The Social Media Tracking Platforms’ main objective is to assist you in your search for the most trustworthy, reputable and widely used social media tracking tools. It aims to present them in a user-friendly, informative and accessible way. The Social Media Tracking Platforms have gathered a plethora of technologies that are ready to be deployed by businesses but are also easy to use for anyone who needs to know more about the major players in this growing market
We’ve compiled a list of the best social media tracking tools available for free today. Our expertly handpicked and reviewed list of programs and apps is sure to help you get started with social media listening in no time.
Tweepsmap
What does it monitor?: Twitter
This combination analytics/social monitoring tool is built to show Twitter power-users how hashtags and topics travel, so you can tune into what your audience is talking about.
Reddit Keyword Monitor Pro
What does it monitor?: Reddit
With 430 million average monthly active users, Reddit is an often-overlooked social platform where conversation is often in-depth and honest. This tool allows you to monitor the site’s 138,000 active communities for the conversations you care about.
Social Mention
SocialMention is a simple but effective free tool to track the reach of keywords (or mentions) used in your social media campaigns. You can set email alerts for keywords specific to your social media marketing campaign that you need to track across the entire social media web.
The tool monitors more than eighty social media websites that include Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg and Google. A similar tool is provided for free by Google, known as Google Alerts. The only difference between the two is that, SocialMention is specific to social media sites and Google Alerts tracks mentions from across the internet in its entirety.
With SocialMention you can track keywords across blogs, microblogs, Q&A, comments, and news but it is however, effective at retrieving information from social networking sites.
In the above screenshot, you see four metrics calculated by this tool.
these are:
- Strength: Chances of your brand being mentioned in social media at that point of time.
- Sentiment: The ratio of positive mentions over negative mentions.
- Passion: Chances of how often the particular mention will repeat around the same social media circles.
- Reach: This is a metric of how influential the mention is. It is calculated by dividing the number of unique authors mentioning the particular word by total number of mentions.
Buffer
Also known as Bufferapp, Buffer is a great tool for scheduling, publishing and analyzing your posts all in one place. Buffer integrates with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media accounts. Furthermore, you can shorten your links using Bitly, or other URL shortening tools from within the app, that helps you track your link’s reach.
All the social media posts done via Buffer, can be tracked within their Analytics tab. You can track the posts that receive maximum interactions. You can also add UTM parameters and track your social media campaign URLs via Google Analytics, from within the tool.
This tool is like a one-stop-shop for your social marketing needs.
Pinterest Analytics
Pinterest Analytics provide a detailed insight into your activity. As well as displaying your top performing pins, audience demographic is broken down by gender, language and location enabling you to identify, and therefore, target your audience more easily.
The Pinterest Analytics tool also includes the Interests tab. This unique feature will display your audience’s interests, along with clickable content.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite isn’t just a social media management software; it also monitors relevant conversations on social media, and provides relevant insights.
Aside from tracking key topics and brand mentions. You can also analyze your performance on social media and measure your results against competitors. This can help spot trends, patterns and optimize your social media presence.
With Hootsuite, you can separate conversions from your paid and owned media, and filter out conversations by keyword, language and location.
Pros: Manage your entire presence on social platforms from one place.
Cons: Higher price than other alternatives. Lower-tiered packages do not include social listening, analytics or benchmarking.
Price: $29 USD – $599 USD per month.
Falcon.io
Falcon.io is an all-in-one social management tool that helps you plan your content calendar and manage your inbox across different platforms. Also, you can create and schedule ads, and monitor your brand’s impact on social.
The platform was built to assist social media marketers with social listening, customer engagement, content marketing and audience management.
Its social listening feature allows you to keep tuned into online conversations and trends, track your campaigns and discover top influencers that are engaging with your brand.
Falcon.io supports all the major social media such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn and Twitter, and makes their sentiment analysis available in multiple languages
Pros: Intuitive user experience. Great social listening functionality.
Cons: It comes at a hefty price, so it is not available to smaller businesses.
Price: Essentials available at $129 USD per month. Contact Falcon.io to inquire about their custom packages/pricing for larger organizations.
Meltwater
From tracking brand mentions to monitoring campaigns in real time, Meltwater gives you a rundown on conversations about your brand on social media.
Meltwater’s AI engine helps you listen to relevant social media conversations, and gather historical audience data to make more informed marketing decisions.
Moreover, the platform enables you to dig deeper into your audience insights. Allowing you to discover the exact segments that are engaging in conversations related to your brand, and identify significant influencers among them.
Similar to other tools on this list, Meltwater offers a social media management functionality. It enables you to plan and schedule posts and engage with your audience via a centralized inbox.
Pros: A great tool to identify media contacts and influencers in your industry.
Cons: Pricey, especially considering the limited number of users for the cost you pay.
Price: Contact Meltwater for pricing.
Conclusion
Shape your social media marketing strategy with this suite of tools for measuring, listening and engagement. These free tools help you to understand the benefits of social media, measure brand sentiment and monitor your social media presence.