Listening & monitoring · Social media monitoring
Social media monitoring tools and software for Reddit, Mastodon and forums, scanned twice an hour
The short answer
Social media monitoring tools track every public post, comment and mention of your brand, products and competitors across social platforms, then read that conversation for sentiment and themes. Social media monitoring software and social listening software describe the same category; the practical differences between products are how many keywords you can track, how many mentions a month are included, and how often the tool actually refreshes. EyeOut monitors Google News, Reddit, Mastodon, Hacker News, Lemmy and Apple Podcasts in one twice-an-hour feed, scores each mention for sentiment, and, from Growth, fires an alert when a keyword's volume or negativity jumps well above its own 7-day average. Plans start at $39 per month billed yearly with twice-an-hour collection on every tier, self-serve, no free plan.
Social media is where opinion about your brand forms fastest, and it rarely waits for a weekly report. A social media monitoring tool has to catch a post the moment it lands, and EyeOut tracks mentions of your brand, products and competitors across Google News, Reddit, Mastodon, Hacker News, Lemmy and Apple Podcasts twice an hour.
Every post, caption and comment is read by AI for sentiment and theme, so you can tell a praise wave from a complaint thread without reading each one. When volume or negativity spikes, an alert fires first. EyeOut does not read X, Instagram, TikTok or YouTube directly, so a moment on those networks reaches you once it spills into news, Reddit or the forums. Start watching in minutes, no sales call.
Start watching to see mentions from news, Reddit, Mastodon and forums with sentiment.
Sentiment
Share of voice
Negative mention spike detected
on Reddit and forums, up 320% vs baseline. Severity: High.
Suggested first move: review the batch threads and prepare a holding response before it spreads to news.
Interactive demo on a representative mention set. Your own workspace scans every source twice an hour.
Watch your own brand across news, Reddit and forums and get the alert when something spikes.
Every 30 minutes across Google News, Reddit, Mastodon, Hacker News, Lemmy and Apple Podcasts. AI sentiment, spike and crisis alerts.
Add a brand · watch news, Reddit and forums · read sentiment · catch the spike
Self-serve no sales call
Cancel anytime no annual lock-in
Why it works
What your team gets with social media monitoring
One feed for every source
Google News, Reddit, Mastodon, Hacker News, Lemmy and Apple Podcasts are tracked together, so a conversation on any one of them lands in a single feed instead of five browser tabs.
AI reads sentiment
Each post and comment is scored for sentiment and theme automatically, turning a flood of social chatter into a clear read on how people feel.
Alerts that fire first
A spike in mentions or a shift toward negative sentiment triggers an instant alert, so you engage while a moment still matters instead of finding out after it peaks.
What it handles
Watched, read and flagged twice an hour
EyeOut watches Google News, Reddit, Mastodon, Hacker News, Lemmy and podcasts for your brand, scores each mention for sentiment, rolls it up into a daily digest and share of voice, and alerts you when a real spike begins.
- Tracks posts, comments and mentions across Google News, Reddit, Mastodon, Hacker News, Lemmy and Apple Podcasts
- Reads sentiment and themes with AI
- Alerts you the moment mentions spike or turn negative
- Measures share of voice against your competitors on social
- Connects social activity to web, news, forums, podcasts and reviews
Why EyeOut
One tool for cross-channel brand monitoring
Not a social-only listener and not a sales-gated enterprise platform. Watch news, Reddit, forums and podcasts, read the sentiment, track share of voice and catch the spike, in one place, self-serve.
Watches news, Reddit and forums
Google News, Reddit, Mastodon, Hacker News, Lemmy and Apple Podcasts in one feed, including the blind spots most affordable tools skip.
Catches the spike
AI baselines your normal volume and sentiment, then alerts on a real anomaly with a severity and a suggested first move, twice an hour.
Reads it for you
Sentiment, emotion, theme clustering and a plain-English daily digest, so you act on the story instead of scrolling a firehose.
Social media monitoring, explained
How social media monitoring actually works
The questions buyers ask before they choose a social media monitoring tool, answered directly.
Social media monitoring is the practice of tracking every public mention of your brand, products and competitors across social platforms, then reading that stream for sentiment, themes and sudden changes. The point is not to collect posts for their own sake. It is to know, in near real time, what people are saying, how they feel, and whether something is starting to go wrong.
The reason speed matters is that social moments compound. A single critical post can gather replies for hours before anyone on your team notices, and by the time it surfaces in a weekly summary the window to respond calmly has closed. A monitoring tool that baselines each platform's normal activity can tell an ordinary busy day from a genuine spike and warn you while an issue is still small.
Social media monitoring vs manual checks vs a publishing tool
| What you need | Manual searches | Publishing tool (e.g. Hootsuite) | Monitoring tool (EyeOut) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Platform coverage | One platform at a time | The accounts you connect | Google News, Reddit, Mastodon, Hacker News, Lemmy and Apple Podcasts |
| Speed | Whenever you remember to look | Focused on your own posts | Every source scanned twice an hour |
| Sentiment | You judge each post yourself | Limited or add-on | AI scores sentiment on every mention |
| Crisis alerts | None | Basic keyword alerts | Graded crisis radar with severity and a suggested first move |
| Competitor tracking | Manual | Partial | Share of voice against the competitors you track |
What is a social media monitoring tool?
A social media monitoring tool continuously tracks public posts, comments and mentions of your brand, products and competitors across social platforms, then reads that conversation for sentiment and themes and alerts you to spikes. Instead of searching each network by hand, you get one continuously updated feed that shows what is being said, how people feel, and when something needs your attention.
What is the difference between social media monitoring and social listening?
Social media monitoring tracks direct mentions of your brand across social platforms so you can respond and catch issues early. Social listening is broader, analyzing conversations and trends across your whole market, including topics that never name you, to inform strategy. Most modern tools do both, and EyeOut covers direct mentions and wider theme analysis in one dashboard.
How much does a social media monitoring tool cost?
Prices range widely. Free options like Google Alerts cover only indexed web pages with no social and no sentiment. Self-serve tools with published pricing run roughly $50 to $500 per month, and EyeOut starts at $39 per month billed yearly. Enterprise social suites are quote-based and typically run five to six figures a year.
Can one tool monitor all social platforms at once?
EyeOut does not connect to social platforms directly at all. It tracks Google News, Reddit, Mastodon, Hacker News, Lemmy and Apple Podcasts in one feed, twice an hour, so a conversation that spreads into any of those sources stays visible in one place.
Does social media monitoring work in real time?
It should come close. The value of monitoring is catching a post while you can still act on it, so mentions need to arrive within the hour rather than in a daily digest. EyeOut is not continuous real time: it scans every source twice an hour and on Growth and above fires an alert on the scan where a keyword's volume or negativity jumps well above its 7-day average, which is what separates monitoring from a scheduled report.
Good questions
Questions about social media monitoring
Explore more
More ways teams monitor their brand with EyeOut
Real-time brand monitoring
Brand mention alerts on a 30-minute scan, not in tomorrow morning's digest.
Learn moreBrand monitoring API
Pull your monitored mentions, sentiment and crisis alerts into your own product, warehouse or dashboard.
Learn moreSocial listening pricing comparison
Every published list price in one table, plus the metering rules that decide what you really pay.
Learn moreStart watching your brand today.
Add your brand and EyeOut watches news, Reddit, forums and podcasts twice an hour, reads the sentiment, tracks share of voice, and warns you when a spike begins. Self-serve, cancel anytime.
Twice-an-hour across Google News, Reddit, Mastodon, Hacker News, Lemmy and Apple Podcasts · AI sentiment · spike and crisis alerts