15 Social Media Listening Tools for Every Marketer

Social listening is like having a superpower that lets you see what people are really thinking — and saying — about your brand online. 

Social media is a goldmine of conversations, opinions and trends that can shape how your brand connects with its audience. But how do you tap into this chatter to find meaningful insights? This is where social listening comes in. Social listening is more than just tracking mentions of your brand or organization — it’s about understanding the context, emotions and trends behind these mentions so your social team can respond strategically. 

Using a social listening tool is like having your ear to the ground, 24/7 on social. Social listening tools let you monitor real-time conversations about your brand, industry and even competitors. This helps social media managers and teams identify trends to work into their own content, gauge audience sentiment of their current content and even respond to potential issues before they escalate. These tools offer actionable insights to help you refine everything from product development to marketing strategies, which help teams stay ahead. Essentially, a great social listening tool turns raw data into a competitive edge for marketing teams.

Social listening helps you understand what your audience says, feels and thinks. The right social listening tool can provide helpful insights that shape your marketing strategy and enhance your relationships and community. To help you make sense of the myriad of tools on the market, we’re exploring 15 of the most popular social listening tools so you can make an informed decision for your team and brand.

1. Dash Hudson 

Dash Hudson’s AI-Powered Social Listening offers a premium monitoring tool that helps teams focus on visual content. It's particularly powerful for brands that rely heavily on imagery to tell their story, making this tool perfect for Instagram listening or YouTube social listening. 

Its listening tool offers advanced analytics, including the ability to customize Social Listening trends and topics, sentiment analysis for images and an intuitive interface that makes it easy to track and analyze visual trends across social media platforms.

Pros: 

• Exceptional at monitoring and analyzing visual content.
• User-friendly interface that’s easy to navigate.
• Advanced analytics and reporting features.

Cons:

• Best for social — not as helpful for mining the entire internet.

2. Brand24

Brand24 is a social listening tool that offers real-time insights into what’s being said about your brand online. Teams can set up unique feeds for different terms and volume charts to help determine whether you’re receiving a large amount of negative or positive comments. Brand24 is simple yet effective, making it a great choice for businesses of all sizes that want to stay on top of their online reputation without a steep learning curve.

Pros: 

• Pulls in content from news, blogs, videos, forums, podcasts, reviews and more.
• Realtime alerts and monitoring. 

Cons:

• Limited customization in reporting.
• May not be robust enough for large enterprises with complex needs.

3. Brandwatch

Brandwatch is designed for enterprises that need deep, actionable insights from large datasets. It offers collaboration between teams and advanced analytics, which allow you to understand complex trends and consumer sentiments at scale, making it a favorite among larger organizations.

Pros: 

• Highly advanced analytics and data filtering.
• Ideal for handling large datasets and in-depth analysis.
• Easily integrates with other business tools.

Cons:

• Steep learning curve due to its complexity.
• Higher cost, often a barrier for smaller businesses.

4. Mention

Mention is a versatile social listening tool known for its real-time tracking capabilities. Along with the usual listening capabilities, Mention also offers an influence score, which helps you determine the influence of different individuals and brands. It's designed for businesses that want to monitor their online mentions and respond quickly to conversations about their brand, making it a great general tool for companies of all sizes.

Pros: 

• Real-time monitoring with instant alerts.
• Intuitive and customizable dashboard.
• Cost-effective for businesses of various sizes.

Cons:

• Limited historical data access.
• Basic analytics compared to more advanced tools.

5. Talkwalker

Talkwalker is a social listening, benchmarking and analytics platform by Hootsuite that's ideal for enterprises. It offers comprehensive monitoring, including sentiment analysis and trend detection, making it a strong choice for brands that need to manage their online presence at scale.

Pros: 

• Extensive features, including AI sentiment analysis.
• Specific listening tools for crisis management tools.
• Wide range of data sources for comprehensive coverage.

Cons:

• High cost, making it less accessible for smaller businesses.
• Can be complex to use without training.

6. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is a social listening tool that’s helpful for brands who are curious about where they’re mentioned — whether it’s in the news, social or in other online spaces. While it's more content-focused than some other social listening tools, its ability to track social engagement and scan hundreds of online articles makes it valuable for both marketers and PR teams who want to stay on top of popular trends.

Pros: 

• Excellent for discovering trending content and influencers.
• Affordable for content creators and marketers.
• Ability to capture links coming to your brand from various online sources.

Cons:

• Limited social listening features beyond content tracking.

7. Awario

Awario is a budget-friendly social listening tool that offers real-time content monitoring for social, news, videos, forums, reviews and blogs in any language. It’s particularly suitable for small to medium-sized businesses looking for an affordable solution that still provides powerful insights from across the web, along with any team who’s prioritizing specific regions and languages. 

Pros: 

• Affordable pricing, great for small businesses.
• Real-time monitoring with competitor analysis.
• Easy to navigate and use.

Cons:

• Limited advanced analytics and reporting.
• Fewer integrations with other platforms.

8. YouScan

YouScan specializes in visual content recognition, making it a great choice for brands that rely heavily on UGC and visual branding. Its advanced image recognition sets it apart from other tools. Along with its visual capabilities, YouScan lets you set custom filters to customize your data parameters, making this a great option for any team analyzing large data sets or trends. 

Pros: 

• Advanced image recognition for monitoring visual content.
• Strong focus on user-generated content analysis.
• User-friendly with powerful insights.

Cons:

• Limited in text-based monitoring.
• Higher cost may be too high for smaller businesses.

9. Mentionlytics 

Mentionlytics is an AI social listening tool that lets you track online conversations about your brand, product and competitors. It lets you monitor both social media and the internet, pulling in mentions from news, forums and more. It's primarily made for small to medium-sized businesses that need robust monitoring without the complexity of enterprise-level tools.

Pros:  

• Easy to use with robust monitoring features.
• Affordable pricing with flexible plans.

Cons:

• Limited in-depth analytics.
• May struggle with large volumes of data.

10. Keyhole

Keyhole is known for its strong hashtag tracking and social media analytics, making it a popular choice for brands focused on campaign performance. It's social listening tool lets teams monitor conversations about their brand, monitor competitors and discover trends, like which competitors are leaders in its industry. 

Pros: 

• Excellent for tracking hashtags and campaign performance.
• Real-time insights with easy reporting.
• User-friendly interface.

Cons:

• Limited in overall social listening capabilities.
• Best suited for specific campaign monitoring, not broad brand analysis.

11. Zoho Social

Zoho Social lets your team monitor reviews, keywords, branded hashtags and more. Their social listening tool lets users create custom dashboards to monitor competitors, keywords and even types of online sources (like fashion blogs, for example). Zoho offers integration with its broader ecosystem, letting you connect these insights to broader business factors, like CRM and sales, which makes this add-on great if you use Zoho already.

Pros:

• Built-in contact directory to manage audience handles.
• Mobile integration, including notifications, to monitor mentions anywhere, anytime.  

Cons:

• Does not offer TikTok monitoring capabilities. 
• Limited in analytics and data for monitoring.  

12. BirdEye

BirdEye is a reputation management and customer feedback platform that also offers some social listening capabilities. It’s particularly useful for businesses focused on customer experience and online reviews. In addition to the ability to monitor keywords, BirdEye also lets you set up specific queries to monitor, which is especially useful for catching the most important feedback in online reviews. 

Pros: 

• Strong focus on reputation management and customer feedback.
• Easy integration with review sites and social platforms.
• Provides comprehensive insights into customer sentiment.

Cons:

• Social listening features are not as robust as other tools.
• Higher cost for advanced features.

13. Digimind

Digimind is a powerful listening and competitive intelligence tool, mainly used by enterprises to gain insight into audience’s brand perception and industry trends. Social teams can tap into realtime conversations about its brand, and use these insights to set performance benchmarks and gain a qualitative and quantitative understanding of how their brand is perceived. 

Pros: 

• Comprehensive analytics with competitive intelligence features.
• Strong integration with various data sources.
• Advanced filtering and reporting capabilities.

Cons:

• High cost, making it more suitable for large enterprises.
• Steep learning curve for new users.

14. Infegy

Infegy is a social listening platform that mostly focuses on emotional and sentiment analysis and trend identification. Its listening software also offers unlimited mentions, making this a great option for teams needing to monitor a large amount of terms and trends. Inefgy can also monitor and analytze emotional sentiment for a variety of languages, which is particularly beneficial for any brand with multiple global handles.

Pros: 

• Strong sentiment analysis and trend identification.
• In-depth consumer behavior insights.
• Comprehensive reporting and data visualization.

Cons:

• Expensive pricing tiers.
• Complex interface may require training to use effectively.

15. Sentione

Sentione offers two primary tools — AI-powered social listening and conversational chat and voice bots. Its combination of social listening and customer service automation makes it a strong choice for brands that prioritize customer engagement. It offers real-time monitoring and the ability to automate responses, which can streamline the customer service process.

Pros: 

• Excellent for customer service automation and engagement.
• Real-time monitoring with strong sentiment analysis.
• Affordable pricing for small to medium-sized businesses.

Cons:

• Limited advanced analytics compared to other platforms.
• Not as robust for large-scale enterprise use.

Brands like Summer Fridays and Coterie use Dash Hudson to get to the heart of its brand — their customers. While Coterie taps into the tool combined with Community Manager to track its community engagements, identify UGC and using sentiment analysis to continually improve its campaign, Summer Fridays uses Social Listening to tap into what skincare enthusiasts across social media say about not just their product, but about skincare trends in general. Social listening helps both teams forecast additions to its product lines and generally understand how their community sees the brand.