the best free social media listening tools

‘Free’ social media listening

tools

Bloom recommends

www.bloomworldwide.com

Contents

!  Why use a social media listening tool?

!  What can I find out from these tools?

!  What are the best tools to use?


Why use a social media listening tool?

• Pick out and filter online conversations that are taking place around your brand, products or your competitors at specific times or geographic locations

Monitor Conversation

• Monitor the volume of mentions around a particular topic or brand

Volume of mentions

• Negative, positive or neutral, you will know what your customers are saying about your brand

• Limit the damage of negative feedback or a PR crisis Sentiment

• Listen to feedback about a new product or service • Swoop in to help a customer that is struggling with a

product or service. Customer Service

• Derive meaning from the mass of social media chatter online Insights

• Identify your brand advocates and influencers in your industry.

Influencers & advocates


What can I find out?

Monitor Conversation

Market share

Volume of mentions

Brand awareness

Sentiment

Brand affinity

Customer Service

Customer satisfaction

Insights

Customer highlights

Influencers & advocates

Partner programme


What are the best social media listening tools?

Source: Eknath Gomphotherium @ Flickr


Socialmention

Great for quick checks and reporting

Monitors all the major platforms


• Socialmention is great for tracking what people are saying about a company, new product, or an event, serving-up ‘user-generated content from across the universe’ on one neat page of real-time information. You can also easily download the data into a CSV spread.

Great for...

• Monitors over 100 social media properties directly, including: Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg, Google, WordPress, plus blog content, comments and frequent authors. Choose to search with keywords across all or individual platforms.


• Strength (volume), Sentiment, Passion (a measure of the likelihood that individuals talking about your brand will do so repeatedly), Reach, and Frequent Authors.

Measures 4 categories...


Socialmention summary:

Quick, neat dashboard Thorough search

No sign-up required


HootSuite

Great for finding opportunities to engage with customers & influencers



• Hootsuite is one of the leading, all-encompassing social media management tools. Primarily used for monitoring, posting & scheduling content, it can also be a great listening tool. You’ll need to register and authorise each social platform for the free version.

Great for...

• Direct sign-in to Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Wordpress & Mixi.


• Hootsuite’s free version comes with basic analytics, but in terms of listening, it will not measure sentiment or volume. However, you can monitor conversation in real time and respond straight from the dashboard. Receive alerts on mobile when keywords are mentioned.

Measures...


HootSuite summary:

Great for responding to customers & engaging in the

moment.


Topsy

Great for narrowing down specific conversations & influencers

Monitors Twitter and public pages on Google


• Social Search in Topsy is a free real-time search tool which can index and rank results based upon the most influential conversations about a specific term, topic, page or domain queried. No sign-up required.

Great for...

•  Primarily Twitter and Google . Choose to search keywords or competitor profiles across Twitter, web links, photo, video or influencers.

Monitors some platforms

•  Volume, Sentiment & Influence, plus detailed searches of a specific domain and keyword to chart trends with Topsy Analytics.

Measures...


Topsy summary:

Simple, easy setup Great for finding content to

share on your social media platforms


Netvibes

Great for viewing all social media on 1 page

Monitors all major platforms and more

Source: Netvibes @ Flickr


• Netvibes is a dashboard reader, pulling through your social media channels into one page. The free version (choose) ‘I’m just me’ allows you to customise the layout & add or remove boxes displaying each platform. You will need to sign up & allow access to each social platform.

Great for...

• Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Flickr, Video (YouTube, Vimeo, DailyMotion, Metacafe), Blogs (WordPress, Google Blog and Twingly) as well as web searches (Google, Bing and Yahoo).

Monitors all major platforms

& more

• Essentially a reader, but you can search on keywords to pull up any online mentions & bookmark. It does not measure volume, sentiment or author influence. Fine for a quick check on a daily basis. Alerts & analytics & reports available on Premium only.

Measures...


Netvibes summary:

Good for quick checks on current conversations and

keywords


Google alerts

Great for simple notifications via email

Monitors Google search results only


• Simply monitor new blogs and online conversations through Google search engine. Sign up for Google email alerts . Set up as many as you like on different keywords.

Great for...

• Google and any public pages on social media that may appear in Google search results, including video, news, blogs and new web pages.

Monitors results from

Google search

• No measurement is included – just Google results on a daily, weekly or monthly frequency, sent to your Inbox. Measures...


Google alerts summary:

Simple, easy setup Great for finding content to

share on your social media platforms


Google trends

A good indication of trending topics in online searches

Monitors most major platforms


• Get a colourful visualisation of real-time hot search trends on Google Trends homepage, or run searches around topics and location to monitor level of interest.

Great for...

• Topics on Facebook, YouTube, Google, Yahoo and Outlook and queries on Facebook, YouTube, Google, Hotmail and Yahoo.

Monitors most major platforms

• Measures search trends only. For example, if you search for tea in Scotland in March of 2007, Trends analyses a % of all searches for tea within the same time and location parameters.

Measures...


Google trends summary:

Plot global or regional trends around particular topics or

search queries

Bloom take insight from social data & develop it

into actionable solutions

Want to know more?


@bloomworldwide

+44 (0) 1273 732 626

[email protected]

the best free social media listening tools

Social Media

easy setup great

major platforms www

social media

frequent authors

free version

public pages

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social platform