5 Social Media Tools To Help Listen To Your Customers – And Your Competitors

Social listening is more than a trendy buzzword; it’s an essential part of your business’ digital strategy.

Listening to your target audiences online helps you monitor trends, identify potential influencers, and track consumer sentiment to grow your community and develop more relevant, engaging content.

For even more valuable insight use social listening tools to monitor what your competitors are doing and how their consumers respond. We break down 5 of the best social media listening tools to make the job easy for you:

1. Hootsuite

One of the earliest comprehensive social monitoring tools available, Hootsuite remains one of the most popular today. Hootsuite Insights accesses real-time data from over 100 million sources in 50+ languages across 25+ social networks and other platforms to make sure you never miss a conversation that matters.

Social sentiment around your brand – or your competitors – can be filtered by location, language, and gender for a multi-dimensional view of your market segments. Take advantage of the free basic plan or upgrade for additional functionality.

2. Sprout Social

Easy to use and reasonably priced with plans starting at $59/month, it’s no wonder Sprout Social is among the leading social media management tools on the market today.

Track hashtags, keywords mentions and sentiment across multiple social channels in real time, then use the data you’ve gathers to gain deeper insights thanks to a suite of helpful analytics tools and customizable reporting options.

3. Mention

Mention promises to scour the web, allowing you to monitor your brand, your products, your consumers and your competitors anywhere online.

An integrated dashboard allows you to post, reply, and engage on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram from a single screen, while collaboration tools help you share and assign tasks to your team members. The budget friendly Solo plan starts at just $29/month.

4. Likeable Local

Designed specifically for small business, Likeable Local is on a mission to transform small businesses into #likeable businesses through the power of social media.

The platform promises to help manage your reputation and track the conversations which matter to you with advanced keyword tracking across multiple channels, while connecting you with the people searching for or talking about your services online. Monthly plans start at $299.

5. Brandwatch

Popular among larger enterprises and agency clients, the social listening tools from Brandwatch provide valuable insights to small business owners as well.

Brandwatch Analytics tracks conversations as they happen on social media channels, blogs, forums, review sites and more, to help you listen to your customers anywhere, any time.

The extensive selection of features for analysis, includies advanced filtering, tagging and categorization, Alerts, flexible charting, topic and sentiment analysis, and plenty more data management capabilities. Pricing is available upon request only.