These days, social media has a great impact on businesses.
Business decisions have always relied on the target audience’s perception, and social media now represents a major method of deducing it.
And it’s not just businesses.
It is a significant part of decision-making for consumers too.
And on the flip side.
I could go on with more stats, but I’m sure you get the point by now — your brand is missing out on huge business opportunities if you’re not listening to your target audience on social.
The way to bridge the gap is social listening.
Social listening is simply monitoring social media platforms for relevant marketing insights.
It helps businesses with a wide range of business research and brand management. That includes reputation management, audience analysis, competitors’ analysis, lead generation, product research, customer support, influencer marketing, etc.
Yes, it may sound pretty overwhelming or impossible, and that’s where social media listening tools come in.
These software will do the heavy lifting and present valuable data in no time.
Read on to find an in-depth analysis of the best social listening tools.
| Tool | Pricing (starts from) | Free plan/trial? | Recommended For | Lead Generation | Content Marketing | Influencer Marketing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Awario | $24/month | ✅ | Overall Social Listening | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Brandwatch | $108/month | ✅ | Consumer Intelligence | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Brand24 | $49/month | ✅ | Sentiment Analysis | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Sprout Social | $89/month | ✅ | Appealing reports | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
| BuzzSumo | $79/month | ✅ | Content Marketing | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
1. Awario (Overall Best For Social Listening)
Awario is a fantastic social media listening tool for obtaining all sorts of competitive advantages from all over the web. If there is a conversation about your brand, Awario is the go-to software for finding it.
This social listening tool monitors brand mentions on blogs, forums, news websites, or social media channels so that you can respond promptly and appropriately.
In addition, Awario works like prospecting tools assists businesses with lead generation through Awario Leads. This works by monitoring posts where users may want product recommendations or have issues with competitors.
Its powerful artificial intelligence can spot leads in multiple languages, from any location, and across the internet. However, it is also intelligent to detect only relevant mentions so you do not waste resources. There’s also the freedom to input specific terms and keywords to include or exclude from the search.
Other notable features
Powerful analytics. Powered by sentiment analysis, you can track a number of factors about a brand, including the reach, mentions, etc., and get important analytics and reports. It also comes as an exportable file with a link for easy sharing.
Flexible search function and organized results. Awario’s boolean search function lets you search manually for specific data. The results are organized with related information coming together and replied mentions moving to another folder.
Real-time alerts even on the go. Whether on mobile or computer devices, you can continue monitoring conversations and get up-to-date alerts through email.
Pricing
Awario pricing comes in three folds starting from $24/month for the somewhat limited Starter plan. Data exports and shareable reports are available with the Pro plan at $75/month, while the Enterprise plan at $249/month gives access to more report types, API, and an account manager.
💬 The bottom line
Awario social listening software is a sophisticated solution to all your social listening needs. It has a straightforward setup, easy-to-use features, and multiple alert and report types to help your growth marketing and reputation building.
2. Brandwatch (Best For Consumer Intelligence)
Founded in 2006, Brandwatch is an award-winning social media engagement tool. This social media monitoring tool combines powerful features to help brands and organizations stay up to date with their customers online.
Brandwatch is aware of how fast things happen online and has positioned itself to help businesses monitor, understand, analyze, and respond as things unfold. It prides itself on powerful consumer intelligence to generate insights from historical data and trends.
That means Brandwatch can generate unique information from customer demographic data. It also uses image recognition and data visualization to get more insights. For instance, it can recognize your logo to detect brand mentions or other images for specific data.
Real-time engagement is essential for brand reputation, and you can achieve this easily with Brandwatch. That’s because it lets you send personalized messages in real time.
Other notable features
- Powerful collaboration for a smooth workflow. By combining all content on a single calendar, Brandwatch makes it easy to get all data and assign user roles from the same place.
- Listen more from a spot. With Brandwatch, you can manage all social media platforms at the same time. That means you can schedule posts, drive engagement, and analyze performance with a single tool.
- Intuitive data visualization. Brandwatch uses Vizia, its data visualization feature, to deliver valuable data collection and analysis.
Pricing
Brandwatch has two sets of pricing plans. There is an all-in-one Essentials plan at $108/month. This plan has the basics for social listening, but you can get more features by contacting the sales team through the pricing page.
💬 The bottom line
With a consistent user interface, an intuitive user experience, and a couple of features, Brandwatch supplies unique business, customer, competitor data and link-building services that will enhance your social listening strategies.
3. Brand24 (Best For Sentiment Analysis)
If customer satisfaction is your aim, as it should be for any business, then maintaining a perfect online reputation should be at the forefront of your objectives. That is what Brand24 achieves for businesses.
This excellent social listening tool monitors online channels for topics related to you and your competition. To achieve this, Brand24 uses a combination of unique features, like filters, scores, analysis, metrics, alerts, etc.
For instance, it features a mentions feed that delivers real-time mentions of your brand so you can engage immediately. It also has the Discussion Volume Chart, which detects changes in social media conversations. Alongside helping you bank on positive mentions, it will also help to arrest negative ones quickly.
If you’re searching for mentions, Brand 24 will make the process seamless with a wide range of filters, from source and sentiment to trend level.
Other notable features
- Monitor brand perception easily with Sentiment Analysis. This feature helps to analyze the mentions you’re getting, whether neutral, positive, or negative.
- Where are you getting mentions? Most social listening software will show you mentions, but Brand24 will go further to tell you the exact places you’re getting them from. When combined with the influence score, you can locate industry influencers easily to promote your brand.
- Flexible data reports. Getting and using reports also come with flexibility as you can generate them as PDF, .XLS files, o,r infographics.
- Real-time alerts. There are a variety of ways to get notifications with Brand24. You can get them via app notifications or directly to your email inbox.
Pricing
Brand24 pricing plans are based on the number of keywords, brand mentions, and updates. The lowest plan is $49/month for three keywords and 2,000 mentions, while the highest is $249/month for 100k mentions and 25 keywords. There are also two plans in-between for more freedom and brand-tailored pricing.
💬 The bottom line
Brand24 is another wonderful social listening software with excellent features and flexibility. From its reporting and analysis features to pricing, you can enjoy freedom while choosing your listening options.
4. Sprout Social (Best for Appealing Visual Reports)
Sprout Social was founded in 2010 and, therefore, has had enough time to grow its excellent social media management platform. This tool will help your brand’s conversational marketing strategy by analyzing social media posts to monitor brand mentions.
This social listening tool has a friendly interface that makes it easy to discover all the necessary helpful intelligence. To understand brand perception and how it impacts competition within your industry, Sprout Social will carry out web monitoring for relevant online conversations.
What this achieves is access to consumer thoughts and feedback that will aid the development of winning strategies. It will also help you understand customers, competitors, and the industry.
Other notable features
- Unique customer data for better targeting. Sprout Social research takes a deep dive into key demographics, like location, age, gender, and device. This makes it possible to improve product development and customer satisfaction.
- Know how customers feel. The sentiment analysis will help you determine what consumers think about your products. By designating your social mentions as positive, negative, or neutral, you can better manage your social presence.
- Never miss any findings. Sprout Social delivers appealing visual data. That means you can get critical findings quickly and measure the success of campaigns.
- Discover social media influencers. When someone advocates for your brand, it is better to use them as ambassadors, and Sprout Social can help you uncover this information.
Pricing
Three pricing plans exist for using Sprout Social. All plans are much cheaper when billed annually, with the Standard plan available for just $89/month instead of $99. The professional plan is $149/month, and the Advanced plan goes for $249/month.
💬 The bottom line
Sprout Social is an all-in-one social media growth and management platform. Apart from building brands with robust engagement, publishing, analytics, and advocacy services, its listening platform is one of the best tools to help you leverage relevant social discussions around your brand.
5. BuzzSumo (Best For Content Marketing)
BuzzSumo was founded in 2014 to provide content marketing solutions to businesses. It is currently one of the most popular social listening tools, providing the right brand and industry monitoring for businesses worldwide.
According to the official website, BuzzSumo surfs through “billions of articles and trillions of social engagements,” which helps it build an in-depth and data-driven social listening experience. Hence, discovering trends and understanding your target audience and competition has never been more accessible.
Since studying the competition is a crucial business and marketing strategy, BuzzSumo will track essential metrics around your industry to reveal what works for your competitors. The Facebook Page Analyzer is one of the tools used for this. It compares as many as ten competitors’ Facebook pages to metrics like engagement and emotions.
Other notable features
- Enjoy real-time alerts. Is a discussion coming up around your brand or industry? Crisis alerting from BuzzSumo will give you a heads-up of essential conversations, so you get ready to respond appropriately.
- Find genuine brand influencers. BuzzSumo has made it easy to identify influencers by detecting those who get the most retweets when they share your social posts.
- Google Chrome extension. BuzzSumo also has a Chrome extension for extracting important information on the go. This will save you a ton of time wasted in content research and creation.
Pricing
In addition to the free plan, which gives limited access, there are three other pricing plans at $79, $139, and $239/month, respectively.
💬 The bottom line
BuzzSumo is capable of a wide range of social listening services, which makes it a perfect solution for all forms of business, whether startups or huge corporations. It also has dedicated tools for excellent content monitoring and competition analysis.
Conclusion
As more people get on social media, the influence on business will grow, and that will mean more opportunities for companies that are properly positioned to take advantage.
This is not going to be easy, especially not manually.
That’s why social listening platforms will be crucial in bridging the gap between happenings on social platforms and business. The above-stated software are your best bet because of the powerful features they pack.
With these tools, you can get all forms of insights, analysis, metrics, data-driven reports, alerts, and strategies to put your business in the driving seat while prioritizing what your audience and target customers want.
