Curated list: 12 best social media monitoring tools (2025)

If your brand is on social media (which it should be), then you know that conversations happen fast. One minute you’re trending, the next you’re wondering why your engagement tanked.

This is where social media monitoring tools come in handy. These tools help PR professionals track brand mentions across diverse online sources, including major social media platforms, engage with audiences, and stay ahead of industry trends–all in real-time.

Let’s explore the best tools available in 2025 and how they can help PR pros keep their fingers on the digital pulse.

Social media monitoring is the process of tracking, analyzing, and responding to conversations about your brand, competitors, or industry across various social platforms. It involves:

• Tracking brand mentions, keywords, and hashtags
• Monitoring customer sentiment and trends
• Engaging with your audience in real time

For PR professionals, it’s essential for reputation management, audience engagement, and crisis response. Without it, you’re navigating social media blindfolded.

Yes and no. Social media monitoring focuses on online conversations, while media monitoring includes traditional outlets like newspapers, online news sites, and TV.

Some tools, like Prezly’s media monitoring, combine both–tracking news mentions, linking them to CRM contacts, and making PR reporting effortless.

Most social media monitoring tools cover the big players like:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• X (formerly Twitter)
• LinkedIn
• Reddit
• TikTok
• YouTube

But what about newer platforms like Bluesky or Mastodon? Some advanced tools like Altmetric and Onclusive track Bluesky, but Mastodon remains challenging due to its decentralized nature.

Do you need more than one tool? If your audience is spread across platforms, you might need a combination of tools for full coverage.

Social media moves fast, and keeping up can feel overwhelming. That’s where social media monitoring tools step in, helping PR professionals track conversations, measure sentiment, and respond strategically. Social media data is crucial for monitoring brand sentiment and emerging trends.

Whether you’re engaging with your audience, identifying key influencers, or monitoring your brand’s reputation, these tools make PR more data-driven and efficient.

Monitor conversations to spot brand mentions and jump into discussions and comments across various platforms as they happen, ensuring you never miss an opportunity to connect with customers or manage a potential PR crisis before it escalates.

Find influencers talking about your brand, analyze their impact, and build authentic relationships that help amplify your message to the right audience.

Stay ahead by leveraging trending topics and timely news stories, allowing your brand to insert itself into relevant conversations and gain visibility.

Get data-backed insights into what’s working (and what isn’t), helping you refine your content strategy and allocate resources effectively for better engagement and conversions.

Spot potential crises before they escalate by tracking a brand's mentions across multiple channels to monitor sentiment changes and address negative feedback in real time, preventing minor issues from becoming PR nightmares.

Learn what works (and what doesn’t) for your competitors, uncovering gaps in their strategy that your brand can capitalize on to gain a competitive edge. Use these insights to refine your social media strategy, integrating monitoring tools to track conversations, brand mentions, and engage with audiences effectively.

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• Understand who is talking about your brand
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To get a comprehensive view of online conversations, it’s essential to monitor across whatever social media platforms your brand uses. That can include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and YouTube. This allows businesses to track brand mentions, hashtags, and keywords across different platforms and respond to customer inquiries and concerns in real-time.

By casting a wide net across various social media channels, businesses can ensure they capture every relevant conversation. This holistic approach not only helps in understanding the broader sentiment but also in identifying platform-specific trends and opportunities. With tools that consolidate data from multiple sources, managing and responding to brand mentions becomes more streamlined and efficient.

Social media monitoring tools like Hootsuite, Sprout Social, and Agorapulse offer features to monitor multiple social media platforms from a single dashboard. More on those below.

Setting alerts and customizing keywords is crucial to effective social media monitoring. Businesses can set up alerts for specific keywords, hashtags, and brand mentions to receive notifications when someone mentions their brand or competitor.

Customizing keywords helps businesses to track relevant conversations and filter out irrelevant noise. Social media monitoring tools like Mention and Brand24 offer features to set up custom alerts and track keywords across multiple social media platforms.

By tailoring alerts to specific terms and phrases, businesses can stay on top of the most pertinent discussions. This proactive approach ensures that no critical mention goes unnoticed, allowing for timely responses and engagement. Customizing keywords also helps in filtering out the noise, focusing on conversations that truly matter to the brand’s strategy and objectives.

Before starting social media monitoring, it’s essential to clarify your objectives. What do you want to achieve through social media monitoring? Do you want to track brand mentions, monitor competitor activity, or identify emerging trends?

Clarifying your objectives helps businesses to focus on relevant conversations and track metrics that matter. Social media monitoring tools like those listed below offer features to help businesses clarify their objectives and track relevant metrics.

Having clear objectives provides direction and purpose to your social media monitoring efforts. Whether it’s enhancing customer engagement, improving brand reputation, or gaining competitive insights, knowing what you aim to achieve allows for more focused and effective monitoring. Tools that support objective-setting and metric tracking can significantly enhance the strategic value of your social media monitoring activities.

With so many social media monitoring tools on the market, finding the right fit for your PR strategy can be overwhelming. Whether you’re looking for an all-in-one solution, a specialized tracking tool, or something more advanced, we’ve got you covered.

Below, we break down 12 of the best tools available in 2025 to help you stay on top of social conversations and industry trends.

Social media monitoring is coming to Prezly! Be the first to try it and all of Prezly's other features, including news media monitoring, newsroom publishing, pitching and more, by signing up to a no-obligation 2-week free trial today.

For brands whose social media strategy spans multiple channels, an all-in-one monitoring tool can offer a comprehensive solution. These tools combine tracking, analytics, and engagement capabilities into a single platform.

Hootsuite is one of the most widely used social media management tools, offering comprehensive features such as content scheduling, analytics, and social listening.

It provides an all-in-one dashboard that allows brands to track their social performance and respond to mentions in real-time.

• Entry price: $99/month
• Platforms monitored: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube
• Why it’s great: Combines scheduling, analytics, and monitoring in one platform, allowing businesses to manage their social media presence more effectively and streamline their workflow

Sprout Social is a robust social media management tool that integrates monitoring, publishing, and analytics. It’s known for its user-friendly interface and in-depth insights that help brands optimize their engagement strategies, though as you can see from the above screenshot, the interface is a bit dated by modern standards.

• Entry price: $199/month
• Platforms monitored: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube
• Why it’s great: Offers deep analytics and audience insights, providing PR teams with the data they need to optimize their social strategy and measure the impact of their campaigns

Agorapulse simplifies social media management by providing a simple dashboard for monitoring mentions, scheduling posts, and tracking engagement. It’s especially useful for teams that need an efficient way to manage customer interactions.

• Entry price: $79/month
• Platforms monitored: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube
• Why it’s great: Filters social mentions and automates moderation, making it easier for businesses to manage customer interactions and focus on building meaningful connections

Specialized social media monitoring tools are valuable because they offer precise insights tailored to specific needs, such as influencer tracking and sentiment analysis. This focus helps PR teams make informed decisions without getting bogged down in unnecessary details.

Mention helps brands keep track of online conversations by scanning over a billion sources, including social media, blogs, and forums. It’s ideal for businesses looking to stay ahead of brand mentions and industry discussions.

• Entry price: $41/month
• Platforms monitored: Web, blogs, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook
• Why it’s great: Monitors over 1 billion sources for relevant mentions, ensuring businesses never miss critical conversations about their brand

Keyhole is designed for brands that want to track influencer campaigns and measure hashtag performance. It provides real-time analytics on engagement trends and audience sentiment. Keyhole is a Muck Rack company.

• Entry price: Custom pricing
• Platforms monitored: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok
• Why it’s great: Focuses on influencer tracking and hashtag analytics, making it an excellent tool for brands looking to maximize their reach and engagement

Brand24 is a media monitoring tool that specializes in sentiment analysis and instant alerts. It’s great for businesses that want to track how their audience perceives their brand and respond to feedback proactively.

• Entry price: $119/month
• Platforms monitored: Web, blogs, social media
• Why it’s great: Includes sentiment analysis and instant notifications, helping businesses track audience perception and respond quickly to emerging trends

RivalIQ is a competitive analysis tool that allows brands to benchmark their social media performance against competitors. It helps businesses stay ahead by identifying industry trends and tracking key metrics.

• Entry price: $239/month
• Platforms monitored: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube
• Why it’s great: RivalIQ helps brands keep tabs on their competitors with real-time alerts. It tracks changes in social media bios, post performance, and paid ad activity, making it easier to stay ahead

Atribus is a consumer intelligence tool that focuses on social media monitoring and sentiment analysis. It helps businesses identify unmet customer needs and uncover pain points within their industry.

• Entry price: Custom pricing
• Platforms monitored: Social media, web, blogs
• Why it’s great: It helps brands uncover unmet customer needs, allowing them to respond proactively and improve their offerings

Awario is a powerful listening tool that scans the web and social media for brand mentions and tracks how audiences engage with brands through social media posts. Its unique Awario Leads feature helps businesses discover potential customers looking for recommendations in their industry.

• Entry price: $29/month
• Platforms monitored: Web, blogs, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook
• Why it’s great: Awario not only monitors mentions across social media and the web but also includes a feature that identifies users actively looking for recommendations in a specific industry.

Brandwatch is an AI-driven social listening tool that provides deep insights into audience sentiment and industry trends. It’s widely used for market research and brand reputation management.

• Entry price: Hidden pricing
• Platforms monitored: Web, news, social media
• Why it’s great: AI-driven sentiment analysis and trend tracking enable brands to anticipate shifts in public opinion and adjust their strategies proactively

Meltwater combines media and social monitoring, making it an essential tool for PR professionals looking for a complete view of their brand’s performance across digital and traditional media.

• Entry price: Hidden – see Meltwater pricing guide
• Platforms monitored: Web, news, social media, blogs
• Why it’s great: Combines media and social monitoring, providing a holistic view of brand performance and reputation management

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Emplifi is a social listening and analytics tool that helps businesses track competitor activity and measure engagement trends. It’s useful for brands that want a complete view of their digital footprint.

• Entry price: Custom pricing
• Platforms monitored: Social media, web, competitor insights
• Why it’s great: Great for tracking competitor mentions and benchmarking performance against industry leaders

Social media monitoring isn’t just about tracking mentions–it’s about making the most of the insights you gather.

The following tips will help you turn raw data into actionable insights that enhance your brand’s online presence by improving engagement, refining messaging, and ensuring your brand remains relevant in an ever-changing digital landscape:

That means brand name, product names, and common hashtags. Identifying key terms helps track brand perception and discover conversations that matter most.

Different platforms attract different audiences, so tracking across multiple channels ensures a well-rounded view of your brand's reach and reputation.

Understanding public perception and how your competitors are performing helps fine-tune your strategy and respond proactively to industry trends.

Social listening informs not just content strategy but also customer interactions, helping businesses respond to concerns efficiently and enhance engagement.

Active participation in online discussions builds loyalty and strengthens relationships with your audience, making them more likely to advocate for your brand.

Selecting the right social media monitoring tool depends on your specific needs, budget, and how deeply you want to track conversations. Some tools specialize in social listening, while others offer a mix of analytics, engagement tracking, and reporting. 

Before committing to a tool, consider the following factors to ensure it aligns with your PR strategy and business objectives.

Crisis management? Competitor tracking? Influencer outreach?

Different tools cater to different needs, so having clear objectives will help you choose a solution that aligns with your business priorities. 

Take advantage of trial periods to test the dashboard usability, data accuracy, and integration options. Ensure the tool fits seamlessly into your workflow and meets your reporting needs. Oh, and take advantage of free trials – like this one!

Not all monitoring tools are created equal–some provide a comprehensive suite of features, while others specialize in specific areas like sentiment analysis or audience insights. Consider your budget and determine whether you need an all-in-one PR platform or a more focused tool. 

Keeping track of online conversations is one thing – understanding how they impact your PR strategy is another. 

While social media monitoring tools track brand mentions on platforms like Twitter and Instagram, Prezly helps you monitor the bigger picture by logging media mentions, linking them to journalists in your CRM, and making reporting seamless.

If you’re tired of sifting through endless social media noise and want a smarter way to track your brand’s reputation, try Prezly’s media monitoring for free – no credit card, no commitment, just insights that matter.