12 Best Social Media Monitoring Tools for SMBs in 2023

Does your target audience love your product? Hate it? Or do they prefer your competition?

Chances are, you don’t have the answers to these questions because you don’t know where to look.Without social media monitoring, businesses are forced to be mind readers when it comes to their customer’s behavior and opinions.

With the right social media monitoring, brands can:

• Listen to conversations relevant to their brand and industry

• Keep track of their competitors’ marketing and share of voice

• Quickly find out about brand mentions and instantly respond

• Discover the rightinfluencersand fans for their brand

Today, businesses see the value in social listening and are investing in it. In fact, more than35% of enterprise businessesspend over $100k on their social listening tool stack.

But you don’t need a sizeable budget to connect with your audience.

We’ve made a list of the top 12 social media monitoring tools that are accessible to small businesses in 2023.

What are social media monitoring tools?

Social media monitoring tools keep track of your social media marketing. These tools make it easy to schedule posts, plan content in advance, and then track their performance after posting.

Brands can also monitor core keywords to stay updated on relevant industry conversations and trends. Many social media monitoring tools update you on brand mentions, even if you’re not directly tagged. On some tools, you can get real-time updates and reply to these mentions without leaving the platform.

12 best social media monitoring tools for small businesses in 2023

Here are the best tools for social listening, tracking social campaign performance, and managing social media marketing.

Hire a social media expert for your business

1. Agorapulse

Agorapulseis a social listening tool that helps you stay informed on conversations relevant to your brand and industry. You can also proactively respond to mentions and user-generated content.

“We are big fans of Agorapulse and use it for our own social media marketing and our client accounts,” says Laura Moore, Co-founder ofThe Two Lauras. “The biggest benefit has been the inbox feature - we are less likely to miss important notifications, messages, and mentions and can respond quickly to opportunities.”

But Agorapulse goes beyond social media listening. It’s also a social media management solution. You can easily pull out reports that show you the ROI of your social media campaigns, making it easy to measure real business impact.

We spoke to Darryl Praill, CMO of Agorapulse. He says, "for small to medium businesses feeling the pinch of reduced budgets, Agorapulse is the key to measuring social media ROI. You can prove to stakeholders that their resources are paying off in tangible and significant ways – from increased leads, sales, and traffic.”

Here’s what an Agorapulse insight report looks like. Shared by The Two Lauras.

Pros

• Tracks key performance indicators

• Boolean keyword search

• Filters to detect negative comments or hate speech

• Content scheduling and planning

• Competitor and campaign analysis

• Recommends the best time to post

• Community management automation

Cons

• No API

• No email marketing

• Listening only works with business Instagram profiles

• No Instagram DM features

• No workflow management tools

Pricing plans

• Free:The free version offers a basic social media and ROI report with Google analytics integration. You can schedule up to 10 posts.

• Standard:$49 per month (paid annually). You can draft and schedule unlimited posts and have an advanced social inbox. Social listening tools are not available with this plan.

• Professional:$79 per month (paid annually). You get everything in standard and a few collaboration, productivity, and engagement features. Social listening tools are available.

• Advanced:$119 per month (paid annually). You get a full package of collaborations, productivity, engagement, and social listening features. There’s an unlimited content library and team workflow tools.

• Custom:You can also contact the team for custom pricing and features.

Who is it for?

Agorapulse is a great 2-in-1 social media management and monitoring tool for small businesses. It can handle 10 social media profiles, making it best for SMBs with multi-platform social media campaigns.

2. Sprout Social

Sprout Social利用人工智能和机器学习提供丰富的数据and performance insights. With Sprout Social, you can listen in on real conversations relevant to your brand, keep track of competitors’ market share, and also identify the right influencers and audiences to incorporate into your social strategy.

“As the social industry evolves, tools like Sprout are essential for gathering critical cultural context and staying ahead of industry trends,” says Rachael Samuels, Director, Social Media, Sprout Social. “With Sprout, SMBs can keep up with the fast-paced nature of social media and simultaneously identify the most impactful opportunities for their business.”

Pros

• Campaign analysis and industry insights

• Brand health analysis

• Competitor analysis

• Easy to navigate user interface

• Robust analytic reports

• Trends alerts

• Identify influencers and thought leaders

• Monitor brand events

• Crisis management tools

• Workflow management

Cons

• Separate drafts to publish on multiple platforms

• 社会听工具是艾娃ilable as an addition

• No file management, sharing, and transfer features on platform

Pricing plans

• Free:30-day free trial.

• Standard:Starts at $249 per month. You get 5 social profiles, a social inbox, CRM tools, a content calendar, and post scheduler.

• Professional:Starts at $399 per month. You get everything in Standard plus unlimited social profiles, CRM+social integrations, response and trends analysis, and competitive reports.

• Advanced:Starts at $499 per month. You get everything in Professional with message spike alerts, chatbots, Twitter surveys, a content library, and automated link tracking tools.

• Enterprise:Contact the team for custom pricing. It includes everything in Advance with premium customer support, consulting services, customized onboarding support, and premium add-ons.

Who is it for?

Sprout Social is a powerful business analytics tool best suited for mid-level companies and enterprises. It offers advanced social media marketing, social monitoring, and data analysis features.

3. Hootsuite Insights

Hootsuiteoffers a monitoring tool called ‘Hootsuite Insights’ powered by Brandwatch as part of its social media management software. With this tool, you can set up keyword monitoring streams and receive email notifications when a prospect mentions those keywords.

It lets you monitor hashtags, trends, locations, social topics, and profiles. Furthermore, you can build and publish social media campaigns from one location and integrate it with your CRM to see insights about visits, prospects, and customers.

We spoke to Brayden Cohen, Manager of Social Marketing at Hootsuite. “Hootsuite helps social media managers monitor and analyze conversations, identify trends, track brand mentions, and gain valuable insights to inform your social media strategy. SMBs can easily gauge their brand sentiment and awareness to get an edge over their competition.”

Will Yang, Head of Growth atInstrumentl, uses Hootsuite as a social monitoring tool. “It's important to us to stay on top of what people are saying about our brand, but we don't want to get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information that can come in,” he says

“That's why we like using Hootsuite—it allows us to follow multiple mentions at once and filter them based on the type of content they contain. This helps us focus on what matters most without getting distracted by irrelevant content.”

Pros

• Monitor various social media platforms

• Monitor through third-party apps (Tumblr, Vimeo, Reddit, MailChimp, and more)

• Post scheduling tool

• Track brand mentions

• Team collaboration features

• Manage customer queries from one space

• In-depth social media analytics reports

Cons

• Can’t tag people on social media through Hootsuite

• Plans above the starter plan could be out of budget for startups

• High learning curve interface for beginners

Pricing plans

• Free plan:This plan gives you basic marketing, sales, CMS, service, and operations tools.

• Starter plan:$18 per month (paid annually). You get all the free tools with extended limits.

• Professional plan:$800 per month (paid annually). It has all the starter tools with omnichannel marketing automation, teams feature, campaign reporting, and social media.

• Enterprise:Costs $3,600 per month for 10,000 marketing contacts. You can have up to 300 teams, 200 inboxes, 50 dashboards, and 1,000 campaigns.

Note that pricing is for Hootsuite software, not just the Hootsuite Insights tool.

Who is it for?

Hootsuite Insights is a good option for small to large-scale businesses that need extensive social media and team management features. Its best feature is tracking important topics and responding to them quickly.

4. Sendible

Sendibleis an easy-to-use social media analytic tool that helps grow your audience. It can create automated reports of your top posts, schedule content, give content ideas, offer collaboration tools, engage with customers, and even edit images.

We spoke to Cecilia Haynes, Director of Product Marketing at Sendible. “Consistency is key when it comes to growing a brand’s reach on social media. Sendible gives you content ideas, allows you to recycle evergreen content, and you can easily schedule out a month’s worth of campaigns in 30 minutes,” she says.

In addition to content management and post scheduling, Sendible handles social monitoring, and tracks customer conversations across multiple platforms.

Pros

• Automated RSS feeds

• In-built photo editing tools

• Bulk importing tools help in scheduling a month’s content

• Automated overview and reports of the best-performing posts

• One space to engage with the audience through DMs, comments, and social mentions

• Lead generation tools

• White label offering for social media agencies

• Content suggestions

• Regular updates

Cons

• No conversion or KPI tracking

• No AB testing features for social media campaigns

• No behavior or predictive analytics

• Does not remember hashtags used in the past

Pricing plans

• Free:14-day free trial.

• Creator:$25 per month (paid annually). For 1 user and 6 social profiles, you get unlimited post schedules, content ideas, monitoring, planning, and reporting features.

• Traction:$76 per month (paid annually). This plan is best for startup agencies. For 4 users and 24 social profiles, you get all creator features, collaboration, user management, and assignment.

• Scale: $170 per month (paid annually). For 7 users and 49 profiles, it has all tracking features with automated customer reports, content library, hashtags, and account management tools.

Who is it for?

Sendible is a scalable social media management tool that works on multiple social media platforms. Its standout feature is white-labeling, making it perfect for growing social media agencies that handle multiple accounts.

5. Keyhole

Co-founded byNeil Patel,Keyholeis a data-driven tool that automates the process of social media monitoring. Its low learning curve means you need no prior data analysis experience to use this tool to measure brand performance, engagement, and reputation.

Keyhole’s standout feature is suggestions on how your social posts can go viral, which works by analyzing data from thousands of social media posts.

Top companies across the globe use Keyhole for social media listening, including Google, and the United Nations.

Pros

• Sentiment analysis for every brand mention

• Real-time insights on campaign performance

• Insights on influencer engagement and overall reach

• Full analysis of new and old competitors

• Discover niche keywords

• Identify the top influencers and compare their overall performance

• Perform market analysis

Cons

• 反应迟钝铜stomer support

• ROI reports aren’t always reliable, need to be cross-checked for accuracy

Pricing plans

• SMB and Freelancers:$79 per month (paid annually). For 1 user, you get basic social listening, PDF exports, and profile analytic features.

• Corporate:$239 per month (paid annually). For 3 users you get 10 trackers, 20,000 mentions, 10 influencer reports, campaign analysis, 3 months of old data, 3 social media platforms, optimization suggestions, PDF, and XLS exports.

• Agency:$479 per month (paid annually). For 10 users you get 25 trackers, 1-year-old data, 50,000 mentions, 50 influencer reports, campaign analysis, a media wall, 6 social media platforms, PDF/XLS exports, white label dashboards, and trends analysis.

• Enterprise:Contact the team for custom pricing and features.

Who is it for?

Keyhole has dedicated plans for freelancers, small and medium-sized businesses, agencies, and global organizations. It’s best for B2C brands that need monitoring tools at an affordable price.

Find a social media pro for your next campaign

6. Brand 24

仇恨言论可以毁掉你的品牌的声誉a single comment, social media post, blog, video, or any other form of media. Brand24 is a reliable software that helps you detect any negative feedback that people have about your brand.

“Brand24gives you an amazing number of insights and a built-in AI that can differentiate between positive and negative mentions. It’s helped me work on brand awareness, and react appropriately to every sh**-storm about the company or product,” saysWiktor Święcicki, independent content marketer.

Pros

• Insights into customer preference and past activity

• Advanced content sentiment analysis

• Detailed reports on your PR coverage

• Track brand reach as compared to your competitors

• Hashtag volume and reach tracking

• Noise reduction tools

• Track customer engagement

Cons

• Important social monitoring features like tracking hashtags, slack integration, and filtering are unavailable in the lower pricing plans

Pricing plans

• Individual:$69 per month (paid annually). For 1 user, you get 2,000 mentions per month, updates every 12 hours, and a few basic tools.

• Team:$129 per month (paid annually). For unlimited users, you get 5,000 mentions per month, updates each hour, and more social features.

• Pro:$179 per month (paid annually). You get 25,000 mentions, real-time updates, and all features.

• Enterprise:Costs $399 per month (if paid monthly) and $349 per month (if paid annually). You get 100,000 mentions and real-time updates with all features.

Who is it for?

Brand24 is best for freelancers, small and medium-sized businesses, and large enterprises to manage your brand’s reputation with advanced listening tools.

7. Zoho Social

Zoho Socialis a social monitoring tool for businesses looking to grow on multiple social media platforms. Zoho lets you build a social listening dashboard to track core keyword mentions and engagements with your brand.

After getting real-time notifiactions, you can respond back through the platform. In Zoho’s contact directory, all your Facebook and Twitter messages are stored in a single dedicated space for easy access.

“I am fond of Zoho’s all-encompassing management features. You can also utilize its customer relationship management (CRM) system,” says Devin Schumacher, Founder ofSERPin conversation withUpCity. “Marketers can even execute their entire social media marketing strategies without leaving Zoho.”

Pros

• Track mentions and keyword search

• Hashtags tracking

• The app version is available

• Get a screenshot of people who engage often

• GMB reviews and questions

• Contact directory to create one spot for all social messages

• List of competitors and influencers

• 15-day trial without credit card details

Cons

• Contact directory for Twitter and Facebook only

• Can't post multiple photos on Instagram

• Resizing images is not possible

Pricing Plans

• Standard plan:$10 (paid annually). It includes 9 social channels and a single user seat for one brand. You get basic features like a home dashboard, multichannel publishing, and activity log.

• Professional plan:$25 (paid annually). You get all the standard features with other tools like Livestream, bulk scheduling, monitoring dashboard, link shortener, and repeat posting.

• Agency plan:$200 (paid annually). You can have up to 10 brands and 100 channels for 5 team members. It has all the professional features with other tools like client invites, email reports, scheduling, agency reports, and more.

Who is it for?

Zoho Social is best affordable solution for small-scale businesses that want to manage their brand on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, GMB (Google My Business), and more.

8. BigSpy

Small businesses can be at a disadvantage with lower marketing budgets, but an Adspy tool like BigSpy can level the playing field. With BigSpy, you can analyze trending ads to see what works and doesn’t for others.

BigSpyhas a huge database of 600 million ads sources from major advertising networks, and activity tracking to keep an eye on competitor marketing.

Pros

• Intuitive ad-search filters like type, format, country, industry, and more

• Daily report on trending ads

• Performance reports

• Ad scheduling tools

• 7-day refund guarantee

Cons

• Limited collaboration tools

• Only Ad spy, doesn’t track your own campaigns

Pricing plans

• 基本:$9 per month. You can switch 3 industries per month. It offers 20 queries, 25 ads, and 25 downloads per day only for Facebook and Instagram.

• Pro:$99 per month. It offers unlimited queries, 250 ads, 250 downloads, tracking 20 Facebook pages, and online support. You also get limited equipment, ad ideas, and featured ads for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and Yahoo.

• 6-Month Pro:$79 per month. This plan has all the pro features for 6 months.

• Annual Pro:$69 per month. This plan has all the pro features for annual billing.

• VIP Enterprise:$3600+ per year. Use this plan for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Yahoo, AdMob, TikTok, and more. You can track unlimited queries and ads. Additionally, you get featured ads, ad ideas, trending topics, charts, and special customer support.

Who is it for?

BigSpy is best for small and mid-size businesses to monitor competitor ads and find out the gaps in your performance. It can be a comprehensive solution for new marketing agencies or businesses selling products to get inspiration from tons of ads out there.

9. Critical Mention (Onclusive)

Critical Mentiontracks your social media campaigns and gives you insights in real time. You can track any mentions of your brand, as well as keep track of relevant industry keywords. You’ll also get performance analytics of the share of voice and audience values to fuel competitor market research.

Critical Mention’s standout feature is podcast monitoring in multiple industries. If you’re looking to promote your brand through podcasts, consider hiring apodcast marketing expert on Fiverr.

Pros

• Podcast monitoring

• Unlimited cloud storage to keep track of mentions

• Sentiment analysis to understand podcast and social mentions

• Early crisis alerts

• Search for keywords, hashtags, and popular handles

• Customer feedback monitoring

• In-depth social media metrics

Cons

• No post scheduling

• No competitor social monitoring

• Limited performance metrics and analytics

Pricing plans

• Custom Pricing:Contact the team for custom pricing and features.

Who is it for?

Critical mention is a social media and podcast monitoring software that is best for businesses in broadcasting, social media, and online news distribution.

10. Brandwatch Consumer Intelligence

Brandwatchis a reliable solution for social media insights, brand intelligence, team collaboration, and audience management. It also provides a single inbox for all your customer interactions. This tool goes beyond social listening to provide more than 12 years of historical data.

Pros

• Customizable smart social inbox to manage your community

• Social listening tool analyses 100M+ data sources

• Get history of interactions with your customers

• Scheduling with the content calendar

• Get social insights based on 7+ years of channel analytics and 12+ months of customer data

• Advanced competitor analysis

• Quick customer support

• Unlimited social profiles

• Detailed monthly reports

Cons

• No email marketing features

• Doesn’t filter out low-quality mentions well

• Steep learning curve with interface and features

Pricing plans

• Custom Pricing:Contact the team for custom pricing and features.

Who is it for?

Brandwatch is best for small businesses looking for an all-in-one solution to enhance customer relationships, social media management, social listening, and content creation processes.

11. Reddit by Synaptive

Social monitoring tools often lack features for tracking Reddit activity. In 2023, users are increasingly turning to Reddit to get unbiased community-sourced insights. Almost47% of Reddit’s organic trafficcomes directly from Google, possibly due to search queries including the keyword ‘reddit’.Hootsuite’s integration Reddit通过Synaptive提供了关键词研究工具age your business’s reputation and community on Reddit. It reads millions of data from over 130,000+ communities to track brand mentions and understand sentiment.

Pros

• Search for multiple keywords

• Monitor over 130,000+ communities

• Integrations with Evernote, Pocket, Onenoe, and more

• Affordable price

• Share your posts on other social media platforms

• Never miss brand mentions

• Niched keyword searched

• Easy-to-use feed manager

• Link shortening tool

• Use the Stream feature to mark posts as read, unread, favorite, or notes

Cons

• If you violate Reddit's community guidelines, your account may be suspended

Pricing plans

• Standard:$6/billed monthly.

Who is it for?

Reddit keyword monitor pro is best for businesses that want to create a presence on Reddit. The conversations on this platform are in-depth and genuine, making it a great platform to publish and monitor content.

12. Nexalogy

Nexalogyis a free Hootsuite integration that finds conversation streams relevant to your business. It can detect crises, monitor Twitter activity, and discover what’s popular in your social network.

What’s special about Nexalogy is its data visualizations. You can visually see topic clusters and get heat maps on geological traffic. Nexalogy is the best tool for Twitter on our list.

Pros

• Detect PR crisis at an early stage

• Browse Twitter volume

• Discover trending topics in the form of Interest Maps

• Identify top influencers

• See your network's most active, involved, and retweeted users

• Identify popular and new ideas

• See the most popular links that your followers are sharing

• Competitor analysis

Cons

• Limited customer suport

Pricing plans

• Free:Free Hootsuite integration.

Who is it for?

Nexalogy is the best tool to get in on Twitter conversation streams that are relevant to your business. It’s best for browsing interest maps to see social connections, ideas, Twitter traffic, popular concepts, and hashtags.

Hire a social media manager today

Social media monitoring tools can make your life easier, but they don’t eliminate the need for a strong digital marketing team and strategy. On Fiverr, you canhire a social media managerwho can leverage the best tools and establish a successful social media presence. Sign onFiverrtoday and discover social media marketing talent.