Revised January 23, 2024
Revised January 12, 2022
Revised October 15, 2020
Revised January 9, 2019
Social media monitoring is vital for virtually every B2B or B2C brand. 58% of consumers follow brands on social media. 71% say they are likely to purchase an item based on social media referrals; in fact, consumers report that social media plays almost as big a role in purchasing decisions as does television.
However—96% of the people who discuss brands online do not follow those brands’ owned profiles. That means if you are only monitoring your brand’s social media accounts, you’re missing most of the social conversation about your company, products, and services.
Standard web analytics tools provide only a very narrow view of social media activity: clicks through to your brand website. The analytics tools built into social networks provide a bit more detail, though only within their own platforms.
The social media monitoring tools listed here do far more, enabling you to monitor brand mentions across social networks and online forums in real time. Several also provide features like competitive benchmarking, follower demographics, key influencer identification, sentiment analysis, campaign impact, and reporting.