10 Best Media Monitoring Tools for Brand Management

Brand monitoring has become crucial for businesses looking to manage their online reputation, understand customer sentiment, and respond quickly to brand mentions. With customers increasingly going online to research products, write reviews and engage with brands on social media, keeping tabs on what is being said has huge benefits.

This comprehensive guide looks at 10 of the top media monitoring tools that help track brand mentions across the web and social media, analyze trends and sentiment, and gain actionable insights. Whether you are a small business on a budget or a large enterprise managing multiple brands, there is a monitoring solution for your needs.

Why Media Monitoring Matters for Brands

Actively monitoring your brand across media sources provides many advantages:

  • Identify new sales opportunities and grow your customer base
  • Understand customer pain points and improve products/services
  • Respond quickly to negative publicity or PR crises
  • Gain competitive intelligence on rival brands
  • Measure effectiveness of marketing campaigns
  • Identify key brand advocates and influencers

With real-time monitoring and intelligent analytics, brands today have an unprecedented opportunity to listen, analyze and engage with their audiences across media channels.

Key Features of Media Monitoring Tools

When evaluating monitoring tools, here are some key features to look for:

  • Data sources: Ability to track across social media, news, blogs, forums, review sites etc.
  • Search options: Keywords, date ranges, languages, locations etc.
  • Analytics: Customizable dashboards, metrics and reports
  • Alerts: Custom alerts for new mentions meeting criteria
  • Sentiment analysis: Detect tone and emotion of brand mentions
  • Competitive tracking: Identify and benchmark against competitors
  • Integration: Easy to integrate with other marketing tools
  • Support: Quality of customer support

The right media monitoring tool depends on your business goals, target channels, volume of mentions expected and budget. Keep these parameters in mind as we look at 10 leading brand monitoring platforms:

1. Sprout Social

Sprout Social is an end-to-end social media management platform with powerful monitoring capabilities across Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Key features include:

  • Customizable real-time monitoring feeds
  • Smart inbox to manage brand mentions
  • Competitive benchmarking
  • Sentiment analysis
  • Engagement analytics
  • Integration with Facebook Analytics and Google Analytics

Pricing starts at $99/month for the Standard plan up to $499/month for the Advanced plan with more features. Sprout Social works well for those who are already using it to manage social media and now want to add monitoring capabilities.

2. Brand24

Brand24 provides comprehensive brand monitoring across web sources including social networks, news sites, blogs and forums in over 50 languages.

Key features:

  • Boolean search queries for targeted tracking
  • Sentiment analysis and statistics
  • Customized alerts and weekly email reports
  • Source classification into categories
  • Monitoring teams and workflow management
  • Mobile app for real-time alerts

Brand24 starts at $49/month for basic monitoring of mentions from up to 10 sources. It offers simplified plans for startups and small businesses making it budget friendly.

3. Awario

Awario positions itself as an affordable but powerful media monitoring solution capable of tracking brands across hundreds of thousands of online sources in real-time.

Notable features include:

  • Unified search queries across websites, social media and apps
  • Interactive mention stream and analytics dashboards
  • Smart newsfeed with automatic source classification
  • Easy to customize email digests and PDF reports
  • Sentiment metrics and share-of-voice analysis
  • Team collaboration features

Awario starts at $99/month for 5 search topics and 15,000 monthly search results which is excellent value. It offers a forever free plan with basic features making it easy to try out.

4. Hootsuite

The social media management platform Hootsuite incorporates the ability to monitor branded keywords and set up save searches across social networks including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Key monitoring features:

  • Unified search and tracking across social media
  • Customizable real-time streams
  • Google Analytics integration
  • Alerts and scheduled reports
  • Conversation threading and assignment
  • Mobile app for on-the-go monitoring

Hootsuite pricing starts at $99/month for its Professional plan. While more focused on social listening, it provides a good integrated option for those already using Hootsuite to manage social media.

5. Brandwatch

Brandwatch is a premium media monitoring solution used by leading brands across the world like Audi, Whirlpool and Heineken. It can track millions of online sources in over 100 languages.

Standout features include:

  • Powerful AI search engine tracks hard-to-find brand mentions
  • Trend analysis identifies shifts in brand metrics
  • Customizable real-time dashboards and deep analytics
  • Edgesense technology for contextual sentiment analysis
  • Audience analysis by demographics and interests
  • Collaboration tools and user permission controls

Given the advanced technology and large data volumes it can handle, Brandwatch is priced higher starting at about $600/month. The entry-level plan allows tracking upto 10 key brands/competitors making it suitable for social media agencies and mid-sized companies.

6. BuzzSumo

While focused heavily on content marketing and awareness, BuzzSumo has a useful Brand Monitoring module that tracks keywords across all web content including articles, blog posts, forums as well as Facebook and Twitter.

Key aspects:

  • Alerts for when competitors are mentioned
  • Analyze online sites and authors talking about your brand
  • Monitor SEO ranking positions for important keywords
  • Filter mentions by content type, author, site authority etc.
  • Understand content engagement and shares

BuzzSumo offers a free branded search as well as paid plans starting from $99/month. It can uncover interesting customer conversations happening via online content that other tools may miss.

7. Digimind

Digimind is an AI powered social media intelligence platform for larger enterprises managing multiple brands. With localized servers around the world, it can track millions of online data sources in over 20 languages.

Key monitoring features:

  • Boolean and conceptual searches
  • Sentiment and emotion AI analysis
  • Influencer and evangelist identification
  • Augmented analytics with data visualization
  • Competitive benchmarking
  • Reputation analysis

Pricing is customized based on expected search volume, data sources and number of users. Given the depth of capabilities, Digimind is geared towards sizable brands with large digital footprints.

8. Talkwalker

Talkwalker stands out for covering over 187 million online sources encompassing news, blogs, forums, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc. coupled with image recognition capabilities.

It provides:

  • Retroactive data retrieval across all sources
  • Sentiment analysis
  • Customizable real-time alerts and email reports
  • Data visualization with shareable dashboards
  • conversational AI engine
  • Multi-user collaboration

Talkwalker is affordably priced starting at $1500/month for 5 users making it attractive for mid-market companies. It offers one of the largest social media data discovery capabilities.

9. Barometric

Barometric is focused on PR and communications teams providing media monitoring capabilities + deep media analytics.

Key aspects:

  • Monitors print, broadcast and online media sources
  • Automated clipping service for news coverage
  • Sentiment tracking across coverage types
  • In-depth readership and publicity value metrics
  • Historical data on past brand coverage
  • Compare brand exposure across competitors

Barometric appeals most to PR agencies with pricing starting around $2000/month for monitoring 100 news brands and keywords. It offers complementary capabilities to social media monitoring tools.

10. Critical Mention

Critical Mention tracks both online and offline media sources across TV, radio and print channels beyond just social media making it suitable for Public Relations professionals.

Notable aspects include:

  • Monitoring across global broadcast channels
  • Transcripts of TV and Radio mentions
  • Real-time news monitoring
  • Exportable online press clippings
  • Competitive benchmarking
  • Newsroom with coverage highlights

Critical Mention pricing begins at $229/month for tracking upto 5 keywords making it affordable for small PR teams as well.

Comparing Media Monitoring Tools

Tool Sources Sentiment Analysis Competitor Tracking Pricing Best For
Sprout Social Twitter, FB, IG Yes Yes $99+ Social media teams
Brand24 Broad web + SM Yes No $49+ Brand tracking
Awario 100K+ web sources Yes No $99+ Affordable monitoring
Hootsuite Major social media No No $99+ Social listening
Brandwatch Millions of sources Advanced Yes $600+ Large brands
BuzzSumo Articles, blogs, SM No Yes $99+ Content engagement
Digimind Millions of sources Advanced Yes Custom Large digital footprint
Talkwalker 187M sources + image recog Yes No $1500+ PR and communications
Barometric Broadcast, print, online Yes Yes $2000+ PR professionals
Critical Mention TV, radio, print, online No Yes $229+ PR teams

Choosing the Right Monitoring Tool

Here are key questions to ask when selecting a suitable media monitoring platform:

  • What are your goals and KPIs from brand monitoring?
  • Which sources do you need to track – social media only or wider web?
  • How many brands and keywords do you need to monitor?
  • Is competitive tracking important?
  • Does your team need collaboration features?
  • What level of analysis is required e.g. sentiment, reach, demographics
  • What is your monthly budget for a monitoring tool?
  • Will free tools like Google Alerts suffice or do you need more advanced capabilities?

The answers will determine whether you need an entry-level brand monitoring service or an enterprise level platform. strike the right balance between features and price.

Many tools offer free trials allowing you to test drive them, so make use of that. Monitoring needs often evolve over time for brands, so pick a platform that can scale up capabilities easily.

Tips for Setting Up Brand Monitoring

Once you have selected the right media monitoring tool, here are some tips for getting set up:

  • Define goals – What metrics are you trying to track? Awareness? Sentiment? Share-of-voice?
  • Pick data sources – Strike a balance between coverage and noise-level based on goals
  • Create search strings – Leverage boolean, wildcards, nested expressions for targeted monitoring
  • Set up email/app alerts – Critical for real-time reputation monitoring
  • Customize reporting – Automated scheduled reports by desired parameters
  • Analyze data periodically – Review insights and tweak parameters
  • Collaborate across teams – Ensure insights are shared with relevant stakeholders

The best practice is to start with a well defined narrow search scope and then expand gradually. Audit search terms regularly and keep improving monitoring practices.

Responding to Brand Mentions

The job doesn‘t end with just monitoring relevant brand keywords. How you respond to mentions and trends uncovered is critical.

Here are quick tips on responding appropriately:

  • Thank customers for positive feedback and endorsements
  • Address complaints quickly and guide to proper resolution channels
  • Monitor comments by influential personalities closely
  • Join online conversations if they influence brand reputation
  • Consider an apology or clarification for serious negative PR
  • Draft an internal protocol for responding to common mention scenarios

Having the right workflows to act upon monitoring insights separates the best brands from the rest. Get your team and processes ready before rolling out a monitoring program.

Over To You

Actively listening to conversations across media channels provides invaluable customer insights and trends for brands looking to manage their reputation and marketing effectively. With consumers spending increasing amounts of time online, media monitoring is a high ROI investment.

This guide summarizes 10 capable tools for tracking brand mentions across a variety of sources. Each platform has particular strengths catering to all budgets. Identify which tool best meets your specific use case based on the criteria we have covered.

What has your experience been with media monitoring? Which brand tracking platform do you currently use? Share your thoughts and questions below.