Jonathan Artur
Jonathan ArturIt can be difficult to monitor accurately when, where and what is being said about your business across multiple types of media. From social through to print, the task is made even harder by the never-ending choice of products offering the ‘ultimate monitoring solution’.
Updated
But fear not. We’ve put together our favourite media monitoring services this 2023, tools and apps from the big players to the small start-ups you’ve never heard of.
Pro Tip – Shhh! We’ll even tell you how to monitor your business without spending a single penny.
The best free monitoring services in 2023:
Google Alerts
A fantastic service for anyone without a paid budget. However, the results can vary drastically depending on how Google defines the location of each publication.
https://www.google.co.uk/alerts
IFTTT
With IFTTT you can create unlimited recipes to monitor specific RSS feeds. For example, you could monitor the latest BBC articles for the keyword ‘Microsoft’. It has the added benefit of sending SMS or email notifications when a trigger is actioned.
Talkwalker – Standard
A well-known free service for monitoring your brand across various media types, it’s a great alternative to Google Alerts. Its greatness is a little short-lived, though, as it is less reliable when compared to Talkwalker’s new social media intelligence platform:
http://www.talkwalker.com/alerts
Talkwalker – Social Media
Talkwalker’s new platform offers a ‘free search’ package allowing up to 5 keywords to be monitored at any one time. Bells and whistles are kept to a minimum but are enough to provide an accurate round-up of media mentions in real time. The premium option starts at £420 per month.
http://www.talkwalker.com/app/signup_trial
Google News Downloader
This little gem only pulls news articles containing specific keywords you set and is restricted to publications listed in Google News. However, it does its job very well and is accurate. A great tool – and, best of all, it’s free!
http://press.customerdevlabs.com/
Webhose
Webhose has a free option that comes with 1,000 searches per month and the paid plans start at $50. It provides historical data and a powerful API for implementing media monitoring into dashboards or 3rd party apps.
Monitoring services with free trial:
Observify
Observify provides a free 90 day trial with a maximum of 250 media mentions per day. Paid plans start at a reasonable £99 per month. The media monitoring dashboard is fast and super slick.
Brand24
Polish made Brand24 is a fairly new entrant to the monitoring industry, but it’s definitely a ‘mover and shaker’ to watch out for in this dated sector. With its intuitive dashboard there’s an endless stream of features and settings to play with.
Brand24 provides a free 14 day trial for first-time users with monthly plans starting at just $49 for[LH1] £34 – perfect for small agencies and businesses who want to keep an eye on things.
If you’re using Slack, real-time alerts can be plugged straight into your team’s chat. Nice.
Awar.io
A free 14 day trial is available with a generous 10,000 media mentions – a great way to test Awar.io for clients. The cheapest monthly package starts at just $19 – around £13 for us Brits. Don’t let this low price fool you, though. It is still very feature rich, offers a generous 50,000 mentions and allows a maximum of 10 keywords for monitoring multiple clients.
The service monitors everything except print, including Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube and websites such as online newspapers.
The auto-generated PDF reports are convenient and snazzy. In fact, they’re ready to show straight to clients.
Mention
The solo package for small users starts at $29 per month – just £20. This enables 1 user to track 2 keywords with a maximum of 3,000 mentions.
Mention allows you to monitor a range of sources including blogs, news sites, RSS feeds, forums, social media platforms and more.
The tool is nippy in terms of the dashboard speed, quickly picking up media mentions. Definitely one to consider for all PR agencies.
Mediatoolkit
The free package allows you to monitor just 1 keyword at any time, with the paid package starting at a very affordable €15 per month with real-time alerts – a great price for small businesses. Our tests monitored various keywords, but the results were disappointingly incomplete. This comes as no surprise, though, as Mediatoolkit is fairly new to the monitoring industry.
Trackur
A robust online monitoring service with a 10 day free trial available. Monthly packages start at $97 or around £70. And 3rd parties can integrate the monitoring solution with their API.
The top paid monitoring services in 2020:
Signal
A powerful media intelligence platform monitoring over 3 million news sources around the world. The dashboard is intuitive with a variety of settings and features to take full control over the incoming data.
NUVI
The dashboard is powerful and feels almost like you’re commanding an alien spaceship. NUVI provides real-time media monitoring across 4 million sources including social media. It’s the ultimate solution for PR agencies, with the added bonus of exporting cool-looking PDF reports. Unfortunately we can’t provide you with a price as NUVI is customised to each individual client based on their specific monitoring needs.
Kantar Media
Kantar Media is a global leader in content solutions, with a powerful media monitoring service available. Recently bolstered by the Precise acquisition, they are a top choice for many PR agencies and large organisations. Tracking includes international sources, national and regional newspapers, the business and consumer press, online news portals, Twitter, forums, and national and local broadcast channels.
NewsWhip
Not really a media monitoring solution in the traditional sense, but NewsWhip can be used to track billions of social media users and make sense of the complex data, giving a real-time look into what’s naturally trending on many platforms. NewsWhip covers 100 countries in 30 languages.
CustomScoop
At first glance the CustomScoop website is dated, but don’t let that fool you. The monitoring tool is highly accurate, putting some of the larger companies to shame, and there’s a free trial for new customers on offer.
CustomScoop monitors news sources in 21 languages from 156 countries, and covers social media including blogs, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and more.
The cheapest package, the ‘Standard’, starts at $299 per month and can accommodate 3 users tracking 25 keywords in total. It’s a little more expensive than other companies offering a similar solution but well worth the money.
Newsmeter
Carma
Carma claims to cut through the noise of millions of social conversations to find what matters, boasting global monitoring in 80+ languages in social media, web, print, TV and radio.
Opoint
Opoint claims to have the world’s largest news database collecting 2.2 million news articles each day from around 130,000 sources globally.
Are you aware of a monitoring tool not on our list? Give us a shout in the comments below and we might add it. Opoint was recently acquired by Norwegian media intelligence company M-Brain.
The user dashboard is snappy with historic searches taking seconds to pull from the database and it has the added options of choosing the language, media source and other helpful settings.
Other monitoring tools:
Isentia
Brandwatch
https://www.brandwatch.com/demo/
Cision
Mentionlytics
Imooty
Simplify360
Meltwater
http://www.meltwater.com/uk/products/
CyberAlert
Sysomos
Gorkana
http://www.gorkana.com/pr-products/media-monitoring/
BrandWatch
https://www.brandwatch.com/demo/
Mentionlytics
Imooty
MediaMiser