its tools, it offers free hashtag, keyword, and account tracking.
Platforms supported: Twitter and Instagram
Prices: $165 per month, $349 per month, $599 per month, $999 per month, and enterprise pricing
Trackur
Simple, fast, and affordable social media monitoring
Description: Like Keyhole, Trackur is a monitoring and analytics tool. It can help you find mentions of your brand (or your keywords) on social media, blogs, forums, and more and then analyze the trends, sentiment, and influence level.
Platforms supported: Twitter, Facebook, Google+, blogs, forums, and more
Prices: $97 per month, $197 per month, and $447 per month
Buzzlogix
Social media monitoring and engagement made simple
Description: Buzzlogix helps you with both social monitoring and social engagement. For social monitoring, you can track content with your preferred keywords and get the statistics in easy-to-understand graphs. For social engagement, you can monitor multiple social media profiles and response to social mentions and messages.
Platforms supported: Google+, Twitter, YouTube, blogs, forums, and news sites
Prices: $19.95 per month, $49.95 per month, $99.95 per month, and $399.95 per month
TweetDeck
The most powerful Twitter tool for real-time tracking, organizing, and engagement
Description: TweetDeck is the official Twitter management dashboard, where you can manage multiple Twitter accounts and monitor mentions, keywords, Twitter lists, and more in separate columns. And it’s free!
Platform supported: Twitter
Price: Free
Iconosquare
Instagram analytics and management platform
Description: Iconosquare is one of the most popular Instagram analytics and management platforms. Besides its robust analytics and management features, Iconosquare offers custom feeds, which you can use to monitor specific Instagram content. For each feed, you can add up to 50 users and 20 hashtags.
Platforms supported: Instagram
Prices (per Instagram account): $9 per month, $29per month, $49 per month, and from $990 per month
Tailwind
Social media monitoring for Pinterest and Instagram
Description: Tailwind is built specifically for Pinterest and Instagram, the two visual social media platforms. Apart from its scheduling and analytics features, Tailwind enables you to monitor your content and your competitors. It also provides information about emerging trends so that you can tap into them.
Platforms supported: Pinterest and Instagram
Prices: $15 per month, $799.99 per month, and enterprise pricing
Sendible
Seize opportunities via social listening
Description: Sendible is a full social media management tool, built for agencies that manage multiple clients. On top of scheduling and collaborating on social media content, you can also respond to comments and messages from an inbox and monitor hashtags, keywords, and your competitors on social media and the web.
Platforms supported: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Google+, blogs, review sites (e.g. Yelp), and more
Prices: $49 per month, $199 per month, and $499 per month, and enterprise pricing
How often should you monitor your brand?
Social media monitoring is an ongoing task, and it’s best when you take stock of what’s being said about your businesses at least once a day.
By monitoring your brand mentions regularly, you can stay up-to-date on the latest discussions regarding your business and be the first to know about any issues or negative sentiment. The sooner you know about these kinds of things, the sooner you can take steps to resolve them.
Conclusion
Social media is a big place with a lot going on at any given time. If you’re monitoring a brand or campaign, it’s critical to know what people are saying about you online. There are all kinds of paid tools that will help you track brand monitoring, but there are also several free social media monitoring tools you can use, too.
The right toolkit can help your business boost conversion, increase social sharing and create more valuable content that increases sales, leads and exposure. So here are the top free tools to help you monitor social media mentions across a range of social platforms, to help you find insights from which you can build action plans and implement.