5 Best Social Listening Tools to Consider in 2023

Social media rules the roost today, with every company targeting its audience through different online platforms. Be it Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, social media is probably the best way to reach and engage with users right now.

Is it enough to bombard our users and followers with ads and posts? Not really. You should also be able to determine whether your users are listening.

Are they paying attention? Do they like what you are saying to them? Do they engage with your content? Are you monitoring social media regularly? 

You might need to listen to them appropriately to engage and use the most. Otherwise, you will only be shooting in the dark with no idea about your brand's performance.

Thats where social listening comes in. 

What is social listening? 

Social listening is the process of identifying and tracking what is being said about a company, individual, product or brand on the internet. It helps us understand the mentions and conversations about your brand and then analyze them for better insights.

What are social listening tools? 

Luckily, plenty of brilliant social listening tools can help you monitor your brand and competitors and your industry's latest trends or updates. So you don't have to worry too much about your brand's performance if you choose the right tools and use them to their potential. 

We have handpicked the best social listening tools here to make your job easier:

1. Brandwatch

When you think about analysis and understanding, you won't find a tool better than Brandwatch. Highly data-oriented, it is an expensive tool that can turn your online game around. You must be careful, though, because everyone in your organization may not be comfortable using it. In addition, it is extensive and requires someone comfortable using databases and command lines to understand.

Features:

1. Multi-lingual dashboard
2. Separate dashboard for each source in a project
3. You can download files in Excel or CSV formats
4. Extensive reports
5. Basic search option
6. It can be integrated with other tools

Pros: 

• Extensively data-driven – a brilliant analytics tool
• Its flexibility and scalability adapt to all types of organizations. 
• Useful and clear UI that allows easy access to granular reporting 
• Quick support from the team 

Cons: 

• Costly
• Audience data filtering is complex 
• Integration with external data sources not available 
• Sentiment Analysis could be more accurate

It is an excellent choice for small-sized and medium-sized businesses that can shell out big bucks for social media management and detailed analysis.

2. Mention

Mention is the best Social Listening Tool among them as it brings you the best of all worlds by giving you analytics data, enabling you to keep track of your competitors, and monitoring social media for you. It is an excellent option for big brands with regular online engagement and interactions.

Features:

1. Detailed dashboard
2. It helps you find, keep track of, and follow potential influencers in your industry.
3. It makes social media monitoring a breeze.
4. You can keep a close eye on the competition and take cues from them about audience targeting.
5. A weekly chart summarizes the number of positive, negative, and neutral mentions.
6. The analytics data will tremendously help you improve your targeting strategy online.

Pros: 

• User-friendly interface
• Mention is straightforward to set up.
• Enables the ability to see the activity of multiple social networks in a single combined recap each day.

Cons: 

• Limited support and training material
• Need to improve publish and calendar tool
• Some searches are not as accurate, and we get some irrelevant results
• Mention's price point is not always affordable.
• Could have better third-party integration 

Some top global brands use Mention for social media monitoring and competitor analysis.

Recommended: Social Media Tools to Promote Your Website

3. Buzzsumo

Buzzsumo is among the more affordable social listening tools. It is predominantly a tool that helps understand the trends in the industry and enhance your brand strategy accordingly. It is easy to use, and the interface is very user-friendly. You can navigate through the tool and understand how to use it. After a few uses, you can get the hang of it. If you need help, you can always check out the FAQs or request a demo.

Recommended: 9 Content Search Tools That Are Perfect Alternative to BuzzSumo

Features:

1. Helps you track backlinks.
2. You can get real-time alerts that will help you stay updated with the latest trends.
3. It is the best tool to track how many shares your content or competitors' posts have received. However, some users say that the emphasis on shares is negative because the other metrics are sidelined in this process.
4. You only get engagement data through the Facebook analyzer, which restricts it.

Pros: 

• An excellent means to keep track of trending blogs posts and news
• It provides accurate social share counts 
• Search is excellent 
• Always keep track of your competitors 
• Provide quite good influencer insights 

Cons: 

• It does not include Instagram yet, limited engagement data
• It is expansive 
• Sometimes it brings irrelevant results 
• It sometimes gets buggy when integrated with Slack.
• Minimal number of search options in the free trial 
• Customer support could be better 

While it is an excellent tool for sharing monitoring and analysis, Buzzsumo falls behind in influencer and engagement tracking beyond sharing. Thus, only if you are looking for a good option that tells you about breaking news, trending blog topics, and listicles, Buzzsumo is for you.

4. Sprout Social

Sprout Social provides an aggregated window of everything you need to know about your brand's online presence. You can see everything from Facebook to Twitter in one place. This makes the tool hassle-free.

Features:

1. Sprout Social's trends report helps you understand your audience, enabling you to change your content strategy accordingly.
2. You can also learn about keywords and hashtags that you must use on various platforms so that your audience connects with you.
3. It is a time-saving tool that lets you gather data quickly.

Pros: 

• A single tool to monitor your social media presence
• Users can filter the messages easily 
• Provide complete visibility of fans and followers 
• Robust analytics dashboard 

Cons: 

• No real-time reports
• Didn't have good integration with influencer tools 
• Minimal third-party integration 

Whether it is Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn, Sprout Social is the answer to all your social listening tools requirements. So do check the tool out. We highly recommend it for all businesses.

5. Hootsuite

For complete social media management, monitoring, and listening, Hootsuite has emerged as the winner. This is mainly because it serves the purpose and does not force you to break the bank.

Features:

1. You can schedule posts to all social media platforms in one go, without having to do it separately or one after the other.
2. It is among the few tools that support all major platforms, from LinkedIn to Instagram to YouTube.
3. It lets you reply to comments and mentions without opening the platform separately.
4. The detailed analytics report will help you understand your audience and tweak your online content strategy accordingly.

Pros: 

• An excellent tool for social scheduling, publishing, engagement, and analysis
• Provide unified dashboard 

Cons: 

• The interface can feel cluttered
• Fewer insights on hashtags performance 
• Could have better customer support 
• Sentiment analysis is helpful but could offer more detail

Hootsuite is a perfect tool, especially if you are a small business looking for one platform to take care of all your social needs. The reports may not be as extensive as the other tools in this list, but they are a great starting point.

How to choose social listening tools? 

Each social listening tool has advantages and disadvantages; the right one depends on your requirements. So you can look at their core feature and match them with your condition; whatever fits into it, choose them. One tool is not necessary to work better for others, but it will work the same for you. 

Take demos of the tools you are interested in before making the final call. Then, explore each feature that greatly fits your requirement.