15 social listening tools for your brand in 2025

An effective social media strategy depends on an in-depth understanding of your audience. Knowing what topics interest your audience helps you craft content and messages that resonate with them. To stay in tune, brands rely on social listening tools. These tools let you tap into the conversations that your audience is engaging in.

Social listening tools monitor and track social media conversations related to a specific brand or topic, giving you insights that inform your marketing decisions.

Learn how social listening fuels relevance, responsiveness and results—and explore the tools that help your team move from insight to impact.

Why are social listening tools important for your brand?

Social media listening tools help you find meaningful insights in millions of online conversations.

They cut out hours of manual digging, letting you focus on what matters—turning real audience opinions into strategy.

Here’s why social listening tools are so important to the growth of your brand.

Spot emerging trends

Social listening platforms detect patterns in conversations around specific keywords and hashtags. This helps you see when certain topics are starting to gain traction.Being early to a trend or leveraging it in the right way helps your brand stay relevant and memorable. And it’s what your customers expect from you. 

According to The 2025 Sprout Social Index™, 93% of consumers think it’s important for brands to keep up with online culture. 

Social listening helps you do this by surfacing real-time shifts in conversations. As new discussions emerge and trends evolve, you can respond quickly and craft your messaging to match the moment.

Understand customer interests and pain points

The Index also indicates that 90% of consumers use social media to stay updated on trends and cultural moments. This makes it a goldmine of audience data to inform your business strategies. 

Social listening lets you tap into those signals. 

Listening in on social media conversations helps you understand what topics people like to engage with and what inspires or frustrates them.

These insights fuel more relevant content, smarter product ideas and more empathetic customer care.

Understanding customers’ values and pain points makes it easier to speak directly to what matters most.

Monitor and manage brand reputation

The Index reveals that how quickly a brand responds and how they engage are two of the most important factors that make brands stand out on social.

Social listening tools keep track of every relevant brand mention, even if you’re not tagged. That means you can identify and address conversations that could harm your brand reputation—and amplify conversations that cast you in a positive light.

Quick, thoughtful responses deliver the standout experience customers are looking for. It shows you’re paying attention and that their opinions matter. 

Take Penn State Health, for example. By using Sprout Listening to track sentiment and conversations in real time, Penn State Health can now spot potential crises early. This enables them to proactively address patient concerns and shape content that builds trust with their community.

Identify sales opportunities

Social isn’t just about visibility. It also drives revenue. 

In fact, there are more people who buy things on socials than you probably think. According to the Index, 81% of consumers say socials drive them to make spontaneous purchases multiple times a year.

Social listening platforms help you spot these revenue opportunities. They highlight relevant conversations from users that seek a solution you can provide. 

So it’s important for your brand to engage in ways that feel timely, relevant and genuinely helpful. As The Index also highlights, 73% of buyers say they turn to a competitor if a brand doesn’t respond to their needs—so being present and adding real value can make all the difference.

Identifying high-intent conversations early allows you to engage at the right moment, offer useful solutions and optimize conversion tactics.

Keep an eye on the competition

Social listening isn’t just for your brand. It’s also a powerful form of social media competitive analysis. 

When you track what audiences say about similar brands, you can see what’s hitting the mark and what’s missing it. 

These insights help you benchmark your brand performance and identify gaps in the market. Spot negative feedback aimed at competitors and position your brand as the better alternative.

Best all-in-one social listening tools

Some tools provide deep listening for one specific platform or they specialize in certain functions. 

Others offer cross-channel listening and a variety of functions, like sentiment analysis and trend predictions.

If your brand is present across multiple social networks, an all-in-one tool offers the breadth of coverage and functionality to help you juggle lots of conversations at once.

Here are the best all-in-one tools to listen in on socials.

1. Sprout Social

Sprout Social’s social listening tools automatically sift through millions of data points to uncover conversations and insights relevant to your brand. With powerful cross-platform integrations, it’s easy to track conversations across social networks, blogs, forums and news outlets so you never miss a beat. 

At the trend level, Sprout helps you learn what’s gaining popularity in your industry—from rising product categories to cultural conversations. See how audiences feel about specific products, campaigns or topics to stay ahead of strategic or emotional shifts. Sprout surfaces the influencers and thought leaders driving those discussions, so you know who to engage with to expand your reach.

Sprout also highlights brand-specific conversations and indirect mentions, giving you a sharper, on-the-ground view of customer experiences and expectations. With custom alerts, you see potential brand crises early, giving you the time and context to respond thoughtfully—before things escalate.

And because Sprout combines social listening, social media management and analytics in one platform, you can move from insight to action in seconds within a unified solution.

Sprout’s AI capabilities further streamline your social listening efforts.

AI Assist automatically summarizes long Listening messages (800+ characters) giving you key takeaways to quickly zero in on essential insights.

Analyze by AI Assist goes one step further to take the guesswork out of social listening.

It analyzes trends in words, phrases, hashtags and even emojis. This clarity enables you to identify what’s gaining momentum and prioritize your efforts accordingly. With sentiment flagged automatically, teams stay agile and ahead.

Want to keep an eye on your competitors, too? Sprout’s competitive monitoring tools track what’s resonating or falling flat with rival brands. This helps you fine-tune your strategies to stay one step ahead.

Sprout offers a free trial to test out its publishing and analytics capabilities. The social listening tools are part of a custom-built plan for enterprise users.

Start a free Sprout Social demo

2. Brandwatch

Brandwatch extracts valuable conversational insights from millions of sources. It analyzes both historical and real-time conversations to identify current trends and how they change over time.

Gain deeper clarity on your audience and market, so you know what’s trending and popular. You’ll be able to see the top topics they’re talking about and identify relevant brand mentions.

3. Brand24

Brand24 is a powerful tool for measuring brand awareness and reach. It lets you track conversations from 25 million online sources to gather valuable consumer insights.

This gives you a better understanding of what people like or dislike, especially when it comes to your brand. You can even measure brand sentiment and quickly identify reputational risks.

4. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is a comprehensive listening tool that specializes in content discovery and research. The platform lets you track trending topics and popular content to inspire you.

You can use the monitoring features to track mentions and industry trends across leading social networks. It lets you set up alerts for brands, topics and keywords to help you stay on top of the latest conversations.

5. Keyhole

Keyhole offers enterprise-grade social listening to gain a deeper understanding of your audience. It provides insights to identify who they are and get a better sense of what they like. You can use the platform to track specific hashtags and keywords as well as identify relevant influencers.

The volume predictions feature lets you anticipate when your posts are going viral, allowing you to come up with a game plan.

6. Meltwater

Meltwater helps you cut through the noise and uncover the conversational insights that matter to your brand. It provides you with a full picture by capturing historical data to help you research changes in trends over time. 

The platform gives you a better understanding of your audience and allows you to analyze their sentiment. This helps you monitor mentions of your brand in real time and stay on top of upcoming crises to quell them on time.

7. YouScan

YouScan is one of the top social listening tools that comes with image recognition capabilities. It gives you access to AI-powered visual insights to gain a better understanding of your buyer persona.

The platform identifies upcoming trends so you can align your marketing strategy accordingly. It tracks brand sentiment and consumer perceptions to show you how people feel about your brand. It even detects possible threats to your brand reputation in real time.

8. HubSpot Social Media Management Software

HubSpot’s social media management software lets you create custom keyword monitoring streams. This makes it easy to surface interactions that could turn critical and manage them on time.

You can also set up email alerts, allowing your sales team to follow up when prospects mention specific keywords. It even provides AI-generated recommended actions to speed up your analysis.

Social listening tools for Twitter (X)

X is a place where all the trending conversations take place. It’s where people go when they want to complain about a brand or discuss a trending topic. As such, Twitter listening can uncover valuable insights into your target market.

Here are social media listening tools that specifically focus on X.

9. X advanced search

X’s built-in advanced search tool is highly robust for listening in on relevant conversations. You can track conversations containing specific words, phrases and hashtags. It even lets you narrow your search by excluding certain words.

To get even more specific, look for posts from one specific account to another. The tool gives you plenty of additional filters to help you narrow your search by engagement, date range and so on.

10. X Pro (formerly TweetDeck)

X Pro is a paid tool that offers the same features as the formerly free TweetDeck. Pull up hundreds of conversations across the platform and display them in several columns.

This makes it easier to look out for posts around specific topics and news stories as they come in. X Pro even lets you pull up X posts from the dedicated lists you’ve created. This makes it easier to narrow down conversations from accounts that are most interesting to you.

11. Awario

Awario provides real-time insights on specific brand and keyword mentions in any language. This makes it a great social media listening software for brands that want to grow an international customer base. It even helps you identify top influencers and brand advocates leading the conversation.

Awario supports your social selling efforts with a feature that identifies hot leads. It tracks X posts and zeroes in on ones that are looking for a product similar to yours.

Social listening tools for TikTok

TikTok’s reach and influence are rapidly expanding. Now it’s the hub for all the latest social media trends and conversations. So being able to tap into the conversations happening on the network gives you leverage to stand apart.

Let’s take a look at a couple of TikTok tools to conduct social listening on the platform.

12. Exolyt

Exolyt gives you comprehensive insights into TikTok conversations and trends. You can use the tool to monitor what people are saying about your brand and how they feel about it.

It lets you track specific TikTok accounts, hashtags and videos to gather granular insights. Also, discover trending sounds, hashtags, effects and accounts to inform your content strategy.

13. All Ears

All Ears is an AI-powered social listening platform that focuses on voice and video conversations. It analyzes millions of TikTok videos to identify relevant brand or topic mentions.

The platform automatically transcribes these mentions, saving you hours of time having to comb through the noise. All Ears also provides relevant metrics like reach, PR value and net sentiment to streamline your listening analytics.

Free social listening tools

If you’re not ready to invest in a paid tool just yet, there are a few free social listening tools that come with basic listening capabilities.

14. Answer the Public

Answer the Public pulls up search volumes and trends for a given topic, brand or product.

It gives you a breakdown of the associated search terms. So it shows you what questions people are asking about it and what comparisons they’re making. This gives you a better understanding of their needs and pain points as well as their interests.

15. Google Alerts

Google Alerts is another free option that lets you set up alerts for conversations taking place across the web. Use it to monitor specific keywords and topics or even brand names.

The tool lets you filter your results based on sources, language and region. Customize the frequency of alerts and choose to show only the best results.

Use Sprout Social’s platform to turn listening into action

Social listening data is powerful—but only if you know what to do with it.

Sprout highlights the trends that matter and helps you put them into action. 

Its advanced capabilities like customizable Listening Topics and sentiment visualization empower teams to truly understand audience signals and respond strategically.

Build custom Listening Topics to track what matters

Sprout’s Listening Topics let you track signals that are relevant to your brand, industry or audience. Using the Query Builder, you can tailor topics around anything—from customer pain points to competitor mentions. You cut straight through the noise to find what matters to your brand.

Filter by platform, location, intent, emotion, product name and much more. Set alerts to flag conversational spikes or sentiment changes, making it easier to act fast and stay ahead.

Visualize sentiment and trends at scale

With Sprout, you no longer have to comb through endless messages to find out what’s going on. Sprout’s sentiment analysis and trend tracking give you a holistic view—and fast. 

Sort audience feedback by emotion, keyword or campaign and turn thousands of data points into digestible dashboards and reports.

While these insights are powerful for fueling marketing strategies, they also help streamline workflows throughout the whole business. 

Take James Hardie® as an example.

The clothing brand uses Sprout’s sentiment and trend analysis to identify themes and feed these insights to their sales, product and customer care teams.

“Not only is it good from a brand health and marketing angle, it’s also important information we can pass on to our sales teams and product teams,” explains Senior Digital Marketing Manager Bridget Kulla. 

“We can find trends and common themes that come up in conversations. We can identify not only our own brand advocates, but brand advocates for our competition.”

Spot emerging opportunities before they trend

Most customers enjoy brands that keep up with trends—though according to the Index, almost a third agree that it’s only cool if you act on them within the first one or two days.

Ideally, you want to act on a trend before it explodes. But how?

Sprout’s real-time social listening surfaces emerging trends early, so teams can act before they go mainstream.

The platform flags fast-moving conversations the moment they start to gain momentum. This helps you seize trending moments or protect your brand before it’s too late.

Trek Bicycles taps into this capability to make smarter business decisions. They use Sprout’s Advanced Listening to unearth valuable business intelligence from social conversations to work out what’s about to trend in the industry.

“We’re trying to get more data inputs directly from consumers,” said Eric Rosch, Digital Marketing Manager. “What we are trying to do is make more informed decisions by being better listeners.” 

Which social media listening tool is best for your business?

The best social media listening tool depends entirely on your business’s unique budget, required features and industry-specific goals. It’s about finding the perfect fit for your distinct needs, not a universal “best”.

So, when selecting a social media listening platform, consider the following critical factors:

Industry orientation

When selecting the best social listening tool, it’s critical to consider your industry’s unique aspects, as the most effective platform will directly address your sector’s distinct challenges and opportunities. For retail, this means a tool adept at monitoring product sentiment and consumer trends; for fintech, it necessitates robust reputation management and risk detection capabilities; and for hospitality, it requires strength in analyzing customer feedback and identifying emerging travel preferences.

Coverage

The platform should monitor all relevant social networks, forums, blogs, news sites and review platforms where your target audience may discuss your brand or industry.

Real-time capabilities

Look for features that deliver instant alerts for critical mentions or significant shifts in sentiment, allowing your team to react swiftly to opportunities or challenges.

Sentiment analysis accuracy

Evaluate the tool’s precision in determining the emotional tone (positive, negative, neutral) of mentions, particularly across various languages, slang or nuanced contexts.

Customization and filtering

The ability to establish highly specific search queries and effectively filter out irrelevant data is crucial for focusing on actionable insights relevant to your business objectives.

Data visualization and reporting

An effective platform will present complex data in clear, digestible formats, offering customizable dashboards and comprehensive reports that can be easily shared with stakeholders.

Assess whether the platform integrates seamlessly with your existing CRM, customer service or other marketing software to ensure a unified view of your customer interactions and data.

Careful evaluation of these points will help you select a listening platform that not only enhances your market understanding but also empowers your team to make data-driven decisions and foster stronger brand connections. Many businesses find comprehensive capabilities in platforms like Sprout Social.

Listen, learn and grow on social

Social listening tools empower you to learn what makes your audience tick. They give you actionable insights to inform what content you create and how you engage with your audience.

But the challenge lies in finding a social listening platform that meets your unique needs. If you’re looking for a well-rounded tool that does everything, Sprout’s the answer you need. Try it free for 30 days to see if it’s the right match for your brand.

Start a free Sprout Social demo

Social listening tools FAQs

What are social listening tools?

A social listening tool is a software application designed to track, analyze, and report on conversations happening across various digital channels, including social media platforms, blogs, forums, and news sites. These tools scan for mentions of specific keywords, brand names, competitors, hashtags, or industry-related terms. By doing so, they enable businesses to gather insights into public sentiment, identify emerging trends, understand consumer discussions, manage brand reputation, and uncover opportunities for engagement or strategic actions. In totality, it’s the technology that powers your ability to “listen” to the vast public dialogue occurring online.

What's the Difference Between Social Listening and Social Monitoring?

Social monitoring and social listening are distinct practices that help in understanding the social media space. Social monitoring is the act of tracking mentions of your brand, keywords, hashtags, and competitors across social media. Whereas social listening goes beyond mere data collection. It involves analyzing and interpreting the collected data to understand the underlying sentiment, trends, and reasons behind the conversations. It’s about discerning the “why” behind the “what.”

How to use a social listening tool for influencer marketing?

Social listening tools are invaluable for a strategic influencer marketing approach. They enable you to identify relevant influencers by tracking conversations around your brand, industry, and competitors, revealing who genuinely drives engagement and holds authority. Beyond discovery, these tools help monitor influencer campaign performance, assessing reach, sentiment, and audience response. This allows for data-driven optimization, ensuring you partner with individuals who resonate with your target audience and effectively amplify your brand message, maximizing your marketing ROI.

How do social listening tools work?

Social listening tools operate by continuously monitoring and collecting data from a wide range of online sources, including social media, news, forums & review platforms. These go beyond your own social media profiles and monitor and analyse the important topics across your industry.
Below is the four-step process of social listening:

• Query Building: Users define what they want to listen for by creating “queries” using keywords, phrases, hashtags, brand names (including misspellings), competitor names, and industry topics. This allows you to monitor topics that affect your business and industry.
• Data Collection/Crawling:The tool then collects data across numerous platforms and websites. This includes major social media networks (Facebook, X/Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.); news websites and blogs, forums (like Reddit & Quora, etc.), and review sites (Yelp, Google Play Store, Tripadvisor, etc.)
• Data Processing and Analysis: Once all this data is collected, the raw data undergoes sophisticated analysis, powered by AI and Natural Language Processing (NLP). This data goes through various stages, starting with noise reduction, sentiment analysis, trend analysis, and tagging for topics and clusters.
• Insight Generation & Visualization: This analyzed and tagged data is finally converted into granular visual reports that let you see trends, patterns, and generate alerts.