You would have heard this ample number of times that social media is a two-way street, where customers and brands engage in a conversation, atleast that’s how it should be. The key to making the most of social media is listening to what your audience has to say about you, your competitors, and the market in general. Once you have the data you can undertake analysis, and finally, reach social business intelligence; using all these insights to know your customers better and improve your marketing strategy. The goal is to assess the reputation and be alerted to significant events taking place in social channels

So, here is my list of the best 5 social media listening tools that will help you analyze and monitor your online campaigns.

1. Social Mention

Social Mention is quite popular among social media marketers. This tool helps in searching and analyzing user generated content among different platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google, Digg, etc. It also shows the top keywords and hashtags used for the searched keyword/s.

Price – Free (No registration required)

2. Sysomos

Sysomos is one social media analytics tool that can do everything. It unifies insights with earned, owned and paid channel management. Its “Sysomos Heartbeat” product captures the conversions that hold utmost importance for your business. It gives you updated information related to your business, competitors, and campaigns.

Price – Customized Quotes

3. Buzzsumo

Like any other platform, content rules the social media. And Buzzsumo is a must-try tool for every content marketer. With its “Content Alerts”, you can keep yourself updated with the trending content relevant to your industry. You can set up real-time email alerts for keywords, domains, and authors and refine them on the basis of language, Title & Topic.

Price – $79 per month to $559 per month. Free trial available.

4. Talkwalker Alerts

Talkwalker Alerts is one of the best alternatives to Google Alerts. You can create alerts for specific keywords, brand, competitors or any other topic and easily monitor any new or trending topics. It not only tracks content from social media channels and website, but also measures the number of times a keyword is discussed online.

Price – $8,400/year to $36,000/year

5. Social Crawlytics

Assess the performance of your and competitor’s blog based on the source and the number of shares with Social Crawlytics. This way, you will have an idea about what kind of content works the best for your brand. You can also set up a scheduled report, which will be sent to your email ID. To use this tool, you need to sign up with your Twitter account.

Price – Free

Is your favorite tool not on the list? Do let us know in the comments.