Knowing what’s happening in the fast-paced world of social media is critical and new monitoring tools make this much easier. Andrew Hennigan reports

Even a few minutes can be a long time in the world of social media where a viral post, customer complaint or a simple misunderstanding can quickly spiral out of control if nobody is watching. Monthly, weekly or even daily reports about your social media activity might be useful for reporting to management but are not enough for managing social media while things are happening. For this you need some kind of real-time monitoring.

All of the high-end professional tools like SproutSocial, Sprinklr and Cision include real-time information and many smaller businesses use simpler, free tools to watch for activity about their business. Some use the free tier of the social media management tool Hootsuite to monitor searches for keywords so that brands can see when they are mentioned. Others use simple search tools like SocialMention to see who is talking about them, and a rough measure of how positive the mentions are. But there are also some tools that focus more on the real-time aspect.

Brands with a bigger budget are more likely to choose tools with a monthly subscription to see a clearer picture of how effectively their money is being spent and to head off crises more efficiently. There are hundreds of tools available for social media monitoring and if you ask any expert to list the best, there are usually dozens. But there are some newer tools that emphasise more real-time monitoring, both of what people are saying and real-time metrics measuring how well you are doing. Here are three of the most interesting:

Mention: As the name suggests Mention gives you real time information about any time you are mentioned online. Mention also has a mobile app which is very convenient for businesses that can’t afford to pay someone to sit in front of a screen all day. With the mobile app you can react quickly to any mention wherever you are, making sure that your voice is heard and defusing potentially negative conversations. What you’d normally do is create keyword-based alerts for the name of your company, your brand names, your products, competitors or anything else. Monthly plans start at €20 per month.

UberVu by Hootsuite: A startup focused on real-time monitoring, UberVu was acquired last year by Hootsuite and is now available with the paid professional Hootsuite plans. UberVu presents a convenient dashboard with data on sentiment. It shows the positive conversations about your brand including sentiment trends, user demographics and other useful data. When something happens suddenly on social media you need to know quickly, so it includes a tool to look more closely at spikes, and shows conversation maps about what topics people are talking about. One factor that makes UberVu so interesting is that many people are already using Hootsuite for social media management, so the integration of UberVu lets them add powerful new listening tools without changing the workflow.

FalconSocial: Aimed more at larger social media teams, FalconSocial doesn’t have a free tier or a fixed subscription; you pay according to the needs and size of the team. Like the others, FalconSocial monitors what people are saying on social media and the web, tracking sentiment, volume, demographics and more. What gives FalconSocial an edge is that their listening tool is self-contained and doesn’t rely on plugging in to third-party tools. Much more interesting is the way that its priority inbox – effectively your ‘to do’ list – is automatically sorted in real time in order of importance. This prioritisation makes sure that a busy social media team can focus on the priorities first and not miss a key interaction while they are watching something else.

Any of these three and many more will give you an instantaneous picture of your social media presence, but if you still can’t find exactly the features you want try talking about it on social media. What’s very likely is that the makers of these tools are using their own product. They will see your comments and may even react with new features more quickly than you expect.