Social Media Listening Tools are designed to help you keep tabs on what’s happening with your online reputation, with your competitors or with products, services or events you’re interested in keeping tabs on. It’s important to monitor the web for mentions of your brand, a competitor, a new product, or any topic that impacts your company or bottom line.

One of the more common social listening tools is Google Alerts. For example, if you want to monitor conversations about “social media”, you simply type the words “social media” into the alert section. Google will email a link to you with whatever was written about social media. This is a great way to quickly discover what is being written about you or topics of interest to you. To get started, visit Google Alerts. Don’t just rely on Google, though, as Google doesn’t catch everything.

I use Hootsuite which is a social media scheduling tool. It also allows me to add a stream for “Mentions” to my dashboard. So, if someone mentions your business or the topic you have an alert on, it’ll appear in your “Mentions” stream and you’ll be notified of it immediately. There are also paid services which allow you to connect with influencers to create genuine online relationships which might generate “earned media”.

When you receive an alert of a mention, engage! Jump into the conversation, post a blog, comment on an article, share what’s been written about you with others. People will love that you’re paying attention.

Social Media Listening Tool Resources

21 Top Social Media Tools for 2019

Top 13 Free Social Media Monitoring Tools

20 Best Social Media Monitoring Tools

50 Free Social Media Monitoring Tools to Improve your Results

Some of the information in these articles might be repeated but every one of them is helpful. Choose the social media listening tools which are best for you or your company and especially for your budget.

Jules Marie is a social media strategist and digital marketing manager at 33Words.