A social media engine gives you access to what people across social media platforms are saying about you, your brand, your industry, and any other keywords you want to search for.
In this article, we’re highlighting 11 of the best social media search engines, as well as sharing advanced tips that can help you maximize your results from such a tool.
Come along with us and learn all about social media search engines!
How Do Social Media Search Engines Work?
Social media search engines are platforms that brands, marketers, and influencers use to search for names and keywords related to their business or product. Once the keywords have been input, the search engine trawls social media profiles and the internet and yields posts that contain mentions of those terms.
Why Use a Social Media Search Engine?
There are multiple reasons for using a social media search engine. Here are the top four.
Reason #1: Social Media Monitoring
The most important reason that marketers and brands use search engines for social media is monitoring.
Social media monitoring is a process that involves monitoring social media for mentions of your brand so that you can then respond to those mentions and make a positive impression on the people who originally posted them. This strategy allows you to market your business directly to your target audience while building a positive public image.
Reason #2: Public Sentiment
Searching for your brand name and other words associated with your business on social media can also help you gauge public sentiment about your brand.
When you read and listen to what people really say and think about you, it opens your eyes to a whole new perspective. You may just find out about some things that you need to improve to give your brand reputation a boost. Or you may discover that you’re doing everything right and that you should keep doing what you’re doing.
Reason #3: Opportunities for Growth
Using a social media search engine enables you to identify opportunities for growth for your business.
To that end, you can expand your search beyond keywords associated with your brand and enter search terms for your competitors or your industry. This way, you can see your market on a macroscale and find the gaps where you can insert your brand to turn a profit.
Reason #4: Insights into Target Audience
Certain types of social media search engines allow you to search for the names of individuals and uncover personal data about them. This may be a useful strategy if you want more insight into your target audience so that you can develop targeted social media campaigns that convert.
What Makes a Social Media Search Engine Effective?
A social media search engine is most effective when it can pull social data from as many platforms as possible.
Access to a wide range of data sources is important because the engine must be able to generate a full, comprehensive picture of public opinion about your brand. Without that, you run the risk of basing crucial marketing decisions on incomplete or misinterpreted data.
11 Best Social Media Search Engines
Now for the part, you’ve been waiting for! Here are the 11 best social media search engines on the internet.
1. Mentionlytics
Mentionlytics is a social media monitoring tool targeted at small businesses, startups, and medium to large-sized enterprises.
After you enter your desired keywords (such as your brand name) in the Mentionlytics search engine, the software accesses data from social media platforms as well as the internet at large to find the mentions you’re looking for. Once it does, you have the option to join those conversations directly from the Mentionlytics dashboard.
You can try Mentionlytics for free to see how you like the software. Subscription plans start as low as $49 per month.
New Pricing of Mentionlytics:
2. Social Searcher
Social Searcher is a free social media monitoring software that allows you to search for keywords, users, and trends directly from its homepage.
In addition to the free search engine, Social Searcher also offers three paid subscription tiers that come with different levels of benefits. Many of these benefits aren’t available with the free version.
For example, when you subscribe to one of the paid tiers, you can save posts that come up in your search results, as well as expand your search to the whole web, not just social media. You also get more email alerts, monitorings, and real-time searches.
3. Mention
Mention is an all-in-one social media monitoring, listening, and publishing tool. Using Mention’s intuitive platform, you can search for mentions on social media as well as blogs, forums, and other internet sources.
Then, you can “listen” to what your target audience is saying about your brand, your competitors, and your industry at large.
Finally, you can take the insights you gained, use them to develop an effective social media marketing plan, and publish it directly from Mention’s dashboard.
New Pricing of Mention:
4. Pipl
Pipl is a free search engine that helps you search for information about individuals, including their contact details, occupation, education level, aliases, and more. This is a helpful tool for researching members of your target audience to discover their content preferences, purchasing habits, and ways you can effectively reach out to them.
5. Snitch.name
Snitch.name lets you enter a name and search dozens of social media platforms and other internet resources for profiles and data associated with it. It’s completely free to use and can help you create customer personas to design social media marketing campaigns around.
6. BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo gives you the tools you need to perform in-depth research into mentions of your brand, specific trends, your competitors, and anything else that would help round out your marketing plan.
They claim to have the largest archive of social engagement data in the world and have received honorable mention from such well-known companies as HubSpot, Buzzfeed, and The Telegraph.
BuzzSumo’s basic plan starts at $199 per month. Try them out with a 30-day free trial.
New Pricing of BuzzSumo:
7. Spokeo
Spokeo is an online white pages where you can search for names, email addresses, telephone numbers, and physical addresses to find data about individuals. The search engine has access to billions of different types of records, from court records to properties to more than 120 social networks.
No matter who you’re researching for marketing purposes, Spokeo is likely to be able to generate some results.
8. Keyhole
Keyhole is a social media marketing solution that comes with tools for social listening, profile analytics, trend analysis, and more.
With this platform, a marketer, brand, or influencer can easily monitor their reputation online and keep up with the latest news and trends in their industry. They can also schedule and publish social media posts and track their influencer campaigns.
Keyhole’s plans start at $79 per month. They also offer a 7-day free trial.
New Pricing of Keyhole:
9. BoardReader
BoardReader is a free search engine that targets online forums and community networks. While it’s not as all-encompassing as the other search engines we’ve mentioned so far, it can still turn up useful information about your brand reputation and target audience in online discussion settings.
10. Determ
Determ is a marketing solution for social media monitoring that helps you analyze public sentiment about your brand, as well as how well track how your competitors are performing.
The software also lets you choose which resources you want to pull data from, such as social media platforms and sends you alerts for keywords that you’re monitoring. Other tools Determ includes are data analytics, reporting, automation, and an AI assistant.
For pricing on all three of their plans, Determ invites you to contact their sales team directly.
11. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a comprehensive software suite that incorporates several useful social media marketing tools, including a monitoring feature.
In addition to listening and monitoring your brand’s status across social media, you can use Hootsuite to respond directly to your customers, as well as schedule and publish social media posts to your preferred platforms.
Hootsuite has been used by many top name brands, including IKEA, Domino’s, the World Health Organization, and the University of Chicago. Their plans start at $99 per month.
New Pricing of Hootsuite:
Advanced Tips for Using Social Media Search Engines
Want to maximize your social media search engine results? Try these advanced tips.
Tip #1: Track Trends in Your Industry to Uncover New Marketing Opportunities
One incredibly useful function of social media search engines is tracking trends in your industry. Use this strategy to see what topics people on social media are buzzing about in your particular content niche or market. This will allow you to uncover new marketing opportunities and act on them before they become obsolete.
Tip #2: Monitor Your Competitors to Find Marketing Gaps to Fill
Social media search engines aren’t just for analyzing your brand reputation and following industry trends. They’re also for monitoring your competitors. By keeping an eye on what your competitors are doing and saying in their own social media marketing campaigns, you can identify gaps where you can draw attention to your own brand.
Tip #3: Search for Mentions of Your Brand with the Goal of Responding
Don’t just research your brand name on social media to find out what users are saying about it. Take a proactive stance and search for mentions of your brand with the goal of responding. This is a great opportunity for you to connect with your target audience and increase brand awareness and trust.
The Biggest Limitation of Social Media Search Engines
The biggest limitation of social media search engines is a lack of data sources. This means you may not be able to find out as much information as you would like, depending on the object of your research and which sources your chosen search engine has access to.
With that in mind, it may be helpful to have more than one social media search engine in reserve to help you find as much information as possible.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which Social Media Search Engine is the Oldest?
The oldest social media search engine on our list is BoardReader. It was developed and released in the year 2000.
How Do Social Media Search Engines Help Businesses?
Social media search engines help businesses by giving them tools to research mentions of their brand, relevant keywords, competitors, and target audience. With this data, they can improve their brand reputation and develop more targeted marketing campaigns.
Can I Use Social Media Search Engines for Free?
Yes, some social media search engines are available for free. However, some of them may be limited in function and require you to subscribe to a paid plan to access more features.
Conclusion
Social media search engines give you the power to develop powerful social media marketing campaigns that target your preferred consumers, keep pace with your competitors, and stay ahead of trends in your industry. Use one of the 11 best social media search engines we suggested, or a combination along with our advanced tips to get the best results.
