A Reddit thread questioning your customer service or an X post calling out a product flaw can harm your brand image more than you think.

Within hours, you may face a wave of negative perceptions through social posts, comments, and discussions. That’s how online conversations happen, and if you aren’t aware of who’s saying what, you risk losing your brand’s reputation.

Social listening tools help you track brand mentions. They provide you with relevant insights, enabling you to cut through the noise and create targeted content.

This post discusses the best social listening tools, plus a bonus tool to complement them. Discover which one fits your bill.

What Are Social Listening Tools?

Social listening tools monitor and analyze conversations about your brand, products, and competitors across social media platforms, forums, blogs, and news sites, helping you understand how your audience perceives your brand. They help you:

•  Fetch the latest industry information and trending topics
• Track brand mentions, keywords, and competitor activity
•  Analyze customer sentiments, market trends, and content performance

Using a social listening tool, you can analyze large datasets to identify behavioral patterns or brand engagement in your target audience. You can also identify online discussions about your brand’s downsides and engage directly with the audience to resolve the issues as part of your brand counter or counter-branding strategy.

How to Choose the Right Social Listening Tool for Your Business?

Besides evaluating your business needs, goals, and budget, consider these must-have features to select the best social listening tool:

Real-time monitoring and alerts

Look for tools that provide you with real-time insights into conversations. They must promptly notify you when sentiments shift or when your brand is mentioned in specific discussions, comments, articles, and posts. This will help you act proactively and stay ahead of the competition.

Comprehensive platform coverage

Choose a tool that monitors all relevant social channels where your audience is active—Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, or X. For example, if you are a B2C brand and your audience is the most active on online forums and communities, choose platforms that offer real-time monitoring for Reddit and Quora. You can also select tools that track brand mentions across blogs, review sites, and news sites. Such comprehensive coverage can act as your brand counter against missed opportunities or potential crises.

Sentiment analysis

Select social listening tools that leverage AI to analyze large datasets to identify positive, negative, or neutral audience sentiment across millions of posts. The tool should also notify you about shifting brand perceptions so you understand how customers feel about your brand.

Customizable reporting and analytics

Look for tools that offer detailed social media analytics dashboards with customizable reports. The best social media listening tools provide you with granular insights into conversations and offer the functionality to filter by sentiment, topic, or platform. This helps you understand the context behind mentions and audience sentiment, identify trending topics, keywords, and hashtags, as well as predict future trends by analyzing historical data.  

Pro Tip: Check whether the platform you choose offers dedicated customer support. This will help your team set up the tool and navigate through it easily with assistance.

7 Best Social Listening Tools for Small Businesses

Here’s a quick at-a-glance table to compare the top social listening tools, followed by a breakdown of their features, pricing, and limitations.

1. Brandwatch (Enterprise-grade listening with AI image recognition)

Best for: Mid-market to enterprise teams requiring in-depth social listening with customizable analytics and reporting

Brandwatch provides advanced AI-powered social listening, offering deep insights into customer sentiment, emerging trends, and brand perception across social media, forums, blogs, and reviews.

You can segment audiences, track competitors, and monitor mentions at scale and then turn the data into visual reports and dashboards to ensure data-driven decision-making. It also includes a built-in influencer discovery tool that helps you identify global creators, view their profiles and audience reach, and manage outreach and campaign activity from a single platform.

However, with its steep learning curve and extensive features, Brandwatch can be considered the best social listening tool for enterprises that need robust listening and analytics features.

Key features

• Customizable analytics: Use flexible dashboards and custom queries for in-depth understanding of audience sentiment, topics, and demographics.
• Image insights: Leverage AI image recognition to analyze logos and images containing your brand, understanding how and when people see your logo and images.
• Consumer intelligence: Monitor online conversations in real time to know the latest insights and access historical data to identify patterns and trends.

Pros

• Finding and analyzing online content is easy
• Responsive support team

Cons

• Sometimes, mentions might not display on Brandwatch
• Dashboards aren’t always accurate. Some information may be duplicated, misleading the reader.

Pricing 

Custom pricing (Unavailable on website)

2. BuzzSumo (Content discovery and analysis)

Best for: SMEs, marketers, creators, and content teams looking to monitor and analyze content performance

BuzzSumo is a content-focused tool. Its social listening capabilities focus on discovering new content topics and analyzing content performance across platforms. For instance, its Content Analyzer lets you conduct in-depth keyword research on various topics, brands, and websites. You can identify which pieces earned the most shares, likes, and backlinks. Further, you can break down content performance by format type, such as articles, videos, or infographics.

What stands out is the tool’s time filters. These filters let you track trending topics over time (like 24 hours or 12 months) to help you spot shifts in audience interests. It also allows creators to identify the latest trends and create content before their competitors.

Key features

• Content discovery: Find trending topics, ideas, real questions, etc., to create content that resonates.
• Influencer marketing: Find influencers in any niche, track influencers’ metrics like reach and engagement, and spot influencers who mention your brand for potential collabs
• Brand monitoring: Track mentions and get insights into brand reputation across major social media platforms.

Pros

• Provides content ideas
• Several tools and dashboards to find information on specific topics

Cons

• Advanced features like backlink analysis are locked behind high-tier plans
• UI could be more intuitive

Pricing 

Starts at $199/month for one user. There are three advanced plans, each for 5, 10, and 30 users, with unlimited searches. 7-day free trial.

• PR & Comms: $299/month
• Suite: $499/month
• Enterprise: $999/month

3. Meltwater (Media, Social, and Consumer Intelligence)

Best for: Businesses in regulated industries, PR and communications teams, and marketing professionals who require extensive tracking coverage

Meltwater combines social listening with PR management to help you manage crises and enhance brand reputation with targeted outreach. It gives you a 360-degree view of the audience perceives your brand across social channels, including forums and media sites.

You can track sentiment shifts, competitors, keywords, and other essential metrics using custom dashboards. Leverage AI to filter relevant data, messages, and analyze online sources to optimize your marketing strategy. It also offers consumer intelligence features to help you conduct market research, segment audiences based on behaviors and influence levels, discover new insights, and share intelligence with teams via dashboards.

Key features

• Media monitoring tool: Identify trends, analyze sentiments, and track mentions across forums, social channels, podcasts, review sites, and news sites.
• AI-powered insights: Use AI to automatically analyze market trends, customer sentiments, and cluster coverage by topic to study vast amounts of data.
• Customizable dashboards: Create personalized dashboards to display and analyze metrics of your choice, generating insights relevant to your needs.

Pros

• Analyzes audience activity and suggests the best times to post
• Fair pricing—hasn’t increased a lot over the years

Cons

• The UI isn’t user-friendly. It has a steep learning curve.
• According to a user, Meltwater removed tracking YouTube mentions from its features without prior notice or a fee reduction.

Pricing 

Custom pricing (Unavailable on website)

4. Mention (Custom real-time alerts and crisis management)

Best for: Scaling teams, enterprise, and mid-market companies looking for advanced real-time conversation tracking

Mention’s social media monitoring tool gives you real-time visibility into what people are saying about your brand across social channels, forums, news sites, and more. You can track competitor mentions, hashtags, and filter out irrelevant mentions and false positives to focus on what matters.

Where it really shines? Tracking unlinked brand mentions and those with hidden backlinks. It also detects critical mentions across blog posts, providing valuable information for marketing and outreach efforts.

Additionally, Mention’s dashboards make it easy to monitor trends and assign conversations to team members, streamlining workflows.

Key features

• Reporting and analytics: Get insights into mention volume, sentiment trends, and generate custom reports to visualize data the way you want.
• Influencer identification: Identify key influencers and media outlets that discuss your brand for more targeted outreach.
• Custom real-time alerts: Customize alerts by adding specific keywords, sources, and languages to get real-time notifications.

Pros

• Great customer service
• Allows team collaboration

Cons

• Expensive
• Setting up the tool can be complicated

Pricing

Mention offers a 14-day free trial with four paid plans. Regardless of the plan chosen, if you pay annually, you get 2 months free.

• Solo: $89/month (1 user and 1 account per social network)
• Pro: $99/month (10 users, 10 social accounts)
• Pro Plus: $179/month (Unlimited users, 15 social accounts)
• Company: Custom pricing (Unlimited users and social accounts)

5. Sprout Social (AI-powered analysis with reputation management)

Best for: Enterprise teams and agencies juggling high content volumes and looking for advanced reporting

Whether you want to study audience preferences, perform competitor analysis, or capture audience reactions to campaigns, Sprout Social can help. It is a social media management tool with listening capabilities that make monitoring, engaging, and publishing easier.

With Sprout Social, you can get clear insights into your audience’s interests, content performance, and conversation volume. You can track trending topics, mentions of your brand, and identify potential crises early across major platforms like X, Facebook, and Instagram. You can also build custom listening queries to track conversations around key topics without any Boolean knowledge.

While the tool offers advanced features, all of its social listening features incur additional costs, which makes it a less viable option for small businesses. 

Key features

• Brand health monitoring: Track conversations around your products, brand, and leadership and gain valuable insights using sentiment and trend analysis.
• Influencer recognition: Identify the industry influencers and thought leaders to enhance social media marketing efforts.
• Crisis management: Get custom alerts on message spikes. Monitor conversations and stay prepared to manage situations.

Pros

• Clear, customizable reporting
• Easy to prioritize responses based on sentiment classification

Cons

• Advanced features like more granular competitor analysis require high-priced plans
• Social listening is available as an add-on to paid plans

Pricing 

Sprout Social offers a 30-day free trial, but it doesn’t include social listening. To use its social listening features, you have to purchase it as an add-on to any of its paid plans.

• Standard: $199/seat/month
• Professional: $299/seat/month
• Advanced: $399/seat/month
• Enterprise: Custom pricing

The add-on social listening charges are unavailable on the website.

6. KWatch.io (Reddit and Quora conversations tracking)

Best for: Solopreneurs, founders, and SMEs who need basic social listening tools to track conversations in high-intent communities like Reddit and Quora

KWatch.io is a lightweight tool for monitoring social media conversations and receiving real-time alerts when anyone mentions your brand.

With built-in Reddit and Quora integrations, KWatch.io provides you with actionable insights into what your niche audience discusses. You can monitor competitors, perform sentiment analysis, and receive quick notifications about new mentions, comments, and specific keywords.

In short, KWatch.io is a no-frills tool to help you track customer feedback and conversations about your brand on social networks and across thousands of subreddits and Quora threads.

Key features

• Keyword monitoring: Receive real-time alerts on keyword discovery and automatically analyze its context with AI.
• Conversation tracking: Choose conversations, posts, and comments you want to track and receive alerts when someone comments in the thread.
• Team management: Collaborate on listening and social media strategy, manage workflows, and assign monitoring tasks to team members.

Pros

• Affordable pricing compared to platforms like Hootsuite
• Intuitive interface

Cons

• Doesn’t support Instagram and TikTok
• Limited AI analysis

Pricing 

KWatch.io offers a free plan with two keyword alerts for each Reddit and Hacker News only. The paid plans include:

• Essential: $19/month
• Business: $79/month
• Enterprise: $99/month
• Agency: Custom pricing

7. Keyhole (Influencer and hashtag campaign tracking)

Best for: Agencies, SMEs, and B2C brands running frequent influencer campaigns and looking for real-time tracking

Keyhole’s social listening and analytics platform allows you to track brand mentions, keywords, and competitor activity in real time. You can track reach, views, and top-performing posts across TikTok, X, and Instagram, making it ideal for campaign tracking and analysis.

Its real-time hashtag tracking is beneficial as it provides you with insights into campaign performance, influencer engagement, and overall social media presence.  You can analyze audience sentiment and popular content.

Keyhole also simplifies market research. It gives you audience demographic insights, trends over time, and share-of-voice comparisons to refine messaging and spot new opportunities.

Key features

• Trend prediction and monitoring: Identify the latest trends, use Boolean queries for AI-powered trend analysis, and forecast market trends to stay ahead of the competition.
• Sentiment analysis: Track what engages the audience, their interests, and gauge customer sentiment and brand perception.
• Campaign tracking: Gather campaign insights, spot influencers for campaigns, and monitor multiple campaigns with real-time data access.

Pros

• Detailed reports
• Easy to track social campaigns and gain granular insights

Cons

• Analysis information may not be accurate
• Limited customization options

Pricing 

Keyhole doesn’t disclose its trial and pricing details. It offers a free trial and two paid plans—Team and Enterprise. However, you’ll need to request more information from the team.

Next Step: How Distribution AI Helps You Turn Insights into Valuable Content?

Got the best social listening tool. Check.

Gathered insights across social platforms. Check.

What’s next?

Turning those audience insights, recurring pain points, and trending topics into content that your target audience engages with.

This is where Distribution AI fits in perfectly. 

Drop in on online discussions, blogs, trending videos, or podcasts, and watch as it creates content tailored to specific platforms. For instance, infographics for Instagram, text posts for X, and carousels for LinkedIn.  

Here’s a list of Distribution AI’s key features:

Multi-format content repurposing

Convert blogs, podcasts, or videos into social media posts, newsletters, emails, and more. Suppose your social listening tool reveals online conversations about a specific product feature. In that case, you can repurpose blog posts on that feature to create text posts or infographics for your social media accounts.

AI snippet generator

Once you identify relevant conversations online and extract key information, use Distribution AI’s snippet generator to create engaging text content, catchy hooks, captions, and visual quotes—all aligned with your brand voice.

AI image & visual generator

Found positive reviews about your product? Create user-generated content (UGC) infographics, quotes, and images for your social profiles to attract prospects. You can also use insights from online conversations to create a visual carousel about your social listening strategy.

A/B testing

Generate multiple versions of your post and perform A/B tests to determine which version performs best. You can also test captions, content styles, and formats so you can zero in on the content that drives the most response.

Smart scheduling

Along with content generation, Distribution AI also automates scheduling and publishing. It automatically schedules your content for optimal publishing times based on platform engagement patterns.  

Content performance tracking

Track the performance of your live content using Distribution AI. Monitor its reach, views, and engagement to identify what your audience engages with and which content types and messaging resonate best with them. 

Closing Thoughts

In 2025, gaining a competitive edge requires social awareness. And without social listening tools, you’ll never know what’s happening around you (online).

Our list of the best social listening tools comprises platforms suitable for different business types and needs. For example, if you’re an enterprise, consider Sprout Social or Brandwatch, which offer advanced listening features. Similarly, if you’ve an audience active in communities and forums, try KWatch.io or Meltwater.

Regardless of the platform you choose, pairing it with Distribution AI will help you create content based on real conversations. Results? More views, higher reach, and better engagement.

So, why wait?!