An integral part of any social media effort is listening. Whether you are in the process of preparing a social media strategy or your campaign is up and running, it is essential to know what your audience is saying.

Why you may ask? Well there are a number of reasons but I daresay the most important is that any successful social media campaign must be based on fulfilling the need(s) of its customers.

Social Listening not only allows the listener to collect information about their audience and acquire an understanding of their wants and needs, but it can also be used to find out what is being said about the Brand and its competition.

Let's take a quick look at 7 Social Media listening tools small businesses can use to track their mentions across the web:

1.SocialMention

This social media search and analysis platform was first brought to my attention by my Twitter pal @Ileane of Basic Blog Tips. Social Mention allows you to drill down to a specific social tool in a list of more than 80 sources. It provides metrics around sentiment, reach, keywords and lists top users and the top sources of your Brand mentions .

2.Addictomatic

Addict-o- matic provides search results in a fun, interactive manner with videos and images. Simply choose your search term, brand, name or keyword and hit create. The results dashboard can be arranged in order of preference, bookmarked and checked as required.

3.Twitter Search

The most notable feature of Twitter Search is the ability to search by location. An extremely useful function for local businesses, which can perform more targeted queries by limiting their search to an audience within their radius.

4.Google Alerts

Google Alerts provides a simple interface, which is easy to set-up and allows you to receive inbox alerts as frequently as desired. Through the preview feature you can tweak search terms for better results.

5.WorkStreamer

None of us can deny that it is good business practice to monitor one's competition and this is where Workstreamer proves to be very useful. Unlike other listening tools this search is done by company name as opposed to keyword.You can monitor your vendors, partners and even yourself. Note however that it might be difficult to access data if the company is too small or not very active online.

6.LinkedIn Signal

LinkedIn Signal is a new search feature being offered by LinkedIn. Limit or broaden search parameters such as timeline, location and degree of connection based on your objectives. It also allows one to save the search and check for updates at a later date.

7. Trackur

Despite being limited to a one keyword search, Trackur Free is a tool that should be added to your arsenal. Due to the aforementioned limitation, it would probably be best used in conjunction with another monitoring tool. Trackur Free illustrates mentions over time, and you are provided with visual results of changes in buzz and sentiment.

The tools I have mentioned above are all free. If you are now getting started in social media, or new to social media listening, choose a couple of them for a test drive in order to see which tickles your fancy.

Are you using one or more of these tools to monitor your social media presence or another tool I haven't highlighted here. Drop a comment to let me know what tools you use for social media monitoring and any great tools I have missed.

If you enjoyed this post please share within your networks.