Free 9 Powerful Social Media Tools for Monitoring

Social media has changed the marketing practices of businesses. It has lent voice to the customers where they can express their view about the brands. Nielsen has estimated that in the United States alone, almost 80 percent of 255 million internet users can be reached through social media platforms. So, brands need to hear the conversion of target audiences on the social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+,Tumblr to name a few, and respond accordingly. The majority resort to Social Media tools for Monitoring to get the real-time insights about the brands.

Significance of Social Media Monitoring

Brands need to have a strategy for Social media monitoring. Monitoring or listening the customer conversation on social media platforms enriches the brands with business acumen that will improve the ROI, in the long-term. Key points that experts, brand owners and marketers need to monitor are- brand mentions, hashtags, customers, competitors and niche market.

Being part of the social media conversion also improves the perception of customers about the brand. So, brands start listening your customers, if you have not done it till date! There is a multitude of reasons to do so.

• Know the Real Scenario – Social Media is your honest friend who will provide you with the real-time insights and highlight the areas where you need to emphasize. All you need to do is hear them. If you want to what customers think about you and what is making you lag behind your customers, then monitoring the social media platforms is a must.
• Grab the Opportunity – Every user is important so monitor each conversion and respond fast. For instance, if your customers share their experience of interaction with the brand on any social media platform, to enhance their experience you can give them coupons as it will increase the chance of repeat visitors.
• Identify the Key Influencers – It is important to identify the key influencers who have a large follower base and are regular on the social media platforms. It is important to have the key influencers on your side as their opinion holds weight. Monitoring help in identifying the influencers and you can formulate ways of attracting them.
• Crisis Management – Listen to your customers, or it will be too late before your friend turns foe. Regular monitoring also ensures fast reputation management as it helps in addressing complaints and grievances that your target audiences have lashed out on the social media.
• Pinpoint what works – Ideas originate anywhere. Analysis of customer posts, likes and comments will highlight the recent trends. Identifying trends and implementing those in decision making process, be it for revamping or upgrading improves the revenue. In fact, you can identify the mistakes that your competitors have committed and avoid those.

Monitoring the social media conversation empowers you with the intellect that helps in shaping the business strategy. There are tools that aid marketers to know what customers are speaking about a brand.

Explore best Social Media Tools for Monitoring

To stay abreast of what your customers are speak about you, an effective way is the use of various Social Media tools for Monitoring. There are both free and paid tools that analyze the data and provide business intelligence that helps in shaping the business strategy.

1. Hootsuite – It is one of the best Social Media tools for Monitoring used by the marketers that scrutinizes different social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and WordPress . The tool generates analytics report each week and there are options to aid team management like delegating tasks. Which makes it perfect for teams where there are many handling social media accounts of brands.
2. Tweetdeck – If you are a novice, then opt for this tool. You can schedule the tweets, monitor the tweets, interactions and track the hashtags. It will be easy for you to manage different social media accounts.
3. Klout – A user-friendly tool that helps in monitoring and understanding the brand influence on Twitter. It measures the influence, based on the engagement of Twitter users and monitors what users think about your brand and factors influencing their perception. You will also get a list of influential users or key influencers based on the connectedness, brand mentions and re-tweets.
4. Trackur – It is a simple social media tool for monitoring that yields fast results. Trackur is an affordable option to monitor multiple accounts without much hassle. The dashboard will provide a deep insight of your social media presence. Best part of this tool is that you can monitor brand mentions, presence and reputation from any device when on the go.
5. Social Mention – The visual format used by this tool is a great way for brands to learn about brand interactions and mentions. It is a popular tool among the social media experts as it can monitor almost all the social media platforms. For an in-depth analysis of data this is an effective tool and categorizes the brand influence under four categories- Reach, Passion, Sentiment and Strength.
6. HowSociable – To know the presence of your competitors on the social media platform, then this is the best tool. With a free account, you can monitor and track almost twelve social media accounts, and if you want to track a few more accounts then opt for the pro account. It is different from other tools as you will get individual scores for individual social media account. Social media professionals can identify which social media platform works best for the brand and which one needs more attention.
7. Followerwonk – The focus of this tool is Twitter and it helps in analyzing the online process and optimize it for a consistent social growth. This tool is effective for outreach campaigns as you can search Twitter bios, interact with the influencers and segregate users based on location, followers and authority. It helps in comparing the social graph of a brand with its competitors.
8. Addictomatic – For monitoring the brand image across different social media platforms like YouTube, Flickr, WordPress, Twitter and various leading search engines, this tool is effective. It works best for the latest blogs, news, images and videos. With this tool, marketers can keep a track of the brand reputation and recent developments. Experts can personalize the result dashboard and bookmark the same for further use.
9. Talkwalker – This tool will show how many times your brand is mentioned in the social media platform. You can learn about the engagement level of users, brand mention and what the influencers are speaking. You can also track the source or location where the conversation originated.

These tools provide in-depth analysis of social media conversation of competitors, customers and influencers and form an integral part of the marketing mix.

Strengthen Brand image with Social Media Tools for Monitoring

Based on proven strategies and use of the best tools experts and brand owners can identify their target audiences, influencers and perception of the brand among the online community. You can get the feedback of the customers without much effort. Just tap in the information and use the same for improvising the marketing strategy and plan. Benefits of using social media tools for monitoring are

• Assess the reaction of individual audience to various marketing campaigns and product announcements. Tailor the efforts based on this observation as and when needed.
• The tools help in interacting with the audiences and lend a human voice to the brand. It makes the brand approachable.
• Effective listening helps in reputation management by negating any harmful buzz.
• Spy the competitors by gathering intellect about them and identify opportunities to nullify those.

Listening to the target audiences across social networks help in formulating strategy for content marketing as what content will suit your target audience, answer their questions and address their needs. So, even without asking for any feedback, you can get those at your fingertip with these social media tools for monitoring.