Ever since the Internet became ubiquitous, individuals from diverse backgrounds, companies, and varying degrees of self-confidence have been intrigued by the online representation of themselves. They searched for their own as well as their former partners’ names, and naturally, they looked up their trade names.
Google became aware of this issue and developed Google Alerts, a straightforward application that sends email alerts to users whenever their designated keyword is mentioned online. Although it doesn’t include social media mentions, it does encompass blogs, news websites, and web pages, which is pretty impressive for a free service.
There was widespread celebration. It is unlikely that any marketer has not experimented with Google Alerts. Monitoring mentions of your brand, business, merchandise, CEO, etc. has become a crucial aspect of managing your online reputation and implementing a successful marketing plan.
As time passed, the situation deteriorated.
Initially, there has been a noticeable decline in the functionality of Google Alerts. With its extensive range of numerous existing and uncharted projects, Google’s attention to some of them has dwindled. Regrettably, Google Alerts has become one of the neglected initiatives as it is no longer being backed or enhanced. Presently, Google Alerts serves no significant purpose, and it is essential to come to terms with this harsh reality. However, that is not the only issue at hand.
Social media has been receiving considerable attention over the years as discussions between people and brands occur frequently without any brand tagging. Neglecting social media is not viable for those concerned about their online reputation.
The roster contains tools for social listening that cater to businesses with various scales and financial capabilities.
1. Awario
Awario, a social listening tool, can be considered as the new version of Google Alerts. Awario is capable of scanning various sources including social media platforms such as Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, as well as news websites, blogs, forums, and web pages.
You have the option to either get alert notifications through email or monitor references to your keyword live in Awario’s Mentions’ Feed. You can then respond to posts on social media, which will enhance your customer service and boost the success of your social selling plan.
The data gathered by Awario is also subjected to analysis. The software gives insights on the growth of mentions over time, the audience reached by brand mentions, and the sentiment associated with these mentions – whether they are positive, negative, or neutral. It also identifies the predominant sentiment.
By using sentiment analysis, you can identify individuals who are dissatisfied and address their concerns. Additionally, this tool enables you to detect a social media emergency; when the quantity of unfavorable remarks begins to escalate, it’s essential to access the Mentions Feed immediately and review the comments.
Analytics can provide insights into your audience, including those who have mentioned your brand or related keywords. This tool can reveal the gender, age, location, language, and social media platforms used by the authors. You have the ability to filter these results by various demographics, allowing you to identify where people are discussing your brand and who they are.
Awario features a Boolean search option that is useful for challenging keywords, such as abbreviations and common names. By utilizing Boolean operators, users can define their search with precision, eliminating any potential irrelevant references.
Furthermore, in addition to identifying brand advocates and niche influencers, Awario offers a unique feature called Awario Leads, which locates online individuals who are actively seeking a product or service similar to your own.
2. Mention
Being one of the oldest alternatives to Google Alerts and social listening tools, Mention has been referred to as “Google Alerts on steroids” numerous times. It was introduced into the industry when it became apparent that Google Alerts was insufficient in its performance, and it has since gained widespread popularity.
The app keeps track of activity on top social networks, news sites, blogs, forums, and web pages. Users have the option to receive email notifications at their preferred frequency, or to only receive alerts when there is an increase in activity related to their brand. Additionally, mentions can be viewed in real time on the app’s dashboard and replied to directly within the app.
Your dashboard will gather relevant social posts from the past 24 hours and the tool will enable you to interact with the mentions by sorting, filtering, and searching the social posts.
To streamline your workflow, you have the option to group mentions together. If a mention fits your search criteria but is not applicable to you (such as distinguishing between an apple fruit and Apple the company), you can designate it as spam and Mention will progressively learn to filter out comparable posts.
Mention’s dashboard allows you to repost and respond to social posts directly. Integrating Buffer enables scheduling of reposts in the future. Notifications of new mentions can be received through email or Slack, with the frequency of alerts being customizable. The mobile app provided by Mention is particularly useful for those who work remotely.
The Insights center is a distinct dashboard that offers the ability to analyze social listening data and share it with others, making it one of the primary strengths of the tool.
Over time, you can observe the development of your sentiment ratio, reach, and mention count, and also gain access to demographic insights. In addition, you can utilize the Competitive Dashboard to compare multiple alerts and the Influencer Dashboard to detect noteworthy figures within your field.
With Mentions, it is possible to generate customized reports to disseminate this data among your collaborators and interested parties. The choice of metrics and data points to be included in these reports depends on the tactics and objectives that need to be highlighted.
Awario and Mention have similar analytics capabilities. Both tools can analyze the growth of mentions, determine sentiment, pinpoint location and language, and identify social media sources. Additionally, both tools can help you find and connect with social media influencers. With Mention, you can explore historical data and access an API, which enables you to incorporate Mention functions into your website with a customized layout and rights management.
Ensure to utilize the Boolean search feature, which is available in all excellent tools, to steer clear of being inundated with extraneous statistics, alerts, noise, and mentions.
3. Talkwalker Alerts
Talkwalker Alerts is a tool with features that are almost identical to Google Alerts, and it is free. Talkwalker watches over web pages, news sites, blogs, forums, and Twitter, but you can choose to restrict your search to only blogs.
You will receive all references directly in your email inbox. You have the option to choose the frequency of email notifications and select whether you want to receive all references or only the ones that are deemed more significant by the tool. The tool gauges the popularity and engagement of the mentions to determine their importance.
Talkwalker Alerts includes a Boolean search option that allows you to tailor your search and ensure that you receive only pertinent results, unlike Google Alerts.
4. Talkwalker
At any given moment, there is the option to switch from utilizing Talkwalker Alerts to utilizing Talkwalker, a paid resource designed for larger enterprises and agencies.
The Talkwalker tool is capable of scanning various social media channels, blogs, news websites, the internet, printed publications, radio broadcasts, and television broadcasts. In case the tool is unable to monitor a particular website, users can add it as a manual entry without any additional charges. Additionally, the tool provides the feature of image recognition to identify and track images and photographs containing your logo.
Talkwalker offers a variety of insights such as analyzing the sentiment, creating a map of mentions with countries and regions, identifying the language of mentions, determining the gender of authors, identifying main topics and themes related to your keywords, and additional metrics.
In addition to that, it is possible to incorporate any publicly available social media page to gain valuable information on your top-performing posts, followers’ increase, and audience engagement. This feature can prove to be quite advantageous in keeping an eye on your competitors. By utilizing Talkwalker, you can take advantage of their cutting-edge image and video recognition technology to locate your logo in media files, as well as their AI Engine, which employs machine learning to provide you with more pertinent search results.
A viable substitute to Google Alerts is Talkwalker Alerts, which comes with similar features. This free tool tracks your keywords on social media platform Twitter and web and forwards the results to your email. You can customize the language and frequency of reports and choose to view the comprehensive results or the most impactful ones.
Talkwalker provides in-depth analytics that surpass the capabilities of other tools by analyzing the demographic information, job roles and interests of the audience. Additionally, it identifies trending topics pertaining to the keywords, showcases prevalent hashtags and identifies specialized influencers.
Talkwalker’s predictive alerting system is designed to notify the appropriate individuals of any unusual activity in mentions for brands that typically receive a high volume of mentions and have dedicated SMM teams.
5. Social Searcher
Some may argue that the biggest draw of Google Alerts is its lack of cost. However, if you can’t afford to invest in a social listening tool just yet, Social Searcher is a great alternative. It could be seen as an upgraded version of Google Alerts, as it not only notifies you when your keyword is mentioned online, but also furnishes you with statistics about those mentions.
It’s very easy to establish the search by simply entering your keyword(s). The discovered references are arranged either by date or popularity, while the exclusion of social posts with certain keywords can be done by adding Minus keywords. You may apply filters to sort the references by their source and type (link, video, etc.), and the same standards can be used throughout the search creation process.
Social Searcher is capable of discovering social media posts that date back over five years, with results available from platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Reddit, Dailymotion, Tumblr, Vimeo, Vkontakte, and Flickr. Furthermore, all references can be exported in CSV format.
Despite being a free tool, it offers a plethora of social listening insights. It segregates your sentiment ratio for every platform, provides information on the most engaged users discussing your keyword(s), trending links and phrases, and more. Additionally, it displays post distribution based on the day of the week and hour, which can aid in identifying peak times for your keywords.
You will receive emails every day from the tool containing your mentions.
6. Keyhole
If you opt to concentrate on a single social media platform, specifically the top three, Keyhole is an excellent option to consider.
Despite its monitoring being confined to Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, forums, blogs, and websites, Keyhole compensates for the limited number of platforms by providing comprehensive analytics. In addition to scrutinizing social listening data, this tool also assesses your personal social media profiles.
BrandIQ is tailored to small businesses while Keyhole Advanced Suite caters to marketing teams and agencies at an enterprise level. Despite its more advanced analytics and unrestricted data export, both tools have a similar underlying concept.
Although Keyhole mainly focuses on analytics, it is still possible to browse and engage with social media content.
Keyhole is frequently referred to as a tool for influencer marketing as it presents a roster of users who have displayed the greatest post engagements. By arranging them by their followers, impressions, and reach, you can comb through the list with search filters that classify their location, words in their bio, number of posts that mention specific keywords and more.
Social listening analytics offer a comprehensive view with details such as sentiment, gender, and specific location down to the state level of mentions. They also reveal whether a post is original or a repost, the most popular phrases, links, and hashtags associated with your keywords. The option to access Twitter historical data is available upon request.
Keyhole provides valuable information on your Instagram Insights and Twitter analytics such as your top-performing posts, highly engaged followers, optimal posting time, and other account analytics.
Similar to other software, Keyhole provides you with daily or weekly email notifications regarding new mentions. Additionally, the program utilizes machine learning to notify you in the event that:
- There is a sudden or unpredicted spike in the number of mentions.
- New influential users join the conversation.
- A post containing your keywords starts to go viral.
Keyhole’s social listening data can be integrated via their API as well.
Additional comments
In current times, we reside in a distinct Internet epoch wherein the most trending news is first heard on social media. This implies that businesses must not rely solely on monitoring Google Alerts. Instead, they need advanced software capable of keeping track of all the activities surrounding their brand, beyond just blogs and news sites.
Thankfully, there exist tools that surpass Google Alerts in both the scope of sources included and functionality. These tools enable you to enhance the precision of social media monitoring and also provide you with the ability to analyze the outcomes.
Social media market is very diverse with a wide range of prices and capabilities.
