10+ Free Social Media Monitoring Tools for Better Management

Alexandra

CONTENT WRITER

As a business, you will be the subject of multiple online conversations you will have to track through social media monitoring.

While you can’t control what others say about your brand, you can always control how you engage with your audience. But finding online conversations is almost impossible without the right software, not to mention time-consuming.

Because every skilled spy needs some technological gear to help them investigate social and online data, we created a list of the best social media brand monitoring tools every business needs for reputation management.

This list contains free tools, social media monitoring platforms with free plans, free trials, and affordable subscriptions that make the most out of your money.

So, keep on reading to find out more about our top picks.

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What Is Social Media Monitoring?
The Best 10+ Social Monitoring Tools
Frequently Asked Questions
Choose the Best Social Media Monitoring Software for You

Social media monitoring is a popular practice used by marketers to evaluate online discussions that mention their business, industry, or other topics that might be of interest to them. Social media monitoring tools use keywords, hashtags, and specific brand names to find relevant online mentions.

The main goal of social media monitoring is to find out how other social media users perceive their business. Business owners can internally document this information to help improve their products and services.

Other benefits of social media monitoring include:

Discovering trending content topics for your social accounts
Identifying relevant keywords
Researching competitors

Do you want to track your performance across marketing channels and improve your promotional strategy faster than ever?

Here are the 10+ social media monitoring tools you need to track your social media presence:

SocialBee
Social Champ
Brand24
BuzzSumo
NapoleonCat
Tweetdeck
Keyhole
Mention
Sprout Social
Iconosquare
Tailwind
Statusbrew
ContentStudio
Talkwalker
Mentionlytics

1. SocialBee

So, what can SocialBee do in terms of social media monitoring? While SocialBee is an all-in-one social media management software, it also has features that allow you to monitor and reply to your social comments, mentions, and Facebook messages.

This unified inbox feature is available for multiple social media channels:

Facebook Pages: mentions, comments, and messages
Instagram Business Profiles: mentions and comments (messages coming soon)
Twitter Profiles: mentions and comments (messages coming soon)
LinkedIn Company Profiles: mentions and comments (messages coming soon)
Google Business Profile: questions

By using SocialBee’s engage module you can keep track of relevant conversations related to your business, maintain your target audience happy with fast replies and monitor your reputation by being aware of recent mentions of your brand.

Monitor your social media mentions, comments, and messages from one social media management platform: SocialBee.

Start your 14-day free trial today!

Social media monitoring is not the only aspect you need to focus on. Posting consistently on your social media accounts is equally important for reaching and engaging with your prospects.

Let’s explore the SocialBee features you need to know before you put your social media strategy into action. After all, you don’t want to waste time on repetitive work you can easily automate.

Here are the main social media tasks you can enhance with SocialBee:

Generate social posts effortlessly with AI
Design and curate visuals with Canva, Unsplash and GIPHY
Schedule, recycle, and expire content
Use content categories to better plan your posts
Improve your team collaboration
Optimize your URLs
Get access to in-depth analytics & performance reports

Generate Social Posts Effortlessly with AI

Creating content doesn’t have to be the most time-consuming part of your social media marketing strategy. SocialBee offers an in-app AI content generator that enables you to create both captions and images in just a few seconds.

Generate unique social media images with SocialBee.

And to make the process even smoother, SocialBee also offers a collection of over 1k AI prompts specifically created for different platforms, content types, and industries, which you can pick directly from the app.

Create on-brand social media captions with SocialBee’s AI post generator.

Once you add your prompt, you can choose a tone of voice, adjust the length of your post, enable the hashtag and emoji toggle (if you want them incorporated into your content), and finally, select the number of posts you want to generate. With all these options set, you can now click on the “Generate” button, and choose the best post variations.

From this point, you can edit the content and select the social media channels you want to share your content to.

Design and Curate Visuals with Canva, Unsplash, and GIPHY

With SocialBee, you can now design and import your Canva visuals directly from the platform. This way you won’t have to waste time downloading, uploading, and moving files around your computer.

Create and import your Canva designs directly from SocialBee.

If you don’t want to generate or design your own visuals, you can simply use the Unsplash and GIPHY integrations to find some engaging images and GIFs to share with your followers.

Schedule, Recycle, and Expire Content

SocialBee supports posting on different social media channels: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google Business Profile, TikTok, and YouTube.

Users can easily plan ahead and build an effective content schedule specifically customized for each social media platform. Moreover, SocialBee offers a calendar-like schedule dashboard that provides a complete view of your social media content strategy.

Set and adjust your posting schedule from SocialBee’s content calendar.

And since it’s a shame to let your best evergreen content go to waste, SocialBee allows you to reschedule your posts as many times as you want and get the most out of your most valuable content. The platform also has an expiration feature that makes it possible for you to reshare a time-sensitive post for a limited number of times or expire it after a specific date.

Use Content Categories to Better Plan Your Posts

With content categories, you can organize and diversify your social media content. By doing so, you get a healthy mix of social media posts that keep your audience interested.

Schedule your social media post in bulk with SocialBee’s content categories.

Besides scheduling entire content categories at once, you can also pause them, or set all the posts within a specific category to be rescheduled with just a few clicks.

Improve Your Team Collaboration

Invite your clients and team members to SocialBee, and assigned them different roles and permissions.

Simplify the process of content approval by centralizing it in a single location. Leave notes with your feedback under posts and tag specific team members, ensuring a seamless collaboration.

Optimize Your URLs

Sorthen and optimize your URL thanks to SocialBee’s integrations with Rebrandly, Bitly, RocketLink, JotURL, Replug, PixelMe, and BL.INK. Set UTM and Ref parameters for your content categories and track shared links with ease.

Get Access to In-Depth Analytics & Performance Reports

SocialBee monitors all your social media performance and builds insightful reports about your audience, activity, and top-performing posts. All this data helps users inform their strategies and enhance their social media efforts.

Access all your social media analytics and historical data from SocialBee.

Here is the social media data you can track with SocialBee:

Page Analytics: Stay informed about the total count of posts published within a specific time frame, the number of views garnered by your page content, profile views, and the extent of reach achieved.
Post Analytics: Evaluate the performance of each individual post by tracking metrics such as impressions, likes, comments, and the overall engagement percentage.
Audience Data: Acquire valuable knowledge about your audience, including their demographics (age, gender, language, region). Keep a close watch on the number of followers gained and lost over a selected period.
Insights on Performance: Identify the content categories, types, and specific posts that exhibit top-notch performance. Additionally, discover the optimal posting times to maximize engagement.
PDF Reports: Seamlessly export your performance reports in a PDF format, simplifying the sharing and analysis of your social data.

Free trial: 14-day free trial

Starting price: $29/month

Looking for Top-Rated Social Media Management Tools? Try SocialBee

2. Social Champ

Social Champ is an extensive social media management tool that makes it easier for you to monitor and engage with your comments and DM’s on your social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and even Google Business Profile.

The social inbox of Social Champ comprises comments, DM’s, and likes in one place. This allows users to conveniently manage and respond to these comments without jumping to different social accounts.

In addition to this, Social Champ conducts comprehensive analytics of your social media platforms and generates detailed reports. These reports offer valuable insights on various aspects, including reach, total audience, the best time to post, engagement, and top-performing posts.

Free plan: supporting up to 3 social accounts

Starting price: $29/month

3. Brand24

Brand24 is a social media monitoring tool with features that make it easier for brands to discover online mentions, track competitors, and evaluate ongoing social media marketing campaigns.

It collects data from web pages and platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, Tik Tok, and Twitch. It also crawls the web to find relevant mentions on blogs, review sites, newsletters, and many more.

Additionally, Brand24 performs a detailed analysis based on your mentions and delivers reports that provide information regarding sentiment, search volume, reach, engagement, trending topics, and top social media profiles that talk about your business.

Free trial: 14-day free trial

Starting price: $79/month

4. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is a social media monitoring tool that tracks brand mentions, industry news, and business competitors, giving you all the necessary information to succeed.

Users can set up mention alerts for important updates. In addition, BuzzSumo helps businesses find interesting content topics for their audiences and discover powerful keywords they can use for SEO.

Free trial: 30-day free trial

Starting price: $119/month

5. NapoleonCat

NapoleonCat is a handy social media management tool that will make it easy for you to follow all your brand conversations across different social media platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Google Business Profile.

Within the unified inbox, you’ll find comments, messages, profile mentions, and reviews. You’ll be able to reply to these conversations and talk through burning issues with your teammates thanks to the consultation feature. The inbox updates in real-time.

If you’d like to keep an eye on your competitors’ presence in social media too, NapoleonCat is a perfect choice. You can add your competitors’ Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter profiles and analyze their best-performing content alongside the engagement they generate.

Free trial: 14-day free trial

Starting price: €32/month (for 3 profiles, 1 user)

6. Tweetdeck

Tweetdeck is a customizable dashboard for Twitter that allows users to personalize their workspace, manage multiple accounts, create and schedule posts directly from the platform.

Additionally, it has social monitoring features that help businesses track search terms, hashtags, users, lists, and brand mentions.

Price: Free

7. Keyhole

Along with brand monitoring features, Keyhole offers tracking and analytics for influencers, competitors, and hashtags, and it provides information about social media sentiment, reach, and engagement.

Moreover, it collects data from Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, helping businesses evaluate their social media impact and their brand’s online presence. Apart from this, Keyhole also allows users to schedule, post, and optimize their content on social media (Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram).

Free trial: 14-day free trial

Starting price: $99/month

8. Mention

Businesses can now track brand mentions, schedule content, and engage with their audience from just one platform. Yes, you heard that right.

Mention monitors millions of online sources: social platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter), review pages, blogs, and forums, to find relevant topics and emerging trends that businesses can add to their social media strategy.

Free trial: 14-day free trial

Starting price: $49/month

Next on our list of best brand monitoring tools is Sprout Social.

If you want an all-in-one solution for your social media management that also has social listening capabilities, Sprout Social is for you. This social media tool helps you, monitor, create, edit, and schedule content for all your social media accounts: Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, TikTok, and WhatsApp.

Moreover, it has a social inbox that allows you to manage all your social media messages from one dashboard, improving your customer service performance.

Sprout Social provides insightful analytics across all supported social media platforms, helping you to constantly improve your marketing and branding strategies.

The social listening features include:

Audience analysis
Customer feedback
Consumer research
Influencer recognition
Sentiment research
Campaign analysis
Competitor comparison
Trend identification

Free trial: 30-day free trial

Starting price: $249/month

10. Iconosquare

This Instagram social media monitoring tool has some impressive features that come in handy for any business, not just for monitoring purposes but also for scheduling content and performance evaluation.

But for now, let’s have a look at the most important social listening features. Iconsquare enables you to track discussions about your brand. It also allows you to reply, moderate, and export conversations you find to be insightful.

Monitor your brand, analyze your competitors’ performance, track the performance of your hashtags, and find content topics that will elevate your Instagram strategy, all from one place.

This social media monitoring platform also has free tools you can use to elevate your online strategy:

Bio link manager
Instagram and Facebook audit
Random comment picker (for giveaways and contests)
Screenshot tool that turns tweets into Instagram posts

Free trial: 14-day free trial

Starting price: $59/month

11. Tailwind

Tailwind is a social media monitoring tool designed for Pinterest, allowing users to schedule posts and access insightful analytics from the same dashboard.

Although it has plenty of social media management features for Instagram, it doesn’t support monitoring on the platform.

Moreover, this social media tool is great for research, providing users with features that make it easy to analyze competitors, discover new trends, and evaluate their social media progress.

Here are the main benefits Tailwind has for Pinterest:

Keeps track of how often people pin your content
Measures your reach on Pinterest
Provides users with a better understanding of what content works best among consumers
Improves Pinterest SEO with keyword research
Manages comments and conversations about your brand
Organizes pins by most pinned, most clicked, or most engaged

The free plan includes:

One Pinterest profile
One Instagram profile
20 posts/mo
20 post designs/mo
Five Tailwind communities
Smart.bio custom link
Basic analytics
One user

Free plan: Yes

Starting price: $19.99/month

12. Statusbrew

Statusbrew is an all-encompassing social media management tool with advanced monitoring features to help you gather actionable insights into your brand reputation and make data-driven marketing decisions. Plus, it’s one of the best social listening tools on the market.

With Statusbrew’s advanced social listening feature, you can proactively find essential information about your competitors, and it also assists with keeping track of the latest industry trends.

Here are the main benefits of Statusbrew’s social media monitoring tool:

Social listening for Twitter and Instagram
Language and geo-targeting
Unified social inbox
Custom view creation
Team collaboration
190+ Reporting metrics
Sentiment analysis
Competitor analysis
Comments moderation & automation

Statusbrew starts at pocket-friendly pricing of $69 per month and offers a 7-day free trial. The plan includes:

5 social profiles
2 users
Unlimited posts
Bulk scheduling
Best time posting queue
Unified social inbox
Hide comments on Facebook & Instagram
Email support

Free trial: 7-day free trial

Starting price: $69/month

13. ContentStudio

Marketers spend a lot of time monitoring their social media presence. That’s no longer the case. Using ContentStudio, you can plan, organize, schedule, and monitor all your social media posts from one dashboard.

It integrates 30+ social media sites, video publishing platforms, blog platforms, automation tools, image enhancement tools, and URL shorteners.

Connect with your audience on social media to boost your brand’s ROI. The power of content marketing can be used to create potential business opportunities. Easily schedule, automate, and distribute social media content to dominate social media marketing.

Free trial: 14-day free trial

Starting price: $25/month

14. Talkwalker

Talkwalker is a social media tool with advanced monitoring features and high-quality services. But most importantly, the platform offers free tools for you to track your online presence.

Talkwalker’s free tools help brands:

Monitor their social media mentions
Track their most engaging content
Find the best social media platforms for their business
Discover backlink opportunities
Identify accounts that talk about their brand
Monitor keyword performance
Research the competition

Free tools: Yes

Starting price: Contact Talkwalker for pricing information

15. Mentionlytics

Do you want to discover relevant web and social media about your brand and find out what your customers think about your business?

Well, you are in luck. Mentionlytics is a great tool for finding your brand mentions through social media conversations and websites such as news sites, blogs, community forums, etc. It works by crawling the internet to find keywords and brand names you are interested in.

In addition, Mentionlytics helps users by:

Monitoring competitors
Highlighting important mentions
Identifying the best posting times

Furthermore, it saves a lot of time by organizing all the relevant sources in one user-friendly dashboard. All you have to do is go through the available mentions and use the feedback to improve your business.

Free trial: 14-day free trial

Starting price: $49/month

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What’s the Difference Between Social Media Monitoring and Social Media Listening?

Social media monitoring focuses on tracking and collecting real-time data and metrics related to brand reputation, customer feedback, social media engagement, and competitive analysis. In contrast, social media listening tools analyze and interpret social media data to gain deeper insights into customer sentiments, market trends, brand perception, and customer needs.

So, a social listening strategy requires more in-depth analysis. Monitoring provides quantitative insights for immediate action, while social listening metrics offer qualitative insights for long-term strategic decision-making.

Organizations can benefit from using both approaches to understand and leverage social conversations effectively.

2. Why Is Social Media Monitoring Important?

Social media monitoring helps businesses stay updated about what people are saying about their brand, products, or services and create marketing campaigns that bring more conversions.

It provides valuable insights into customer sentiment, identifies potential issues or crises, and helps businesses respond effectively to customer feedback, inquiries, or complaints in real time.

3. How Can Businesses Use Social Media Monitoring and Listening Effectively?

To use social media monitoring and listening effectively, businesses need to:

Define clear objectives and goals for monitoring and listening.
Identify relevant keywords, hashtags, and topics to track on social channels.
Choose appropriate monitoring and listening tools.
Regularly analyze the data and derive actionable insights that will improve your social media campaign in real-time.
Engage with customers and respond promptly to inquiries or feedback.
Collect user-generated content you find online and use it as social proof.
Use consumer insights to improve their social presence, products, services, and overall customer experience.

4. How Can Social Media Monitoring and Listening Impact Brand Reputation?

Social media monitoring and listening allow businesses to identify and address potential issues or negative sentiment surrounding their brand promptly.

By monitoring online conversations and responding quickly, businesses can prevent a negative situation from escalating and demonstrate their commitment to customer satisfaction.

Additionally, both help identify positive sentiment and enable businesses to engage with brand advocates, strengthening brand reputation and the performance of their social media campaigns.

5. Is Social Media Monitoring and Listening Only for Large Businesses?

No, social media monitoring and listening tools are beneficial for businesses of all sizes. While larger businesses may have more extensive monitoring needs and resources, even small businesses can benefit from understanding customer sentiment, identifying trends, and engaging with their audience effectively.

Plus, equipping your small customer service team with a social media tracker can really help them deliver better support in less time. These tools are available at various price points, making them accessible to businesses with different budgets.

6. What Is Brand Sentiment in the Context of Brand Monitoring?

Brand sentiment refers to the overall attitude or perception of consumers towards a brand. In brand monitoring, sentiment analysis is used to determine whether mentions, comments, or discussions about a brand are positive, negative, or neutral.

7. Is Google Alerts a Brand Monitoring Tool?

Yes, Google Alerts is a simple and free brand monitoring tool that allows users to set up alerts for specific keywords or phrases and receive email notifications whenever those terms appear in new search results.

8. Are There Any Free Social Listening Tools?

Yes, there are free social media listening tools available for brand monitoring. While they may not offer the same extensive features as paid tools, they can still provide valuable insights. Some notable free options include TweetDeck and Talkwalker.

Are you ready to track your performance like the best social media marketers in the industry do?

As you can see, social media tools don’t have to be expensive. There are plenty of free and affordable options you can use to do all your social media monitoring work.

So, don’t waste any more time and try it out for your business. See what others think about your brand, research your competitors and analyze your social media progress by using our top picks.

Don’t miss out on a 14-day free trial of our Pro Plan. To learn more about how to use SocialBee’s all-in-one social media management tool, book a group demo today!