Building brand success online starts with a solid strategy, and one of the smartest moves you can make is leveraging social media monitoring. How? Let’s see!

Over the years, social media has evolved from a casual networking space into a powerful marketing platform for businesses of all sizes. As a brand, business, or service provider, you now have the opportunity to carve out a niche and connect meaningfully with your audience.

One way to do this is by continuously ‘monitoring’ the social space for opportunities for your brand to grow. The ever-evolving digital conversations hold insights into your brand success such as, what are your audiences’ likes and dislikes, what are their expectations, what is the user sentiment based on emerging trends. Well, the list is endless.

Now this depends on you on how you gather this information. 

There are numerous tools online to help you ace social media monitoring in 2025. But which one will suit your business the best? 

Here’s a detailed blog for you to understand what social media monitoring entails, 15 tools to help you, and a bonus tip on how to do it right.

What Is Social Media Monitoring?

To put it in simple words, social media monitoring is keeping an eye out on what people are saying about your brand, your industry, or even your competitors on all the social platforms. It is about staying informed and taking proactive measures to engage with your audiences on conversations, mentions, and trends relevant to your business.

Let’s understand this with the help of some scenarios and their examples:

Tracking Mentions

If someone tags your brand in a post or mentions it in a tweet, giving them a courteous reply, helps you establish a strong brand image. 

• Example: A customer tweets, “I love the new product from @YourBrand!” You notice this, like the post, and reply with a thank-you message.

Watching Keywords and Hashtags

Monitoring specific hashtags or keywords helps you stay updated on industry trends or campaigns.

• Example: Keeping an eye on the hashtag #FitnessGoals allows a gym brand to discover potential customers sharing their workout journeys. The gym can then pitch them a personalized workout plan.

Observing Competitors

Social media monitoring isn’t just about your brand—it’s also about seeing what people are saying about your competitors.

• Example: A competitor launches a new product, and their customers are sharing mixed reviews. You can use this insight to adjust your strategy or highlight your strengths.

How Is It Different From Social Listening?

Social listening goes a step further. While monitoring is about taking note of ‘what’ is being said, listening is about understanding ‘why’ it is being said. This WHY behind the conversations allows you to make better decisions.

Again let’s look at some examples:

Identifying Trends

Analyzing recurring topics in customer conversations can help you predict future trends.

• Example: If many users start asking for sustainable packaging, you can proactively integrate eco-friendly options into your product line.

Understanding Sentiments

Analyzing the tone of conversations—whether they’re positive, negative, or neutral, can help you fine-tune your deliverables. 

• Example: If customers consistently praise your customer service but complain about shipping times, you know where to focus improvements.

Engaging Proactively

Social listening helps you join conversations that align with your brand values, even if they aren’t directly about you.

• Example: Participating in a broader discussion about mental health awareness if your brand offers wellness products.

Together, these two approaches will help you make sense of the noise and respond effectively.

But the question arises, how will you do it?

That brings us to…

15 Social Media Monitoring Tools You Need in 2025

1. Practina AI 

Make your Marketing more Proactive with Practina

Practina is an AI-guided marketing assistant that helps your brand stay relevant, trusted, and visible in the digital space. With its advanced suite of features, you can streamline your social media strategy and effortlessly bridge the gap between passive monitoring and proactive engagement. 

For example, responding to reviews. Reviews reflect the customers’ perception of your brand. And responding to them timely and with the right words only adds to your brand reputation. However, it is easier said than done to aptly and courteously respond to reviews online, especially the negative ones. 

Your reply will not only address a particular customer who has posted that review but will also be read by others and even your prospective clients. That is why Practina’s Reputation Management feature utilizes the power of AI to help you frame courteous replies so your brand can foster trust and goodwill. 

In addition to this, you can encourage 5-star reviews by sending your customers Amazon gift vouchers. 

Practina also allows you to keep an eye on all your social accounts from a single dashboard. It is more like a central command center that lets you manage everything, from ads to generating customized content for your business. Moreover, with Practina deals you can craft irresistible offers for your customers and share them directly on your social media or integrate them on your website. 

With Practina by your side, all aspects of your digital marketing strategy are taken care of. 

2. Hootsuite 

Another popular tool for monitoring social media is Hootsuite. Its AI-powered social listening powered by Talkwalker is surely a standout among other tools. The quick search tabs let you stay abreast of the latest trends, topics, and conversations online. And why is that important? By monitoring these, you can not only stay relevant but also alter your marketing strategy based on what your audience is currently interested in. 

Moreover, its advanced AI sentiment analysis feature helps you understand exactly how your audience feels about your brand, product, or service. These key insights are crucial to fixing any gaps in your deliverables. 

These and many other features make Hootsuite a reliable option for you when it comes to social media monitoring. It helps you stay informed about what’s being said about you online so you can respond quickly and effectively.

3. Brandwatch

As the name suggests, Brandwatch helps you “watch” over your brand’s online presence with ease. This user-friendly social media monitoring and listening tool enables you to track conversations across various platforms, ensuring you always stay informed about what people are saying about your business or industry. 

Brandwatch Consumer Research goes beyond tracking just conversations to gauge the emotions behind them. You get data from a wide variety of sources which you can then segment and analyze for being positive, negative, or neutral. Understanding the sentiment that drives these conversations provides valuable insights into your brand’s health and reputation online. 

Not only that, it also helps identify and monitor emerging trends and topics relevant to your industry. You can use this tool to gather data-driven insights and formulate your brand strategy and messaging accordingly. 

4. RivalIQ

One way to gain an edge in social media is to keep track of what your competitors are up to. And RivalIQ helps you do just that. It empowers you to stay ahead by keeping a close watch on your competitors’ online performance and comparing it directly to your own.

This competitor analysis can go a long way in providing actionable insights to shape your brand strategy on social media. 

Beyond competitor analysis, RivalIQ also has a social listening feature that lets you track your brand health online. Right from the shifting consumer preferences to sentiment analysis, it lets you gauge where your brand stands in the digital conversation.

You can pair this with its comprehensive social media audits to get a wealth of data to fine-tune your strategy even further. RivalIQ simply arms you with the insights needed to make informed decisions and thrive in the ever-changing world of social media.

5. Mention

Another essential tool in our list of 15 best social media monitoring tools is Mention. True to its name, Mention allows you to track all your brand mentions across multiple platforms effortlessly. However, this tool goes beyond merely tracking mentions. It empowers you to monitor discussions happening worldwide on any topic that matters to you or your business.

One of Mention’s standout features is the ability to create customized alerts for conversations surrounding your brand. This enables you to stay proactive by responding to these mentions in real time. Let’s just say Mention ensures you’re always part of the conversation.

6. Keyhole

Keyhole is a social media analytics platform that aids businesses in tracking and analyzing hashtags, mentions, and competitor activity. It provides real-time data and in-depth reports, allowing them to measure campaign performance, identify influencers, and gain valuable insights into audience engagement.

7. Sprout Social

Marketing is no one-person job, and Sprout Social understands it well. That is why with a comprehensive dashboard, it lets teams collaborate effortlessly while monitoring their social media handles. Sprout Social ensures that teams stay in the know by monitoring and tracking mentions across social platforms while also providing detailed sentiment analysis. This data can be shared across departments so they can come up with effective and cohesive brand strategies. Additionally, Sprout Social lets you track key metrics and respond to mentions promptly, ensuring no opportunity to engage with your audience is missed.

8. Zoho Social

Besides tracking social engagement and notifications, Zoho Social empowers you to build a custom social listening dashboard, enabling you to monitor the mentions that matter most to your brand. This personalized approach ensures you stay on top of key conversations relevant to your business. Additionally, Zoho Social features a unified message inbox, consolidating all direct messages from platforms like Facebook and X (formerly Twitter), making it easier to manage and respond to your audience.

9. Awario

Awario boasts of crawling ‘13 billion web pages’ to bring you all the relevant mentions of your brand. What sets it apart is its ability to prioritize conversations, helping you focus on discussions with significant reach and engagement rather than overwhelming you with unnecessary data. A standout feature of Awario is its Lead generation tool, which identifies potential sales opportunities by highlighting users actively searching for products or services similar to yours. 

10. Sendible

Another tool in our list of 15 social media monitoring tools is Sendible. With a comprehensive dashboard, Sendible consolidates all your social media data in one place. Whether you want to track mentions or analyze key metrics, Sendible lets you have a clear and organized overview of your online presence. 

Sendible works best for teams or agencies as it makes it easier for them to collaborate on posts, assign tasks, and review content seamlessly. This allows for a cohesive strategy and keeps everyone in the loop for all things important. 

11. Meltwater

Meltwater’s social listening and analytics feature gives you insights into data that you can use to inform your strategy. It also provides 15-month data so you can compare your brand growth year on year. You can do unlimited searches to find the data relevant to your business. In addition, its AI-powered analytics breaks down the data into actionable insights that you can use to drive your brand success. 

12. YouScan

Another tool in the list is YouScan. But it varies slightly. As most of the tools provide text-driven insights, YouScan gives you an edge with its AI-powered Visual Insights. This advanced feature enables brands to analyze images by detecting elements like logos, objects, demographics, and activities, offering a detailed view of how your product is experienced in real life.

It helps refine marketing strategies, identify target personas, and discover potential influencers or brand ambassadors through visual data analysis.

13. Social Searcher

True to its name, Social Searcher assists you in monitoring your brand mentions across social media platforms. Its comprehensive dashboard is your portal to countless online conversations where your brand or product may be mentioned or tagged. You can even set up email alerts to ensure you never miss important customer feedback.

Additionally, Social Searcher offers insightful audience analytics presented in clear, easy-to-read charts for you to track user activity and engagement trends effectively.

14. Buzzsumo

BuzzSumo is your go-to tool for staying on top of everything that matters to your brand. With real-time alerts for any keyword, brand mention, or competitor activity, it ensures you’re always in the loop.

Set up keyword alerts to track topics relevant to your niche or monitor specific influencers to respond to their posts instantly. BuzzSumo also helps you stay a step ahead by tracking your competitors’ activities, giving you actionable insights to refine your strategy and maintain a competitive edge.

15. Atribus

Atribus is a powerful social media monitoring tool that focuses on providing deep insights to improve your brand’s online presence. With Atribus, you can track mentions of your brand, products, or services in real-time across multiple platforms, ensuring you never miss an important conversation.

Its sentiment analysis feature lets you gauge the tone of discussions, helping you understand how people feel about your brand. Atribus also provides competitive analysis, offering insights into your rivals’ strategies so you can stay ahead in your industry. 

How to Choose the Right Social Media Monitoring Tool?

• Define your business goals and align them with the tool’s features.
• Develop a clear social strategy to integrate with the tool effectively.
• Choose a tool that enables real-time engagement with your audience.

Conclusion

Hope this elaborate list helped you narrow down your go-to social media monitoring tool. Our personal favorite? Practina. Its features like Practina Deals and Reviews widget are a standout and a must-have for any business aiming to accelerate its social media success.