5 Best Tools for Social Media Listening in 2022

We love good listeners. They not only hear what we say but also focus on understanding it entirely and acting upon it. Being heard makes us feel valued, while receiving the correct responses improves the value of the listener in our perception. Both people and brands are more appealing if they are good listeners. 

When it comes to brand communications, help desks, social media, and surveys act as our ears. Using relevant tools can sharpen our hearing and improve our listening skills. But before getting into the tools for social listening, let’s take a look at what we can hear on social media and why it is important.

What Is Social Listening?

Social listening is a comprehensive process involving all kinds of conversations related to your business. Customers, prospects, competitors, products, services, support issues, hot topics, and other aspects of your industry are all a part of the stuff you should listen to, understand and act upon. 

Although often used in the same context, social listening and social monitoring (also referred to as social media tracking) are two different processes. Basically, social media monitoring tools collect metric data while social listening makes sense of it. All the platforms provide data on likes, comments, reviews, shares, and similar metrics, and you can monitor your brand’s online presence without the help of additional tools. But when conducting social listening, numbers are replaced by feelings. 

For example, a high engagement rate on one of your contents can look pleasing at first glance, but what if many comments contain anger or disappointment instead of sympathy and love? Or what if a scene in your latest commercial grabbed unexpected attention and now presents an opportunity for further product development? Numbers alone can’t provide that kind of intelligence – but words and conversations can, with the use of appropriate tools. 

What Are Social Listening Tools?

Collection, categorization, and analysis are the three steps of processing social listening data. Social listening tools streamline this process through a single platform. Most of these tools help you understand your customer better by providing three types of social listening:

1. Collecting Metric Data: Metric data is mainly concerned with reach, engagement, time, and the number of queries in an omnichannel environment.
   
2. Collecting Sentimental Data: Sentimental data classifies the feelings and moods behind the engagements. It tracks keywords and categorizes them according to sentiment, which leads to a deeper understanding of customer personas and preferences, or the relevance of a particular topic.
   
3. Analysis and Reporting: Meaningful data creates actionable insights. Analysis and reporting show you the changing tendencies as well as your brand’s progress, so you can reach better conclusions and plan.

While some tools are specifically developed for social media listening, others offer social listening features among many. Here is a list of the five best tools that offer social listening while meeting different business needs.

Best Social Media Listening Tools

Juphy for Customer Support + Social Listening

Juphy is a multichannel help desk for social media oriented teams. It helps you receive and respond to all user queries from different platforms while it supports keyword tracking and categorizing on Twitter.

Features

• Unified inbox that allows you to receive and respond to all queries from social platforms and review sites (including direct messages) on a single dashboard
• Keyword tracking on Twitter as well as automation rules that classify incoming messages based on content, urgency, and tone from all social media and review sites
• Actionable reports including sentiment analysis, audience data, channel, and team performances
• Shared inbox, project groups, and messaging features for team collaboration
• Fully featured social media inbox with real-time notifications and various software integrations

Pros

• Extremely easy to setup (1-click setup) and use; thanks to its minimalistic design
• Historical data for all conversations
• An affordable choice for small/mid sized businesses and freelancers

Cons

• No demographical / geographical segmentation
• No TikTok integration yet

Hootsuite for Social Media Management + Social Listening

Hootsuite is a highly popular social media management tool with social listening features. Mainly it helps the users with scheduling and planning for multiple social media platforms.

Features

• Great for publishing, scheduling, and boosting posts on multiple social media platforms
• Tracks keywords, brand mentions, and competitor activity
• Manages organic and paid content together
• Allows engaging with interactions on a single dashboard

Pros

• Supports TikTok and Pinterest
• Has a free version for a limited number of social accounts

Cons

• Requires to sign out from platforms occasionally for security reasons
• Automation can be improved

Sprout Social for Employee Advocacy + Social Listening

Sprout Social is a social media management platform much like Hootsuite. You can publish, schedule, track, and advertise your content on a number of platforms. The main difference is that Sprout Social offers employees a simple way to share curated content across their social networks as brand advocates.

Features

• Offers social listening and analytics 
• Content planning and user engagement on a single dashboard
• Chatbot builder for Twitter and Facebook
• Automated inbox rules for message classification

Pros

• Can be integrated with other customer support and team management tools
• Features for employee advocacy

Cons

• Covers only social media
• Platform integrations are limited

Audiense for Social Listening + Consumer Segmentation 

Audiense offers intelligence on audiences of various sizes and a Twitter marketing platform. It helps brands develop relevant audience-centric strategies through social consumer segmentation and insight development.

Features

• Community analysis and management
• Advanced monitoring and listening
• Twitter tailored audiences for advertising

Pros

• Good for creating a strategy that needs custom segmentation

Cons

• Only works with Twitter data but can be integrated with other social data providing tools

YouScan for Monitoring + Image Recognition

YouScan is a social listening platform powered by image recognition technology. It uses a quite accurate AI engine to crawl through images as well as written content, which provides detailed demographic and psychographic information about your audience.

Features

• Shows all brand mentions and identifies influencers without relying on hashtags or written text
• Saves time by merging repeat / duplicate posts
• Filters and organizes data effectively in real-time

Pros

• Provides consumer insights from user-generated images

Cons

• Offers so many features that it takes time and hard work to make the best use of the product

How Should You Choose a Social Media Listening Tool?

Tools that offer social listening besides other features usually work for many businesses, but your specific needs and available resources will determine the right social listening tool for you in the end. If the tool supports integrations with your existing software and offers benefits that can improve your overall performance, look for the brands that provide product demos and free trial periods.

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