Today, it is no secret that social media is a very powerful tool that can help you expand and empower your brand in numerous ways. So, whether you like it or not, social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+ have now become mainstream communication tools for brands and businesses. Never before has connecting and sharing real time information, both on a personal and professional level become so simple, fast, and effective. According to the latest statistics by Pew Research Center, almost 74% of internet users can be reached by blogs and social media. That is an incredible number of people and many of them are providing brands with insights and suggestions on how they can win over more customers. In fact, if brands are not in sync with their following on social media, it can damage their reputation, because fans won’t be able to associate with them in a convenient manner. So understanding and monitoring social media is one of the main methods by which brands can build their reputation online and achieve real success within the social media marketplace.

After having established the importance of social media monitoring, let us have a look at some of the tools that can help a brand to monitor social media in a successful fashion. When looking for a tool, it is always better to try a couple of them and then choose the one that suits your needs in the best possible manner.

1. Hootsuite: One of the best free social media management tool, it covers multiple social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, WordPress among others. The weekly analytics report and well-integrated team management facility allows users to delegate tasks and send private messages which are highly useful, especially when there is more than one person handling the social media account.

2. Google Analytics: Another impressive social media monitoring tool that will help you find out which social networks are referring traffic to your site. Further, Google Analytics will also help you find out the conversion rate for your website as well. Aside from finding out general traffic and social activity, this tool can also help you find out specific data through Google’s URL builder and create goal tracking to see the conversion rate of each page in your website. This will enable you to see which traffic source converts best.

3. Cyfe: Different social media tools allow users to track different things and keeping a track of all of them can be quite challenging. It is here that Cyfe is ideal as it allows brands to create their own customized dashboard. Cyfe also has a number of pre-built widgets for social media platforms like Google+, Facebook and Twitter. Further, Cyfe allows customers to track their emails and marketing campaigns as well. This tool is however not completely free and unlimited usage requires a fee of USD19/month.

4. Social Mention: A very popular tool among social media enthusiasts, Social Mention monitors more than 100 social media sites. One of the best free listening tool in the market, it analyses data under four categories namely strength, sentiment, passion and reach. As a result the data collected is comprehensive and detailed.

5. NOD3x: Another great social media tool for in depth analysis is NOD3x. This tool is more focused on YouTube and Google+ platforms. There are plenty of great features in NOD3x that are particularly helpful for social media monitoring such as brand monitoring and social listening, sentiment analysis and page insights (includes both profiles and brand pages)

6. Oktopost: Another great social media tool, especially for digital campaigns, Oktopost makes it easier for brands to track the progress of each campaign, rather than relying on metrics or statistics of individual social messages. There are numerous other features in the tool but the biggest advantage of Oktopost is that it allows brands to see how well their campaigns are performing at a glance and which networks are driving results.

Social media is changing the way brands conduct their businesses. And the sooner a brand adapts to this rapidly changing scenario, the faster it will be able to use it to its advantage. Therefore, it is time for brands to not just track and monitor social media, but engage with it as well. And more importantly, they have to do it in real time as being part of the social media conversation gives them a unique opportunity to positively influence public perception. Therefore, smart companies have learnt that monitoring social media is the key through which they can track their role in the digital world, understand consumer behavior, and gain insights into both their digital successes and failures. After all, if you’re not actively listening, how can you truly connect with your customers?