5 low cost ways to do social media listening

I list here 5 social media listening tools to try for free or for a low entry cost. There are many other tools that I often use, but I have selected my best 5 for you that will give you a good spread of results across the major social media platforms that can be set up and used within 20 minutes. Yes, 20 minutes!

Mention.com

This is my number one favorite low cost social media listening referral. I have used this for my personal use for a number of years. It is perfect for influencer discovery, crisis management, competitive analysis, brand monitoring etc. I have regular updates on my listening surveys sent to me via email. The language coverage is excellent.
Get started here.

Mention was acquired by Mynewsdesk, the number one Saas solution for digital communication and PR in the Nordics, but it is still business as usual.

Mention is not free but has low cost entry level subscription options.

Buzzsumo

This is an interesting social media listening tool. I suggest to create a free account because the daily limit use of the site without a login will expire very quickly. This tool has a very different approach compared to the others in my recommended top 5.

The content analyzer shows the most shared content, and indicates which social media platforms shared it the most.

Selecting the link to view the people who shared exposes a table of people ranked by page authority, domain authority, followers, retweet ratio, reply ratio and average retweets. I had a very useful set of sharers listed for the searches I did that I would expect to be there.

Buzzsumo also lists a set of backlinks and an option for B2B only results which is not a common option in tools like this. In summary Buzzsumo works like a typical social media listening tool but in reverse. It highlights the top web sites that had the most social media attention, and then you can click and deep dive to see which social media platforms were most responsible for that and in turn, the influencers that helped to drive the traffic. This was also the case even for hashtags that I searched for. Get started here.

Social Mention (via brandmentions.com)

This social media listening tool has some nice functions. It is the logical replacement of one of my most used tools years ago; the famous “Socialmentions.com”. Social Mention finds who’s talking about your brand or competitors in the news & social media Get started here.

Tweetreach

Union metrics is now the home of Tweetreach, which is a well known search site. It is free but you need to make a Union metrics account to see the results. Once you have logged in you can save and export snapshots from Tweetreach. Get started here.

Union Metrics

Union Metrics others advanced reports, mainly based on Twitter. It can be used for keyword listening, campaign reporting and competitive analysis and more however the main tool is not free but a good low cost option with one or two free add-on options. For example there is a free Instagram account checkup. The checkup will suggest the best time to post on Instagram, the hashtags that acquired the most engagement and more based on your Instagram history. Get started here.

Conclusion

I have searched for a rich mix of topics in some of the most used social media sites over the years and I am convinced that there is at least someone talking somewhere about a topic that is key to your business.

My suggested 5 social listening tools are free or low cost tools to get started. It is unlikely that you will find them being used as the exclusive tool of record in major enterprises. However, that is why they are on this list.

They can be used by social media novices for free or when you have a low budget. In my work life I use the recognized market leading tool and that is relative quite expensive. However in my private life and for recommendations to SMEs; I always talk about these 5 tools.

What’s next after you have matured by using any of the above 5 tools? I suggest to start work on at least one of the 10 tasks in this list; – 10 things you should be doing right now with social media

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Clive Roach

Social media marketing expert with +15 years’ experience. Creates and deploys strategy, social listening, tactical planning, analytics, campaign calendar management, all while achieving revenue opportunities and cost savings.

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