The Pros & Cons of the Top 5 Social Media Listening Tools

Are you aware of what people say about your brand on social media? Let’s face it: with the constant flow of posts, comments, and mentions, it can be overwhelming for marketers to track everything manually.

That’s where social media listening tools come in to help you monitor brand mentions, track customer sentiment, and gain valuable insights from the chatter across different platforms. They make it easier to stay in tune with your audience and respond to trends in real time.

In this article, we’ll dive into the pros and cons of the top 5 social media listening tools, so you can choose the best one for your needs. Let’s get started!

Short Summary

• SocialBee offers a unified inbox dashboard, from which you can monitor and reply to your mentions, comments, and messages across Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter) profiles, LinkedIn, Threads, YouTube, and Google Business Profile. This way, you can connect better with your audience, address situations quickly, keep customers happy, and get a real sense of how the brand is perceived.
• Talkwalker sets itself apart with its free set of social media tracking tools that allow users to get backlink opportunities delivered straight to their email, at no additional cost. This way, you can effortlessly boost your SEO, which is incredibly helpful if you’re new to the game. 
• Brandwatch stands out through its advanced audience segmentation. Not only does it track brand and competitor mentions, but it also allows users to slice and analyze demographic data from both social audiences and customer lists. 
• One unique feature that sets Mention apart is its crisis management capability. This feature allows users to detect and manage potential brand crises in real time by setting up alerts for unusual activity. 
• The standout feature of Agorapulse is that it lets you search for relevant keywords and hashtags to see what content is currently popular in your field. It also keeps you competitive by allowing you to monitor your competitors' activities through searches.

What is social media listening?

Social media listening is the process of monitoring online conversations and mentions of your brand, competitors, or industry on various social media platforms. It helps you understand how people feel about your brand by analyzing the tone and topics of these conversations. 

With social listening, you can spot customer feedback, identify trends, and find opportunities to improve your brand reputation and online presence.

What should you look for in a social listening tool?

When choosing a social listening tool, ensure it integrates with key social media channels and offers engagement features, collaboration capabilities, and customization options. Other important functionalities include analytics, sentiment analysis, keyword tracking, trend detection, and timely notifications to manage your social media interactions effectively. 

Here’s what you should look for in a social listening tool:

• Integration with major social media platforms: A strong social listening tool should connect with key social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (X), LinkedIn, TikTok, and even niche platforms that matter for your industry. The broader the integration, the better your ability to capture key conversations.
• Engagement features: Make sure the tool you choose gathers all your social media interactions—like messages, comments, and mentions—into one place. It makes it easier to manage everything without switching between apps.
• Collaboration features: These tools allow you to invite team members, ensuring everyone has a clear overview of your social media activity. You can assign tasks and share notes, streamlining communication and coordination across your team.
• Customization options: Look for user-friendly dashboards that allow you to customize and organize your social media data. For example, you might want to separate the social media mentions and messages you get by platform or account.
• Analytics: To get a sense of your performance, you should be able to check out how well your posts are doing, how many people you reached, and how they interact with your content.
• Sentiment analysis: By examining emotions and tone in posts, this feature helps you gauge public sentiment, which can guide your communications.
• Keyword tracking: Users can set up specific keywords, phrases, brand names, or hashtags to monitor. The tool alerts the user whenever these are mentioned, providing opportunities to engage with the content or gather insights from the discussions.
• Trend detection: Social media listening tools can help spot emerging trends by analyzing the frequency and patterns of keywords and hashtags over time.
• Notifications: Getting notified whenever there are new mentions, comments, or direct messages ensures you never miss an opportunity to engage with your audience or address issues promptly.

Top 5 social listening tools in 2024

Here are the top social listening tools in 2024:

1. SocialBee
2. Talkwalker
3. Brandwatch
4. Mention
5. Agorapulse

1. SocialBee

SocialBee is a social media listening tool that helps you monitor mentions, comments, and interactions across different platforms from one central location. Beyond this, it also allows you to create, schedule, and publish content, as well as track its performance. Additionally, it supports collaboration, making it easier to work together with your team.

SocialBee is a great fit for small businesses, entrepreneurs, and marketers who need an easy way to manage their social media. With SocialBee, you can keep your social media active and build your brand reputation without spending too much time managing it.

SocialBee’s unified inbox feature allows you to keep a close eye on what people say about your brand on the following platforms:

• Facebook pages: mentions, comments, and messages
• Instagram business profiles: mentions and comments
• X (Twitter) profiles: mentions and comments 
• LinkedIn company profiles: mentions and comments
• Threads: comments
• YouTube: comments
• Google Business Profile: questions

However, what sets SocialBee apart is its universal posting capability, which makes it an all-encompassing platform. This lets you plan and schedule content for platforms not directly integrated with SocialBee, like Facebook Groups, Reddit, and WhatsApp. This ensures you can manage all your social media channels, even if the tool does not fully support them.

Here are SocialBee’s social listening tools:

1. Unified social inbox: Manage and reply to comments, mentions, and direct messages from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Threads, YouTube, and Google Business Profile, all in one place.
2. Real-time monitoring: Track mentions and interactions as they happen, making it easier to respond quickly to your audience.
3. Reach & impressions: Track how many people are seeing your posts and how many times your content is displayed.
4. Engagement tracking: See how well your posts are performing by tracking likes, comments, and shares across your social accounts.
5. Audience growth analytics: Monitor how your follower count is growing over time, so you can see if your audience is increasing.
6. Performance reports: Create and export detailed PDF reports on how your social media content is performing, including insights into your audience demographics and top posts.
7. Notifications: Get alerts for new mentions, comments, or messages so you're always ready to engage with your audience or sort out issues quickly.
8. Collaboration features: Invite your team to join in. This makes it easier for everyone to contribute to content, handle social media chats, and keep track of how things are going.
9. Customization options: Set up your workspace your way. Arrange social media mentions, comments, and messages into boards and streams, helping you manage interactions by account, platform, or type.

SocialBee G2 rating: 4.8/5 (429 reviews)

Pros of using SocialBee:

• SocialBee is an all-in-one social media management tool that lets you monitor and manage mentions, comments, and DMs. It also enables you to create, publish, and analyze your content's performance.
• Users appreciate the detailed insights into social media engagement, reach, and audience growth. As Caitlin M., Manager of Operations & Partnerships, notes, "The reports help us see exactly when to post for the best engagement."
• SocialBee is powered by AI, offering features like caption and image generation (using DALL-E 3) and an AI assistant that crafts customized social media strategies for your business based on responses to eight specific questions about your brand's needs.
• SocialBee's customer service is frequently praised for its responsiveness and helpfulness: “Their customer support is second to none,” says small business owner Marjan V.
• The ability to automatically reshare posts several times is a hit among SocialBee users. This feature is perfect for keeping evergreen content active in your feed and ensuring your best-performing posts continue to reach a wide audience. Brett H., Creator at The Mindful Coach Method, appreciates this functionality, saying, "I love how I can tag posts by category and schedule them in rotation—makes my life easier."

Cons of using SocialBee:

• A slight learning curve at the beginning.

SocialBee pricing: 

SocialBee’s cheapest version starts at $29/Month, but before fully committing to a paid plan, try SocialBee’s 14-day trial for free first!

2. Talkwalker

Talkwalker by Hootsuite by is a well-rounded social media listening platform known for its advanced monitoring capabilities. It helps businesses track and analyze their online presence on major platforms like LinkedIn or X, as well as more niche ones, such as news sites and media outlet blogs.

This tool is ideal for brands of all sizes that need to manage their online reputation and track social conversations. From startups to established enterprises, Talkwalker helps users monitor brand mentions, analyze engagement, and get ahead of trends. 

Talkwalker sets itself apart with its free set of social media tracking tools that allow users to get backlink opportunities delivered straight to their email, at no additional cost. This way, you can effortlessly boost your SEO, which is incredibly helpful if you’re new to the game.

Here are Talkwalker’s social listening tools:

1. Brand monitoring: Track mentions of your brand across social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and X, as well as blogs, forums, and websites to get a complete view of your online presence.
2. Share of voice analysis: Measure your brand’s share of voice by analyzing how much of the conversation you own compared to your competitors.
3. Content performance tracking: Identify which of your social media posts generate the most engagement, allowing you to refine your content strategy and focus on what works best.
4. Hashtag & keyword monitoring: Keep track of trending hashtags and keywords related to your brand or industry, helping you stay ahead of emerging trends.
5. Competitor monitoring: Gain insights into your competitors’ strategies by tracking their social mentions, so you can stay informed and adjust your approach accordingly.

Talkwalker G2 rating: 4.3/5 (132 reviews)

Pros of using Talkwalker:

• Talkwalker allows users to tailor their searches, filtering results by sentiment, location, and media type.
• Users like how Talkwalker combines both mainstream media and social media data, offering a complete picture of brand mentions across platforms. 
• Talkwalker’s ability to visualize data is a key highlight. “Visualizations help tell compelling stories about trends and sentiment,” says Daisy K., Senior Social Media Analyst. 
• The tool’s real-time email alerts help users stay on top of brand mentions without constantly logging in: “I love that Talkwalker sends email alerts in real-time, saving me from having to check the dashboard,” shares Younes B., a small business owner.

Cons of using Talkwalker:

• Talkwalker's basic plans only let you see data from the past 30 days, which isn't helpful if you need information from a longer period.
• Users find Talkwalker harder to learn than other similar tools.
• Users have mentioned that tags update slowly and filters take a while to apply, which can be a hassle when working with a lot of data.
• Some users struggle to change account settings or delete accounts without help from customer support.

Talkwalker pricing: 

Talkwalker’s pricing offer is not public.

3. Brandwatch

Brandwatch is a powerful social media listening tool designed to help brands track trends and analyze online conversations across Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X, YouTube, and Reddit.

Whether you're looking to understand how people feel about your brand or see how much attention you’re getting compared to competitors, this solution gives you the insights you need to know your audience and protect your brand’s reputation.

Brandwatch is perfect for large enterprises, social media managers, and consumer insights analysts who need to dive deep into social media conversations. 

One great feature of Brandwatch is its audience segmentation. It tracks mentions of your brand and competitors and allows you to analyze demographic data from social media audiences and customer lists. This helps you understand who is talking about your brand and how you can better target your audience. 

Here are Brandwatch’s social listening tools:

1. Historical data access: Brandwatch offers access to a massive library of 1.6 trillion conversations, providing brands with a wealth of data to track trends and analyze social sentiment.
2. Audience segmentation: The tool offers detailed demographic analysis, letting brands categorize their audience by age, location, and interests for more accurate insights.
3. Social share of voice tracking: Track how your brand compares to competitors by monitoring your share of voice across social media platforms.
4. Custom data integration: Brandwatch lets users combine their own insights with social media data to get a better understanding of their overall brand strategy performance.
5. Geolocation and image recognition: This allows brands to see where conversations about them are taking place around the world, giving a complete view of their impact.

Brandwatch G2 rating: 4.4/5 (607 reviews)

Pros of using Brandwatch:

• Users appreciate Brandwatch’s ability to gather data from various sources like social media, forums, blogs, and even news websites.
• The tool allows users to customize their analytics dashboard with the KPIs they care most about, providing flexibility in how they view data. Director Geoffrey S. agrees: “The customizable UI is its strongest asset.”
• Users appreciate how Brandwatch’s AI tools make it easier for businesses to analyze large datasets to spot customer trends quickly. 
• For global businesses, Brandwatch’s support for 30+ languages allows them to monitor conversations more accurately. 

Cons of using Brandwatch:

• Users report occasional issues with glitches like data not saving or charts pulling in unrelated data.
• The high cost of Brandwatch can be intimidating for small companies, with pricing higher than some competitors.
• Sometimes, there are delays in data loading, which can slow down the analysis process. 
• “Configuring the tool for a specific purpose can be challenging," especially when it comes to setting up complex searches,  explains Antonio B.

Brandwatch pricing: 

Brandwatch’s pricing information is only available upon request.

4. Mention

Mention is a powerful yet affordable social media listening tool that tracks over a billion data sources, including Facebook, Instagram, X, Reddit, TikTok, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn.

The tool has an easy-to-use interface and real-time monitoring that lets users quickly find and act on important information. Its filtering and reporting features simplify customizing the data you see, helping you focus on what’s crucial for your brand. 

This makes it a great tool for freelancers, startups, and small businesses looking for an affordable way to monitor online conversations, track brand mentions, analyze sentiments, and keep up with industry trends.

Mention has a unique feature for crisis management that helps brands handle potential crises effectively. It works by setting up alerts that notify users of unusual activity in real time. This early warning system allows brands to quickly respond to those driving the conversation, reducing the risk of harm to their reputation.

Here are Mention’s social listening tools:

1. Real-time monitoring across 1 billion sources: Mention tracks brand mentions, industry trends, and competitors across a wide range of platforms, including social media, forums, and news sites, all in real-time.
2. Sentiment analysis and filtering: Easily categorize brand mentions by positive, negative, or neutral sentiment to track customer feedback on campaigns and products effectively.
3. Crisis management: Set up alerts for unusual spikes in conversation, helping to identify potential brand crises early on and take proactive steps to mitigate them.
4. Customizable alerts and filters: Create and save custom filters to narrow down the most relevant conversations, whether tracking specific keywords, competitors, or influencers. 
5. Team collaboration tools: The platform also supports teamwork, allowing multiple users to collaborate, assign tasks, and share insights, making it easier to manage social media efforts across a team.

Mention G2 rating: 4.3/5 (439 reviews)

Pros of using Mention:

• Mention excels at finding unbranded mentions and hidden backlinks in article copy, which is great for monitoring outreach efforts: “I love how Mention is able to look for unbranded mentions in article copy,” says Karl P., Lead Front-End Developer.
• The tool offers real-time notifications for every mention across social media platforms, helping businesses stay on top of brand discussions without delay.
• Many users praise the tool’s simplicity: “The user interface is intuitive, making it easy to use,” says Isaac A., from a mid-market company.
• Users appreciate Mention's effectiveness in finding both positive and negative reviews across the web and social platforms, allowing for quicker reactions.

Cons of using Mention:

• One downside users mention is the inability to capture historical data after creating a Boolean search (A Boolean search uses words like AND, OR, and NOT to help find specific results by combining various keywords).
• Some users feel that Mention’s simplicity limits its customization options: "It is almost too simple, with little room for personalization,” Isaac A. points out.
• If you don't set it up right, you might miss important mentions, which can make it tough to keep an eye on your brand effectively.
• Users have noted that Mention’s pricing can be high for smaller businesses, making it less accessible for startups or those with limited budgets.
• Some users mention that the search function could be improved, especially when compared to more advanced tools.

Mention pricing: 

Individual plans begin at $49.00 per month, but Mention also offers a free trial for you to explore before committing to a paid tier.

5. Agorapulse

Agorapulse is a comprehensive social media management tool that simplifies social media listening by consolidating customer interactions and mentions into a unified inbox, making it easier for users to manage conversations across platforms without missing anything important.

Agorapulse is ideal for small businesses and agencies that need a user-friendly tool for managing their social media presence and generating detailed reports. Social media managers and digital marketing teams will find its reporting features handy for client presentations or internal reviews.

What makes Agorapulse stand out is that it lets you search for relevant keywords and hashtags to see what content is currently popular in your field. It also keeps you competitive by allowing you to monitor your competitors' activities through searches. This way, you can analyze what they're doing and discover ways to create even better content.

Here are Agorapulse’s social listening tools:

1. Unified inbox for conversations: Agorapulse consolidates all social media conversations, mentions, and messages into one place, so you can manage customer interactions without jumping between platforms.
2. Boolean search filters: Users can improve their searches by using Boolean search parameters, which use terms like AND, OR, and NOT to combine different keywords. This method makes it easier to specifically track brand mentions or competitor activity on various platforms such as X, Facebook, and Instagram.
3. Real-time monitoring: The platform allows you to track feedback and mentions as they occur, helping you keep up with real-time conversations about your brand, including comments on Facebook and Instagram ads.
4. Labeling and organization: You can label content such as key customer feedback, competitor mentions, or important posts, making it simple to retrieve and respond to relevant information.
5. Customizable reporting: Agorapulse lets you create in-depth social listening reports that you can share with clients or team members. These reports provide insights into brand mentions, customer sentiment, and more.

Agorapulse G2 rating: 4.5/5 (925 reviews)

Pros of using Agorapulse:

• "Agorapulse is incredibly intuitive and user-friendly," says Sandra H., Senior Communications Coordinator at a small business.
• The platform offers robust reporting tools, which are useful for generating detailed insights into brand performance across social channels.
• Users appreciate how Agorapulse combines social listening with features like scheduling and engagement tools, making their workflow smoother and more efficient.
• Many users highlight the responsiveness of Agorapulse’s support team: "The customer service is excellent," notes Karen P., Social Media and Digital Content Manager.

Cons of using Agorapulse:

• Some users find the analytics provided by Agorapulse to be lacking in depth and detail.
• A few users have noted that the platform can be slow when scheduling posts or uploading media, which might affect efficiency.
• Some users have experienced glitches with the mobile app, making it less reliable for on-the-go social media management.

Agorapulse pricing: 

Agorapulse offers a free plan for individuals. For teams, plans start at $69/month.

Frequently asked questions

What is a social media listening strategy?

A social media listening strategy means actively following what people say online about your brand, industry, or topics important to your business. It's more than just watching for mentions of your name—it's about understanding the reasons and feelings behind these conversations. 

With a good social media listening plan, you can learn what your audience likes, spot new trends, and respond to concerns as they happen. This helps you tailor your messages, enhance your services, and keep in touch with your audience.

Are social listening tools AI?

Many social listening tools use AI to improve their features. AI analyzes big data sets, spots patterns, and offers insights such as sentiment analysis, which tells you if conversations are positive, negative, or neutral. 

It can also spot trends and unusual changes as they happen, helping businesses keep up with what's being said about them online. Although AI supports some sophisticated features, the top social listening tools are easy to use and don't need any special technical skills.

How can you find out if someone is talking about you on social media?

You can use a social listening tool to see if someone is talking about you on social media. These tools search for mentions of your brand, specific keywords, or hashtags on platforms like X, Instagram, and Facebook. 

You can set up alerts to be notified when your brand is mentioned, even if your account isn't tagged. This way, you can keep track of conversations, reply to comments, and understand how people feel about your brand.

Monitor the social media conversations about your brand with SocialBee!

In conclusion, choosing the right social media listening tool depends on your business needs, budget, and the features that matter most to you. 

Whether you prioritize ease of use, advanced analytics, or competitive tracking, each tool has its strengths and potential limitations. The key is to find one that aligns with your goals and helps you stay on top of online conversations about your brand.

And if you're ready to take the next step, SocialBee can help you monitor those important social media conversations. Start your 14-day free trial today to monitor your brand's presence across platforms and stay connected with your audience!