Social media monitoring tools: what each one catches, and where to start

Social media monitoring tools watch X, Reddit, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram and TikTok on your behalf and tell you when a post you care about goes up. For most people and small teams the best place to start is AyeWatch, which reads public posts on all six networks, filters them with a rule you write in plain English and sends only the matches; the big listening suites earn their price later, once someone needs charts and reports.

Three kinds of tool share one label

Products sold under this name do different jobs, and buying the wrong kind is the usual way to overspend.

• Alert monitors send you each new post that matches a search or comes from an account you picked. AyeWatch and F5Bot work this way.
• Listening dashboards pile mentions into one screen with volume, reach and sentiment. Brand24 and Awario are examples.
• Management suites schedule posts and run a shared inbox, with listening bundled in or sold as an extra. Hootsuite and Sprout Social are the best known.

If your question is "did someone just post about us?", you want the first kind. If it is "how did people feel about us this quarter?", you want the second.

The tools, in the order we'd try them

1. AyeWatch. One account covers X searches, profiles and communities, subreddits and Reddit searches, YouTube channels and searches, LinkedIn company pages and post search, Instagram hashtags and keyword search, and TikTok profiles, hashtags and searches. You never log in to those networks or pay for their APIs. An optional "only alert me about" rule has AI read each new post and drop the ones that don't fit, so a search for your product name can skip giveaways and job ads. Alerts reach the feed and your phone on every plan, and email, Slack, Discord or a webhook on paid plans.
2. F5Bot. Free email alerts for keywords on Reddit, Hacker News and Lobsters, in posts and in comments. The free tier is for personal use, and AI filtering and Slack come with the paid tiers.
3. Talkwalker Alerts. A free email alert built as a Google Alerts substitute. You choose News, Twitter, Blogs or Discussion forums as the result types and can ask for results as they happen.
4. Brand24. A listening dashboard whose sources run from Facebook and Instagram to Reddit, YouTube, TikTok and podcasts, with AI sentiment analysis on every plan. Individual costs $249 a month, or $199 a month billed annually.
5. Awario. Another mentions dashboard. Starter is $49 a month, or $29 a month on a yearly bill.
6. Hootsuite and Sprout Social. Hootsuite plans start at $99 per user a month billed annually and include brand and competitor monitoring. Sprout Social sells Listening as an add-on from its Standard plan up.

At a glance

When a dashboard is the better buy

If a client or a board expects a monthly chart of mention volume and sentiment, an alert monitor won't draw it, and Brand24 or Sprout Social's Listening will. Keep in mind that AyeWatch reads public posts only: protected X accounts, DMs, Instagram Stories and comments are out of its reach.

A first setup that pays off

Pick the thing you check by hand most often, such as your product name on Reddit, a rival's LinkedIn company page or a hashtag from your last campaign, and turn it into a monitor during the free preview. Leave it for a week, then tighten the rule if it was noisy. Paid plans start at $9 a month and are billed in monitoring credits; see the plans before you pick one.