Imagine it’s 2009, you’re a digital marketer, and your boss is checking in on the latest banner ad project. “Don’t worry,” you tell her, “I’ve got my artificial intelligence platform scanning online conversations, performing lexical and sentiment analysis across the entire internet to help us find the perfect message that will resonate with audiences. Should be a few minutes.”
In 2009, that’s the kind of sarcasm that gets you fired. In 2024, on the other hand, that’s your daily task list—especially if you’re a social media manager. These kinds of tools are indispensable in the modern day advertising landscape, with no shortage of options to choose from. And Brand 24 has emerged as one of the biggest standouts in its field after a pretty nonstandard growth trajectory.
Founded in 2011 by Michal Sadowski, Brand24 began its life serving as a social media listening tool in Sadowski’s native Poland. By 2013, they’d also set up shop in Indonesia, identifying it as an underserved market that was ripe for the picking. Those instincts turned out to be good ones, and had Brand 24 getting noticed on both European and Asian fronts. The TL;DR of it all is that these two footholds enabled Brand24 to organically grow itself to a global presence. Of course, that doesn’t just happen by being at the right places at the right times. The tech behind the platform was its strongest selling point, and the company has never stopped improving that tech.
Fast forward to today, and social media managers looking for deep data will find all that and more with Brand24. The numerous AI tools add context to that data, while automating some of the most mundane day-to-day tasks involved in planning, monitoring, and reporting on campaigns. In this way, Brand24 transcends being a mere listening tool to become something of a marketing platform itself.
Currently, they’ve got over 4,000 customers of all sizes and across diverse industries (think: Samsung, Wondery, and Stanford University). At least once a month, new updates are released with new features and improvements on old ones. Brand24 hit the ground running in 2011 and they show no signs of slowing down
Brand24 Review:
Pricing
It’s not hyperbole to say that one of Brand24’s innovations is in its pricing. When we think of the sheer amount of data that the algorithm ingests, and the processing requirements of AI, the budget friendliness of Brand24’s pricing tiers cannot be understated. The tiers are smartly designed to meet different needs:
- Individual, $99/mo ($79/mo if billed annually) — 1 user can track up to 3 different keywords, with up to 2k of these mentions viewable per month. Data from Facebook, Instagram, The Platform formerly known as Twitter, Reddit, blogs, news sources, and other forums is refreshed every 12 hours. The only AI feature included here is for Sentiment Analysis; very basic analytics (Volume of Mentions and Engagement tracking) and reporting is included.
- Team, $179/mo ($149/mo if billed annually) — Unlimited users, 7 keywords, 5k mentions per month, updated every hour. All the same data sources as above, plus: LinkedIn, Medium, Quora, YouTube, and TikTok. Basic AI is available, same as the Individual plan, but you’ll get deeper analytics, including things like Trending Hashtags, Most Shareable Links, and Word Clouds.
- Pro, $249/mo ($199/mo if billed annually) — Unlimited users, 12 keywords, 25k mentions per month, updated in real time. All of the data sources as above, plus: Reviews, Twitch, and Newsletters. Additional AI features, plus AI insights for 1 project per month, all the analytics, and advanced reporting.
- Enterprise, $499/mo ($399/mo if billed annually) — Unlimited users, 25 keywords, 100k mentions per month. All data sources as above, plus podcasts. All AI features, AI insights for up to 3 projects per month, all the analytics, and advanced reporting.
The Features
The foundation of all your monitoring in Brand24 is in the creation of a project. You can then add your keywords to each project. Your brand name will be the obvious place to start, but you can create a project to listen for anything: competitor research, campaign tracking, influencers—whatever you want. It’s a pretty flexible setup that allows for a variety of applications. Sure, you can leisurely scroll your way through all your mentions each day to help guide your marketing, but Brand 24 can also act as a powerful crisis detection tool. The AI goes beyond mere Sentiment Analysis, which tells you if things are positive, neutral, or negative. It can go deeper and identify actual emotion, differentiating between someone who’s sad and someone who’s angry. Couple this ability with a real time notification, and you can publicly correct the course in no time. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
For each mention revealed, there are a number of actions you can take, directly from the Brand24 dashboard. If it’s a social post, for example, you can like or reply to it without leaving the dashboard. You can tag the post with an internal label for easy retrieval later. You can visit the post right at the source. There are more actions than this, but you can see just from this level of detail at the Mention level how powerful a tool Brand24 can be. It makes quick work of interacting with users on social—especially important with the ones who might be mad at you, allowing you to defuse customer service issues. On a lighter note, you can just as quickly surprise and delight random brand loyalists when you catch them saying nice things about you.
But it goes deeper: Brand24 also surfaces the most prominent and influential voices within those conversations. Top Public Profiles gives you real numbers on these users relevant to the topic, not just some general level of influence. You’re told their Share of Voice and given a total of their reach, along with their usernames and the social channel where they wield this influence—a great way to find brand ambassadors and collaborators. If the analysis were the end of it, we’d be impressed with Brand24 and how it arms social media managers with the intel they need to run effective strategies.
And, in fact, Brand24’s AI tools include a kind of “brand assistant,” that you can chat with and bounce ideas off of. Down the left side navigation menu, in a menu section titled “Lab24,” is a short list of some cutting edge additions to the platform. The Brand Assistant has a ChatGPT-like interface, and works off of the same data that the AI Insights get. If you have specific questions about strategies, metrics, or anything else that wasn’t found in your insight report, the Brand Assistant can answer the question (provided, of course, that there’s data to support the answer). To be clear, you’re not going to get a full Statement of Work outlining a detailed plan for your next campaign—and you shouldn’t want that, being that it’s your job. Fortunately, this assistant knows its place and doesn’t try to punch above its weight. The answers a great blend of general strategies tailored for your usage (e.g. “You could use Influencer X to spur more discussion and increase your share of voice.”)
Conclusion
Brand24 isn't your average social media monitoring tool. As you can see, it goes far beyond its original listening capabilities to truly function as a marketing platform in its own right. Their listening tech got Brand24 to where it’s at today, and it’s a truly holistic approach to data gathering. Again, the net is cast far wider than just social channels—videos, podcasts, forums, Reddit…it’s exhaustive.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Brand24?
Brand24 describes itself as a “media monitoring tool with powerful analytics.” This gives it a wider remit than many of the other products reviewed here. Apart from monitoring your brand’s performance on social media channels, it also examines websites, blogs, news sites, review sites, video descriptions, and podcasts. It offers a mix of sentiment analysis, hashtag monitoring, and much more. Brand24 is also a powerful social media analytics platform. The tool tracks keywords across all major social media platforms, calculating how your brand is performing.
How does social media listening work?
Social media listening involves tracking mentions of certain words, phrases, and even complex queries across social media and the web. Brand24 goes broader than that, though, and listens to other media types, such as blogs, news sites, reviews, video descriptions, and podcasts. Brand24 crawls through the entire web, looking for every occurrence of your selected keywords. You can drill down to any set time span to find everything that people have said about your brand during that period.
What does Brand24 cost?
You can begin using Brand24 with a 14-day free trial. After that, you will need to select from one of three plans to continue using the product:
Individual, $99/mo ($79/mo if billed annually)
Team, $179/mo ($149/mo if billed annually)
Pro, $249/mo ($199/mo if billed annually)
Enterprise, $499/mo ($399/mo if billed annually)
The Individual plan gives basic data for individuals tracking a single brand. The Team plan is good for professionals to engage and analyze mentions. Whereas the Pro and Enterprise plans are great for teams and agencies to engage, analyze, and report.
What are the benefits of social listening?
The main benefit of social listening is that it provides you with a considerable quantity of data. You can use this data for:
Reputation management – by tracking mentions of your brand, you know whether you have to go into damage control
Competitor analysis – it helps you know what your competitor is doing
Feedback - to check what people really think about your product or service
Customer service
Social selling – you can easily reach your target audience and potential buyers
Public relations - you can quickly spot a potential PR crisis and take precautionary actions
Influencer marketing - discover the most influential profiles in your market niche
Research – you can monitor what people are saying about any selected keyword
What do social media analytics do?
Social media analytics helps teach you about how successful your social media marketing is. It helps to compare your social media analytics with those of your competitors. You can use social media analytics to:
Analyze your followers so you can understand them better
Analyze the reach and performance of your posts – check to see they have the impact you want
Identify influencers
Compare the various social platforms to ensure that you are focusing on the right ones for your target audience
What is sentiment analysis used for?
Sentiment analysis helps understand people’s emotions regarding specific keywords, for example, your brand’s name. Businesses find it particularly useful to examine the sentiment analysis of their customers. What do these people really think about your brand? Would they recommend you to their friends? Will they return for another purchase? Are they so unhappy about something your brand has done that they are “poisoning” all their social friends’ views about you? Sentiment analysis helps you act early before a small problem becomes a major crisis.
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