5 Best Social Media Monitoring Tools and Why You Need Them

What are people saying about your brand on social media? Could you quickly answer the question? Getting to the answer can be a matter that takes many hours of work or just a couple of clicks, it all depends on whether it is done through a manual process or with the help of a social media monitoring tool respectively.

Social media monitoring tools are the best way to answer the most important question a brand can ask to understand the impact their social media marketing efforts are having on their target audience.

A monitoring tool, it gathers and presents information from your audience and competitors on a single platform, so a brand can understand which conversations it is engaged in and which ones it is not but should be. Today we present you 5 ideal social media monitoring tools for your brand.

What Is Social Media Monitoring?

Monitoring social networks means listening carefully. The monitoring process allows you to keep track of the conversations that take place on social networks that are relevant to your brand and business objectives. It can have two fundamental objectives:

• Keep you informed about your audience; connect with your customers and provide personalized attention
• Stay up to date on your industry; understand trends in your sector and even unrelated sectors that work for inspiration

An adequate monitoring of social networks is based on quantitative data, that is, metrics and key performance indicators, as well as qualitative data, that is, data analysis and actionable conclusions such as strategies, content ideas and publications, among others..

Why Do Social Media Monitoring?

Monitoring social networks goes far beyond just gathering data and interpreting it, it is also about finding useful information that allows you to understand, for example, the impact of your brand on the conversations that take place on social networks, the profitability of your actions and social media efforts and even finding relevant hashtags that you can use to boost your content or keywords that you can use to expand your reach on platforms like YouTube.

Monitoring social networks, or in other words, paying attention to the conversations that are relevant to your brand that take place on social networks, is essential to stay relevant to what happens on a day-to-day basis with your target audience and thus attract their attention. to enhance your business results in social networks.

Social media monitoring focuses on:

• Mentions of your brand (with or without direct tagging) and of your competitors
• Hashtags relevant to your audience and sector
• industry trends

So, let’s talk a little about:

• Share of voice (SOV) or share of social voice
• Social ROI: Return on investment in social networks
• HashTags or relevant keywords

Share of Voice (SOV)

Share of voice, also known as social voice share, is a form of measurement that helps you understand the visibility of your brand compared to your main competitors by supporting metrics such as brand recognition and even sales.

It is measured taking into account the total mentions within a defined group of competitors (or even a specific industry and related topics) and the percentage of these mentions that belong to your brand and what these mentions say, in this way you could understand quantitatively and qualitatively what people say about your brand.

This analysis has a lot to do with a competitive analysis and can help you understand in which conversation topics you are appearing and in which you should not appear, let’s call them opportunity conversations, for example, if your brand sells health services, then you should appear in conversations about symptoms of diseases, recommendations for a healthy life or sports practices, among others.

Creating useful content for people who want to share it, creating and managing digital ad campaigns, running influencer marketing campaigns, and even hiring mentions in the mass media, are some strategies that can be used to increase your Share of Voice on networks. social, that is, make people talk more about your brand on their social networks.

Social ROI: Return on investment in social networks

The ROI —Return of Investment— is a financial indicator that determines the relationship between the money invested in certain elements and the profitability generated after a specific action.

Applying the concept of ROI to social networks, we build the social ROI, that is, the return on investment of your actions, strategies, campaigns and content on your brand’s social networks, divided by the investment that each of these actions required, i.e., what was the return on investment in social media for your business?

Network advertising campaigns are the best example of investments made in social networks, however, equally important issues such as paid social management tools, design costs and content production in different formats must also be taken into account.. Contracts with influencers, media, etc.

This indicator allows you to understand if the investments are greater than the results obtained, that is, a negative ROI that implies loss of money, or, ideally, the results obtained are greater than the investments made, that is, a positive ROI that implies profits for your business.

In conclusion, measuring ROI in social networks will allow you to understand what is working and what needs to be adjusted to boost the results of your social media marketing strategy.

HashTags or Relevant Keywords

The use of Hashtags allows content to be grouped according to a specific topic and facilitates the location of content related to a topic of interest to users on social networks. They can be used on all social networks, however they are more popular on platforms like Twitter and Instagram.

Given its usefulness for users, it is highly recommended that brands use Hashtags since they can enhance the visibility, reach and participation of a brand in different social networks.

3 of the most important characteristics of a hashtag are:

• First write the symbol # and then the keywords: #example.
• By adding the hash symbol (#) at the beginning of the characters, a link is created to all the content of the social network that uses the same hashtag, so this content will be grouped in one place.
• It must match the keywords for which your content can be searched.

5 Brand Social Media Monitoring Tools

Manually reviewing every single message, post, reply, or comment across all social networks would be an incredibly time-consuming task, however, social media monitoring tools are here to help improve the way this task is handled. Out, let’s start with the list.

We introduce you:

• hoot suite
• brand watch
• Brand Mentions
• feel
• Buzz Monitor Social Listening

1.Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a social media monitoring tool that allows you to manage your social media from one place. Among its main features it allows you to:

• Schedule and publish content on all your social profiles
• Check its effectiveness in real time
• Boost content that performs best
• Organize and publish content from all your social networks in a single calendar
• Follow trends to be aware of everything that happens with your business

Payment options: It is a free tool with payment options. It allows a free trial of up to 30 days. Its professional plan, at a cost of USD 49 per month, allows:

• 1 user
• 10 social media accounts
• unlimited posts
• post schedule
• Access your messages from a single inbox

The more number of functionalities, the higher its cost becomes. Check their prices and plans.

2.Brandwatch

Brandwatch is presented as a set of complementary and specialized tools for monitoring social networks.

Among its features are:

• Research: Conduct in-depth studies. Anticipates consumer needs by providing structure and meaning to millions of voices
• Monitoring: Monitor your brand. Survive and succeed in a rapidly changing digital landscape and understand what your consumers are saying.
• Content: Create impactful content. Grow your brand with a data-driven content strategy and manage it all through a collaborative social content calendar.
• Engagement: Connect with your consumers. Deliver an exceptional customer experience and connect with the right people in the right place at the right time.

Paid Options: You can try the Essentials plan free for 14 days. This plan allows you to schedule content, interact with customers, and measure impact. They recommend them for 1 or 2 users. Starting at $108 per month.

3. Brand Mentions

Brand Mentions bills itself as the tool that digs into every corner of the internet to find all the relevant mentions about anyone or anything. Your value promise is based on: Building committed relationships, acquiring and retaining customers, and managing brand reputation.

Among its features are:

• Social mention: Search and analysis of social mentions in real time
• Hashtag Tracker: Hashtag Tracking Tools to Monitor Hashtag Performance
• Brand Tracker: Brand Tracking Tools to Monitor Brand Performance
• Social Media Tracker: Social Media Analytics Tools to Monitor Your Brand and Competitors

Payment options: Free for 7 days. They allow you to cancel at any time. His plan costs $99 per month.

4. Sentione

Sentione bills itself as the AI-powered Social Listening monitoring tool for marketing teams for brand monitoring, trend analysis, and customer analytics.

Among its features are:

• Social Listening: Access millions of online sources through a single interface. Collect Facebook posts, Tweets, YouTube comments, and more!
• Online Data Analytics: Easily perform advanced analytics on large groups of online mentions. Who are your best customers, and where do they hang out? What makes your customers prefer you over the competition?
• Automated Reports: Receive daily, weekly and monthly updates on every important topic. Never miss an important phenomenon online.
• Crisis Prevention: Sudden rise in mentions? Negative comments about your brand generating interest? A negative review from an influencer?

Payment Options: Your Team Plan costs $299 per month. This plan is presented as ideal for marketers, bloggers and journalists with the following characteristics:

• Up to 5 projects
• 5 Users
• 1 language available
• Historical data up to 12 months
• Unlimited Keywords
• Unlimited Results
• Real Time Monitoring

5. Buzz Monitor

Buzzmonitor is presented as the tool that allows you to discover what is being said about your brand on social networks, listen to conversations, analyze your audience and identify trends in your sector.

Among its features are:

• Listen to what they say about your brand and competitors: Through Social Listening you can find out what the public feels about your brand, what are the most cited topics, what is the time with the most buzz, and much more.
• Follow closely the performance of your campaigns: Monitor sponsored publications and dark posts from your brands and competitors.
• Monitor Social News: What news was shared the most on your social networks? What is engagement? Which ones had the most reactions and impacted your brand?

Paid Options: Try Buzzmonitor free for 14 days. Information must be requested to access the prices of their plans.