In the rapidly evolving digital landscape, staying ahead of trends and understanding audience sentiment is crucial for small businesses. As we step into 2024 and a new decade, the importance of social media listening tools has never been more pronounced. These tools offer invaluable insights, enabling marketers to craft more effective strategies, engage with their target audience, and respond to emerging trends in real time. In this article, we will explore the essential social media listening tools that every small business should have in their arsenal to navigate the dynamic online environment in the coming years.
What Is a Social Media Listening Tool?
A social media listening tool, or a social listening platform is a software application or platform that monitors and analyses online conversations and mentions about specific topics, brands, or keywords across various social networks. These tools help businesses and marketers track real-time discussions and social media activities, gather insights, and understand public sentiment.
By using social media listening tools, small businesses can:
- Monitor Brand Mentions: Track mentions of their brand, products, or services across social media channels.
- Analyse Sentiment: Assess the tone and sentiment (positive, negative, or neutral) of online social media conversations.
- Identify Trends: Detect emerging trends and topics relevant to their industry or audience.
- Engage with Audience: Respond to customer queries, feedback, and concerns in a timely manner.
- Competitive Analysis: Keep an eye on competitors’ activities and public perception.
- Measure Campaign Effectiveness: Evaluate the impact and reach of marketing and social media marketing campaigns.
Overall, social media listening tools provide valuable data and key metrics that can inform decision-making, enhance marketing and content strategies and improve customer experience and customer relations.
Why Do Businesses Use Social Media Listening Tools?
(1) To Monitor Relevant Conversations
One of the main reasons that businesses use social listening tools is to track relevant conversations and industry news.
To generate accurate insights that will help you understand your audience and the market better, you should gather information about your target audience, especially the platforms that they are using, what are the topics that are being discussed in your industry, consumer sentiment, mentions about your competitors, and any current trends being mentioned.
(2) To Increase Awareness for Your Brand and Business
One use of a social media listening tool is to build brand awareness and increase the visibility of your business. For example, if the tool picks up conversations or trends relevant to your brand or products/services, you can join the discussions, engage with prospects and customers, and even provide helpful advice. This proactive engagement can significantly enhance your brand’s presence and reputation.
By also consistently participating in relevant conversations, you can establish your business as a thought leader in your industry, fostering trust and loyalty among your audience.
(3) To Monitor the Competitors
Do you know what customers are saying about your competitors? I’m going to guess no, because most of the time, marketers have no time for this task. However, listening to what customers are saying about your competitors can help you avoid the same mistakes they make, seize opportunities to exploit their weaknesses, or improve upon their best ideas.
By conducting competitor analysis and analysing competitor feedback, you can identify gaps in the market that your business can fill, understand industry trends, and benchmark your performance against others in your field. This strategic insight allows you to refine your offerings, tailor your marketing messages, and stay one step ahead in a competitive marketplace.
(4) To Gather Constructive Feedback
Using a social media listening tool can help your business gather valuable customer feedback. If you notice that customers frequently ask the same questions or complain about the same issue, it’s a clear sign that you need to address the concern with a solution.
Beyond identifying recurring issues, social media listening tools can also help you uncover deeper insights into customer preferences and experiences. By analysing the tone and content of customer interactions, you can pinpoint areas for improvement and identify opportunities to enhance your products or services. This proactive approach not only helps you address concerns more effectively but also demonstrates to your audience that you value their input and are committed to continuous improvement. Engaging with feedback in this way can foster stronger customer relationships, build trust, and ultimately contribute to long-term business success.
(5) To Look for Spokespersons
You can also find your most loyal supporters through the use of a social media monitoring tool and make them your brand’s influencers. These are usually people who love your products and are enthusiastic about recommending them to their family and friends.
By identifying and engaging with these brand advocates, you can leverage their genuine enthusiasm to enhance your marketing efforts. They can help amplify your message, reach new audiences, and provide authentic endorsements that resonate more deeply than traditional advertising. Recognising and rewarding these loyal supporters not only strengthens their commitment to your brand but also turns them into powerful allies in your growth and social strategy.
10 Best Social Media Listening Tools for Small Businesses
(1) Buffer
Buffer is an excellent social media monitoring platform to enhance your online presence. One of its standout features is its ability to help you find and join the most important conversations, delighting your audience in the process. From a centralised dashboard, you can post content and engage directly in replies through the inbox. This streamlines your interactions and ensures you never miss an opportunity to connect.
Buffer’s free plan is particularly beneficial for individual users or small businesses just getting started with social media, as it allows you to connect up to three social platforms, including Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and/or Google Business Profile. You can also subscribe for just USD6 per profile per month for additional features.
Buffer’s story monitoring feature allows you to record and analyse your stories on a wide range of channels like Facebook and Instagram, providing valuable insights into their performance.
A particularly appealing aspect of the free version is the inclusion of a landing page builder and an AI assistant to help you create social media posts faster. These features make it easier to manage your social media presence effectively, even without a large budget.
(2) Mention
Mention is another social media listening platform with advanced analytics that helps brands track the web and capture mentions of their brand online, with the ability to conduct real-time monitoring for over 44 languages. This impressive tool also lets you filter out content you do not want to see and create and save filters to make it easier to find what you are looking for.
Mention can help you organise your social media content with an easy-to-use editorial calendar on the dashboard. The competitive analysis tool also allows you to compare your brand against two or more competitors, enabling you to adjust your content to ensure it is always relevant and unique to your brand.
Another standout feature is the Crisis Management tool, which tracks the evolution of sentiment over time. This allows you to understand when and why a certain shift happened, and what led to the crisis. You can anticipate a crisis before it explodes and quickly resolve it.
You can start with a 14-day trial or sign up for a plan starting at just USD41 per month.
(3) Awario
Awario is another tool that should form part of your stack for your social listening strategy. It was designed to enhance brand awareness by monitoring your keywords across Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, X, Reddit, Twitter, blogs, forums, and the web at large. It provides both historical and real-time data.
Awario features tools to track and respond to comments, enabling you to build meaningful relationships with your audience on social media. You can also use Awario to identify influencers with popular posts on relevant topics or who have mentioned your brand online. The Leads feature helps identify posts seeking product recommendations similar to your offerings, allowing you to jump in and advise on issues people are having with competitors’ products or services. This can help you build a list of prospects looking for your products or services.
Although there are no free plans, you can use Awario for just USD49 per month, or USD29 per month if you commit to a full year, making it a budget-friendly option for small businesses.
(4) Hootsuite
Hootsuite, one of the more well-known social media management platforms, allows you to schedule and post content across various social media platforms. It also provides social listening tools to monitor brand mentions using relevant keywords and hashtags. With Hootsuite, you can track activities, topics, and trends across different social channels and access all your messages, comments, and brand mentions in one organised dashboard.
Hootsuite offers numerous native integrations, making it useful if you already have digital tools that you want to use in conjunction with Hootsuite. A professional Hootsuite plan costs USD99 per month (based on annual billing) for one user and ten social accounts. This plan includes unlimited post scheduling, analytics, AI captions, an ideas generator, basic social listening features, and more.
(5) Iconosquare
Iconosquare is primarily an advanced social media analytics and social media management software that helps brands track over 100 social media metrics on TikTok, X, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. However, it also offers some social listening capabilities.
With Iconosquare’s social listening features, you can receive real-time engagement information that is useful for your social media listening strategy. The tool gathers comments from various social channels, news sites and online sources into one dashboard, allowing you to reply to your audience, and also moderate comments, such as hiding negative sentiment and mentions.
You can also track mentions of your competitors and compare them with your own.
A basic plan with five social profiles starts at USD49 per month, billed annually. You can also sign up for a 14-day free trial.
(6) ElixBrand
ElixBrand is another all-in-one social media monitoring platform I recommend for small businesses. It combines advanced search capabilities with AI-driven analysis and insightful growth metrics to help brands stay ahead of the competition.
ElixBrand’s advanced search features can help you collect and measure mentions of your company or brand across various online channels and touchpoints, including blogs, social media, news sites, discussion forums, and more. Its multilingual monitoring feature and real-time alerts enable brands to monitor social conversations and make informed decisions to address any issues that may arise.
Leveraging AI (artificial intelligence) to analyse the sentiment behind every mention, ElixBrand provides a deep understanding of how your brand is perceived online. This helps you identify potential issues or risks and take suitable action to safeguard your brand’s reputation.
ElixBrand also helps you track your competitors, monitor their brand mentions, and analyze their strategies, providing valuable insights to inform your social media campaigns and marketing strategy.
For a limited time, you can get ElixBrand’s lifetime deal at a one-time cost of just USD59 using this link. This price is very reasonable compared to other similar tools, as you do not have to pay recurring monthly fees for such game-changing features.
(7) Sprout Social
Sprout Social is a comprehensive social media management tool with robust social listening features that allow you to track relevant conversations across all major social networks, news sites and other online sources. It provides actionable insights into your audience’s preferences, their sentiments towards your brand and competitors, and various campaigns or trends. It also helps you discover key influencers and thought leaders who can be engaged to promote your products or services effectively.
Sprout Social also allows you to set up custom alerts to monitor potential crises, giving you ample time to address issues before they impact your brand’s image.
Sprout Social offers a 30-day free trial, so you can explore its publishing and analytics capabilities. Social listening tools are available as part of a custom-built plan for enterprise users. Subscription plans start at USD199 per seat per month for five social profiles, providing a comprehensive solution for managing and enhancing your social media presence.
(8) Keyhole
Keyhole is an enterprise-grade social listening tool designed to provide you with deeper audience insights through detailed analytics. It enables you to track specific keywords, mentions, and hashtags across multiple social media platforms, allowing you to identify and engage with your most enthusiastic supporters online. This engagement can help you leverage these advocates to promote your brand more effectively.
One of the standout features of Keyhole is its ability to track sentiment in every mention, providing a nuanced view of how your brand is perceived over time. This helps you understand potential customers, and shifts in audience sentiment and respond proactively.
Keyhole’s volume predictions feature also allows you to anticipate when your posts are likely to go viral, so you can develop a strategic plan to maximise their impact.
Keyhole offers a free trial to explore its capabilities, and access to its social listening features starts at USD99 per month. This investment provides powerful tools for understanding and growing your brand’s online presence.
(9) Mentionlytics
Mentionlytics is a robust social media monitoring and listening tool designed to help businesses track brand mentions, monitor competitors, and analyse social media data to enhance their online presence. It offers valuable insights into customer sentiment, engagement, and emerging trends.
Key features of Mentionlytics include real-time social media monitoring, sentiment analysis, competitive intelligence, influencer tracking, and customisable reports. These tools enable you to stay informed about relevant conversations and gauge public perception of your brand and competitors.
You can set up alerts for specific keywords or mentions to receive updates on important discussions. Additionally, the platform allows you to filter social listening results by keyword, source, country, and language, providing a tailored view of the data most relevant to you.
Mentionlytics offers a 14-day free trial, allowing you to explore its features before committing. Subscription plans start at USD 49 per month for monitoring up to 10 social profiles, making it a flexible and cost-effective solution for businesses looking to improve their social media strategy.
(10) Google Alerts
Google Alerts offers a free and versatile way to stay informed about online conversations. By setting up alerts for specific keywords, topics, or brand names, you can easily track relevant discussions across the web. The tool allows you to filter relevant content results by sources, language, and region, ensuring you receive the most pertinent information. Additionally, you can customise the frequency of alerts and choose to receive only the top results, making it a highly flexible monitoring solution.
This tool is particularly useful for businesses and individuals looking to keep a pulse on their online presence without investing in expensive monitoring software. Whether you’re tracking brand mentions, monitoring industry trends, or staying updated on competitor activities, Google Alerts provides a cost-effective way to gather and manage critical information. Its user-friendly interface and customisation options make it an accessible and practical choice for anyone needing to stay informed in the digital landscape.
Enhance Your Brand with Social Listening Tools
In addition to the general tools discussed, there are also specialised tools for specific social media channels like TikTok or X, which I will cover in a future article. To stay updated, you can sign up for my e-newsletter.
Overall, leveraging social media listening tools provides invaluable insights into your audience and their perception of your brand. By monitoring conversations and tracking sentiment, you can identify and capitalise on trending moments and emerging customer needs. This allows you to create campaigns that resonate deeply with your audience, drive engagement, and ultimately enhance your brand’s positioning in the market. Effective use of these tools helps you stay agile in a dynamic digital landscape, respond proactively to shifts in consumer behaviour, and maintain a competitive edge.
Get Started Here!
If you want to improve your business results through social media, it’s essential to monitor and understand what your consumers are saying on social media and other online channels. Contact me at +65-9622-8824 or bei@beithoven.com to learn more about social media listening tools and discover which ones are best suited for your brand and business.
Bei, a bilingual (English/Chinese) Singapore content strategist, has over 20 years of experience in marketing for small businesses. She mostly writes about China marketing (Chinese market marketing), content marketing, SEO, GenAI, metaverses, and social media.