Harnessing the power of TikTok is crucial for staying relevant and engaging with many audiences. The TikTok comments section alone is ripe with information brands can use to form stronger connections and improve their product or services.

But navigating the dynamic landscape of TikTok can be challenging. That’s where TikTok monitoring comes into play. By utilizing social media monitoring tools that offer advanced TikTok analytics, brands gain valuable insights to steer their strategies in the right direction. In this guide, we’ll define TikTok monitoring, why it’s so valuable, how to do it and six TikTok monitoring tools you can use.

What is TikTok monitoring?

TikTok monitoring is the process of tracking and responding to social engagements to understand target audiences and protect your brand reputation. These engagements include @-mentions, comments, TikTok hashtags and keywords related to your brand. Monitoring should be a key aspect of your overall TikTok marketing strategy. However, social media practitioners face one common challenge when it comes to monitoring on the TikTok app: you can only track mentions that directly tag your brand. To see all the conversations about their business on TikTok, many brands use social media monitoring tools.

Why TikTok monitoring is valuable for brands

TikTok monitoring is a form of brand monitoring that gives insight into what your audience thinks about your business and product and services. By using a TikTok monitoring tool, you can conduct customer sentiment analysis to gauge feedback and understand the overall perception of your brand. TikTok monitoring involves analyzing shares, likes, comments and other engagements, which are direct reflections of audience opinions. Monitoring TikTok also strengthens reputation management because you can keep a close eye on potential crises and respond to questions, concerns and critiques promptly.

What important features to look for in a TikTok monitoring tool

Social monitoring tools empower you to discover and view every TikTok mention, even if your brand isn’t directly tagged. They help brands identify and define relevant keywords you want to track for monitoring. Here are some key things to look for when choosing a TikTok monitoring tool for your business:

  • Artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities: AI and automation is necessary for processing large amounts of data and extracting data-backed insights. A TikTok monitoring tool with advanced AI can automatically categorize user interactions and engagements.
  • Automated or customized reporting: An effective TikTok monitoring tool will offer the ability to customize or automate reports. Automated reports save you time, and it makes sharing valuable information to your team and stakeholders easier and faster.
  • Real-time monitoring: Social media is always evolving, so opt for tools that offer real-time monitoring capabilities that enable you to address trends, user engagements and potential crises swiftly.
  • Integrations: An ideal monitoring tool should integrate seamlessly with the other marketing and analytics platforms in your tech stack. It also allows for a more unified approach to data management.

6 best TikTok monitoring tools

There are a lot of social monitoring tools to choose from. Let’s review six of our top recommendations for platforms with TikTok monitoring tools:

1. Sprout Social

Sprout’s robust suite of solutions ensures you never lose track of your important conversations on TikTok. Our Smart Inbox aggregates your TikTok comments and engagements into a centralized feed, enabling your team to address customer needs and build valuable connections with your audience. Set up faster workflows with AI-powered automation and alert customer care agents in real time to the most important messages with Sprout’s Case Management solution.

A preview of Sprout’s Case Management dashboard featuring a case efficiency breakdown by priority and a summary highlighting average handle and reply time.

Sprout also offers in-depth analytics and automated, customized reports so you can share top insights within minutes.

A preview of Sprout's Smart Inbox for all TikTok messages and comments.

2. Emplifi

Emplifi is a customer engagement platform that offers a range of solutions including TikTok monitoring. The platform offers AI-powered spike alerts to notify any anomalies in online activity  so you can navigate a social media crisis quickly and efficiently. Emplifi offers omni channel dashboard and custom displays to make sharing insights across your team and to stakeholders easier.

Emplifi dahsboard, a customer engagement platform.

3. Brandwatch

Brandwatch is a social media analytics platform offering social monitoring capabilities for TikTok. It enables users to get an analysis of social conversations and mentions. You can create customized dashboards to help track and measure the performance of your social marketing efforts. Along with customized dashboards, the platform offers AI smart alerts so you can respond to spikes or drops in brand mentions.

A Brandwatch dashboard for market analysis.

4. Talkwalker

Talkwalker is a consumer intelligence platform providing a range of solutions including social media monitoring. The platform offers hashtag tracking and data visualization tools to help visualize and contextualize topics across social media including TikTok. You can monitor mentions in real time for social media, but it also scrolls blogs, media publications, forums and videos.

A dashboard preview of Talkwalker, a consumer intelligence platform.

5. Mention

Mention is another TikTok monitoring tool brands can use to keep a pulse on conversations. As its name implies, the platform offers a strong @-mention tracker that monitors over one billion sources. Mention offers a variety of filtering options to help practitioners sift through the noise and identify the most relevant mentions and comments. Similar to the other platforms in our list, Mention offers alerts for mention volume and customized reports.

Sample social messages on Mention, a social media monitoring platform.

6. Awario

Awario is a social media and brand monitoring tool that crawls over 13 billion web pages daily. They are a good option for brands of all sizes and offer various upgrades to customize to your business’s needs. Along with tracking mentions, you can use Awario to discover influencers and brand advocates and identify your share of voice on social media. Essentially, you can use this software to see who and where your brand is being talked about the most on social media.

A preview of an Awario dashboard.

How to monitor TikTok for your brand

Follow these steps to monitor your brand on TikTok:

1. Define your goals and metrics

Ground your monitoring by establishing clear goals and determining which metrics are most relevant to your brand. Consider what you want to accomplish through monitoring TikTok. For example, do you want to keep an eye on how your competitors, focus on a specific campaign or better understand your target audience in general? Once you set goals, you can select which metrics you’ll use to measure success.

2. Monitor relevant keywords for your brand

Pay attention to specific keywords related to your industry and brand. These keywords can include anything from specific features and product names, industry phrases, popular hashtags and competitor names.

A preview of Sprout's Word Cloud that shows popular keywords, hashtags and mentions using Sprout's Social Listening tool.

For instance, this image shows a word cloud with top keywords, hashtags and mentions in Sprout’s platform. In this example, a coffee chain might monitor keywords like “espresso,” “cup of joe,” “latte” or “barista recs” to pinpoint rising conversation within the industry.

3. Monitor customer sentiment

Review customer sentiment analysis to get a granular understanding of what your audiences are saying and feeling about your brand. Tools like Sprout analyze positive, negative and neutral sentiment to give you an overview of your customers’ opinions. Some TikTok monitoring tools give you a sentiment score to help you quantify that metric. Use a sentiment analysis score to adjust your strategy, improve customer satisfaction and overall perception of your brand.

A preview of Sprout’s Listening dashboard highlighting Sentiment Summary and Sentiment Trends.

4. Monitor your competitors performance

After reviewing relevant keywords and customer sentiment, seek out how your competitors are doing on TikTok. Competitive analysis empowers you to differentiate yourself from the crowd, so it’s important to avoid only monitoring your brand. Tracking your competitors’ engagement rates, interactions and response rates helps you uncover what’s working for them, while presenting gaps in their strategy that your brand can fill.

In Sprout, you can view automated reports to help you monitor your competition and benchmark performance across various social channels.

A competitive analysis dashboard using Sprout's Social Listening tool.

5. Evolve your TikTok monitoring strategy

As you learn more from your insights, the more you will need to adapt your TikTok monitoring strategy. For example, you might discover new conversations from your audience or new competitors. Remain flexible and use your TikTok monitoring tools to stay ahead.

Protect your online reputation with a TikTok monitoring tool

Using a TikTok monitoring tool will help you learn more about your target audiences and competitors, so you can strengthen your social media presence and brand reputation. Experience and explore Sprout’s TikTok monitoring tools and sign up for a free, 30-day trial.