Menu
Imagine you’re at a giant party where everyone is talking about your brand, your competitors, and the industry in general. Social listening is like being able to eavesdrop on all those conversations at once.
Social monitoring is a tactic that involves analyzing online conversations about your brand on various channels to determine how customers feel about your business and the overall industry. With today’s complex and volatile consumer marketplace, monitoring is imperative to stay ahead of your reputation and customer perceptions of your brand. Fortunately, the best free listening tools can help automate these strategies and skyrocket your company image.
According to recent data, 71% of businesses find value in social monitoring and believe it provides them with actionable data. More companies will adopt these strategies as the monitoring market is forecasted to reach over $14 billion by 2028.
In this review, we will help you take action by in-depth reviewing the top free social monitoring tools, their key features, and which companies they are best for.
Here are a few top benefits of using social listening tools and developing a sound strategy:
Source: Sprout Social
Sprout Social is one of the top platforms for marketers, and there’s no surprise why. To start, this tool relies on AI and automation to track millions of conversations across various topics.
Next, you can configure filters for your data, analyze custom analytics from one unified dashboard, and generate reports to share with company stakeholders.
Not to mention, Sprout Social also allows you to set alerts for crisis management, uncover vital audience trends and characteristics, and determine customer sentiment.
Mid-level to large companies.
Our P2P Score: 4.9
Website: sproutsocial.com
Offering more sophisticated social listening features, Buzzsumo provides opportunities to track and analyze brand mentions, competitor mentions, keywords, topics, and trends.
In addition, businesses can track content published about them by journalists and publications, create custom alerts to stay ahead of customer sentiment, and access data from 15 minutes to five years. Buzzsumo also has a Chrome extension.
Mid-level to large companies.
Our P2P Score: 4.8
Website: buzzsumo.com
While there are various types of social monitoring tools, Google Alerts stands out as one of the simplest to use. This free tool allows businesses to configure alerts for specific keyword mentions.
Google Alerts will monitor the web and update you in real time wherever your targeted keyword is mentioned across online publications. Because this tool is so simple, it is best for small companies.
Small businesses
Our P2P Score: 4.4
Website: google.com
Hootsuite considers itself “the most powerful social listening tool around“, and it certainly has the features to back this up. Ideal for mid-level to large companies, Hootsuite collects and analyzes data on what customers feel, think, and say about your business.
You can monitor mentions for keywords, hashtags, content, trends, and updates from a custom dashboard. You can also measure risks and opportunities based on competitor analysis and pull reports for in-depth customer analytics.
Mid-level to large companies.
Our P2P Score: 4.9
Website: hootsuite.com
As the name suggests, Brandwatch helps you an eye on your business and reputation. You can configure real-time data alerts on keywords, hashtags, and brand mentions to stay ahead of what customers say about your company.
Brandwatch also provides robust data on your customers, business, and market while helping you discover the best influencers to work with and manage and create tailored social content.
Small to mid-level businesses.
Our P2P Score: 4.8
Website: brandwatch.com
Brand24 is a dedicated social monitoring tool that helps you gain a complete understanding of your online sentiment and how to grow your reputation.
Small to mid-level businesses can count on hashtag monitoring, crisis detection, brand mention tracking, competitor analysis, and in-depth analytics.
While this tool is easy to use, it offers valuable functions, and businesses can also generate whitelabel reports.
Small to mid-level businesses.
Our P2P Score: 4.7
Website: brand24.com
Keyhole is another top free social listening tool designed for large companies. Unlike many of the tools we have reviewed, It takes monitoring features to the next level.
First, brands can leverage AI-driven customer and competitor analysis, configure real-time updates for brand mentions, and discover predictions for their reputation.
Next, you can keep tabs on industry updates and aggregate data from all your accounts from one dashboard.
Mid-level to large companies.
Our P2P Score: 4.9
Website: keyhole.co
From custom alerts, personalized dashboards, and alerts for brand mentions to customer sentiment analysis and visual analytics, Talkwalker is one of the best free social listening tools for companies of all sizes.
In addition, Talkwalker provides comprehensive demographics so you can understand your audience better than before and analyzes online conversations across 30 online networks and 150 million websites in loads of different regions and languages.
All businesses.
Our P2P Score: 4.8
Website: talkwalker.com
Sprinklr is the best choice for large businesses looking to gain insights into customer sentiment across all major channels.
This software provides custom data on competitors, market trends, content trends, location, and media mentions. Firms can expect this data in real-time and explore historical data from a wide range of sites for an accurate idea of reputation growth.
Also, Sprinklr stands out because of its impressive portfolio of companies like McDonald’s, Microsoft, and Lenovo.
Large businesses.
Our P2P Score: 4.9
Website: sprinklr.com
Social listening on Twitter has never been easier than Twilert. Offering automated customer support, simple brand monitoring, easy configuration, and in-depth Twitter analytics.
Twilert helps all kinds of brands stay ahead of their presence on this social platform. You can monitor users, exclude certain keywords, and search for tweets in specific locations or languages with one tool.
All businesses.
Our P2P Score: 4.5
Website: twilert.com
Need a simple, web-based social listening software? Answer The Public is the best solution! As one of the best free monitoring tools, Answer The Public allows you to input a keyword and select a search engine, location, and language to find the top questions customers ask about that topic.
This data will help you discover trending content ideas, uncover industry insights, and conduct SEO analysis to improve your online ranking.
Small businesses.
Our P2P Score: 4.6
Website: answerthepublic.com
Designed for brands of all sizes, Meltwater is about managing your reputation, PR, media partnerships, social media presence, and sales intelligence, among other capabilities.
Meltwater provides brand mention tracking in real-time, crisis management strategies, in-depth data on your target audiences, custom reports and historical data for up to 15 months.
If you’re looking for a complete tool to handle every aspect of how customers perceive your brand, Meltwater can help you!
All businesses.
Our P2P Score: 4.8
Website: meltwater.com
Exolyt provides solutions for social monitoring on TikTok for businesses of all sizes. You can track and measure your TikTok mentions, video trends, hashtags, influencers, and campaign performance.
In addition, Exolyt will reveal market trends in your niche and insights into your audience, and you can compare your reputation to competitors in real-time. T
aking it a step further, businesses can also get an AI summary of what their customers say about their brands, evaluate influencers before establishing partners, and so much more for a healthy TikTok presence.
All businesses.
Our P2P Score: 4.6
Website: exolyt.com
Only targeting the pockets of established enterprises, YouScan stands out as one of the best free social listening tools focusing on visual insights.
Through AI, businesses can analyze text, images, and videos for brand mentions, hashtag mentions, and targeted keywords across all major social media sites.
This tool will help you analyze customer opinions, track customer perceptions, detect potential PR crises, assess competitor market performance, and leverage essential industry trends and forecasts.
Large businesses.
Our P2P Score: 4.5
Website: youscan.io
In contrast to many other free social listening tools, Owler takes a specialized approach to competitor analysis. This platform hones in on tracking your competitors’ reputation and overall brand perception to help your business gain a competitive edge.
Also, Owler delivers real-time updates on industry changes and trends, as well as features to discover qualified leads, set sales triggers, and automate customer communication to optimize engagement.
All businesses.
Our P2P Score: 4.5
Website: owler.com
Social listening tools will help your brand dominate the market by analyzing customer conversations and helping you grow your reputation. Out of all these fantastic platforms for social listening, our top choice for small businesses is AnswerThePublic. This software is simple to use, affordable, and will help small businesses get started with basic social monitoring without a complicated setup.
For mid-level companies, our favorite tool is Keyhole. This solution will help mid-level businesses analyze a wide range of customer data across all major social sites while offering affordability and ease of use.
Finally, for enterprises, we recommend Sprinklr. Sprinklr is tailored to established companies and understands how complicated social listening can be for these businesses. As such, large brands can expect a full-fledged suite for social monitoring, custom dashboards, and many more sophisticated functions.
Social media monitoring helps brands track public perception, detect issues, analyze sentiment, benchmark against competitors, engage customers, gather feedback, identify influencers, inspire content, manage reputation, and provide customer service—all of which can significantly impact brand reputation.
To monitor your social media for free you can use tools like Answer The Public, Owler, Exolyt and Google Alerts. For more sophisticated features, you can opt for a free trial with social listening and monitoring solutions, such as Sprout Social, Keyhole, Buzzsumo, Talkwalker, Brand24, Brandwatch, and Meltwater.
The best way to start social listening is by investing in the top software for your business. Working with these tools will help you automate social listening and stay ahead of digital conversations across every major social channel. There are tools designed for companies of all sizes, and accommodate different budget's and social listening requirements.
Improving your social listening requires you to understand your audience, market and competitors, track and analyze the right data and most importantly, invest in the right social listening software. While there is a wide variety of tools available, it's vital to find the perfect option for your company size, social listening goals and requirements and budget to stay ahead of your reputation and customer perceptions.
FinancesOnline: 39 Relevant Social Media Monitoring Statistics in 2024: Data Analysis & Market Share
Mordor Intelligence: Social Listening Market Size & Share Analysis – Growth Trends & Forecasts (2024 – 2029)
Industry Dive: The State of Social Listening in 2022
Imagine you're at a giant party where everyone is talking about your brand, your competitors, and th...
Imagine you're at a giant party where everyone is talking about your brand, your competitors, and th...
Imagine you're at a giant party where everyone is talking about your brand, your competitors, and th...
Enroll in our free 5-lesson email course today!
Free for limited time only.
We created P2P to provide free resources to brands that believe in the power of peers to promote their service or products.
© 2019 P2P Marketing All Rights Reserved.