12 Top Social Listening Tools for Creator Mentions in 2027

Creator marketing teams often need to monitor brand mentions and creator-generated content across Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. Relevant posts can include account tags, hashtags, spoken brand references, and product appearances in short-form video. Mordor Intelligence estimates the global influencer marketing market at $40.51 billion in 2026, reflecting the continued scale of creator marketing investment.

Without a structured monitoring workflow, brands may overlook eligible creator posts, particularly time-sensitive Stories or content that does not directly tag the brand. Manual screenshots and scattered folders can make it difficult to organize creator content and review campaign performance.

A creator-focused social listening platform can help teams identify and organize eligible mentions, monitor supported content formats, and reduce manual tracking. Social listening and creator marketing platforms support different combinations of monitoring, content capture, creator discovery, and campaign workflows. Teams managing creator programs can prioritize the features that connect relevant content with creator information and reporting.

Key Takeaways

• Archive supports creator-focused social listening: Its tools help brands detect eligible creator-generated content, organize UGC, identify relevant creators, and review campaign activity across supported social platforms.
• Detection methods affect coverage: Account tags, written mentions, visual recognition, and supported audio analysis identify different types of brand-related content.
• Creator workflows extend beyond monitoring: Teams may need creator discovery, content organization, usage-rights requests, and campaign coordination alongside mention tracking.
• Reporting supports better decisions: Content volume, creator participation, engagement, impressions, and estimated earned media value can help teams evaluate supported creator marketing activity.
  

What Makes a Social Listening Tool Effective for Creator Mentions

Creator mention monitoring can involve tagged posts, hashtags, spoken brand references, visual product appearances, and campaign-specific content. The relevant capabilities depend on the platforms and formats a brand needs to monitor.

Social listening for creator mentions requires different capabilities than general brand monitoring. When an influencer posts a Story featuring a product, teams need to capture that content before it vanishes. When a micro-creator tags a brand in a TikTok, teams need to know about it in time to engage.

The best tools for tracking creator mentions should help teams:

• Detect eligible tagged posts and supported video formats across relevant social platforms
• Automate the collection and organization of eligible image and video content where supported
• Identify creators worth building relationships with based on content performance
• Track campaign-specific hashtags and mentions in real time
• Route content to the right team members for review and activation
• Review supported campaign metrics, including engagement, content volume, impressions, and estimated earned media value

Understanding these requirements helps separate creator-focused platforms from general social monitoring tools that simply count mentions without capturing the content itself.

1. Archive

Archive is a creator marketing platform that helps brands detect, organize, and analyze eligible creator-generated content. Its Social Listening, creator discovery, UGC organization, and campaign reporting tools support ongoing creator marketing programs.

Primary Focus

Archive monitors supported content across Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, helping teams review eligible brand mentions, creator posts, and campaign activity. Archive reports capturing 100% of eligible tagged Instagram content and 98% of the TikTok content it monitors.

Archive supports automated detection and capture of eligible Instagram Stories before their standard expiration, helping teams reduce manual tracking. For teams running gifting programs, ambassador campaigns, or influencer activations, this coverage difference helps ensure time-sensitive content gets preserved.

Key Capabilities

• Archive Radar: Helps detect eligible brand and product appearances in supported content, including certain posts without direct tags
• Smart AI Fields: Helps classify captured content by product, campaign, sentiment, and available custom categories
• Creator Leaderboard: Helps teams identify active and high-performing creators using available captured activity and performance data
• Story Monitoring: Supports ongoing detection of eligible Instagram Stories before they expire
• Usage Rights: Supports requesting and tracking creator permission before approved content is reused
• Campaign Reporting: Helps teams review creator participation, content volume, engagement, impressions, and other supported campaign metrics

Creator Mention Considerations

Archive works with consumer brands including Allbirds, DoorDash, Notion, and Ketone-IQ. The platform provides account connection and onboarding workflows that help teams begin organizing supported creator content.

Archive supports brands managing creator content, gifting programs, ambassador activity, and campaign reporting. Teams can review the available plan allowances and supported integrations based on their program requirements.

2. Brand24

Brand24 supports brand monitoring, mention alerts, sentiment analysis, and reporting across supported social and web sources.

Primary Focus

Brand24 combines AI-powered monitoring capabilities with sentiment analysis and conversation tracking. The platform serves marketers who need brand mention analysis across social platforms, news, blogs, and forums.

Key Capabilities

• AI Brand Assistant combining chat capabilities with monitoring data
• AI Visibility module tracking brand mentions in supported AI platforms
• Sentiment analysis and trend detection
• Anomaly detection flagging unusual mention spikes
• Coverage across social platforms, news, blogs, and forums

3. Sprout Social

Sprout Social provides social media management, audience engagement, listening, and reporting capabilities across supported social platforms.

Primary Focus

Sprout Social offers publishing, monitoring, analytics, and team collaboration features in a unified platform. Social listening capabilities are available as an add-on module to the core management suite.

Key Capabilities

• AI-powered listening features
• Unified inbox integrating publishing, monitoring, and analytics
• Competitive analysis and industry trend tracking
• Team collaboration and approval workflows
• Coverage across Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, X, YouTube, and Reddit

4. Hootsuite

Hootsuite announced its agreement to acquire Talkwalker in April 2024, expanding its social listening and intelligence portfolio. In June 2026, Hootsuite introduced Social OS, with Lumen by Talkwalker serving as its dedicated social intelligence product.

Primary Focus

Hootsuite provides social media management with publishing, engagement, analytics, and social intelligence features. Listening and social intelligence capabilities are available through Hootsuite's supported product offerings and subscription configurations.

Key Capabilities

• Lumen by Talkwalker for social intelligence
• Listening capabilities within Social OS
• Publishing and scheduling tools
• Over 250 integrations and an app marketplace
• Coverage across Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and YouTube

5. Brandwatch

Brandwatch provides consumer intelligence, social listening, historical conversation analysis, creator-related tools, and supported reporting capabilities.

Primary Focus

Brandwatch supports historical social conversation research and monitoring. The platform serves enterprise brands and large agencies needing trend analysis and consumer intelligence.

Key Capabilities

• Historical social conversation data
• Iris AI for natural-language query writing
• Creator database with supported audience and performance information
• Audience analysis and segmentation
• Coverage across 100 million+ online sources

6. Talkwalker

Talkwalker, now branded Lumen by Talkwalker within Hootsuite's Social OS, provides social listening, consumer intelligence, media monitoring, and supported visual analysis capabilities.

Primary Focus

Talkwalker supports visual recognition and broader media monitoring across its documented sources. The platform specializes in identifying brand appearances in images and video where products appear without text tags.

Key Capabilities

• Visual recognition for logos and products in images and video
• Audio recognition transcribing podcasts and broadcasts
• Historical data access based on subscription
• Conversation analysis and segmentation
• Coverage across monitored sources including social platforms, TV, and radio

7. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo provides content research, topic discovery, and influencer identification features that can support teams analyzing relevant published content and creators.

Primary Focus

BuzzSumo includes content performance research and creator discovery capabilities. The platform helps teams find what content performs well and identify creators based on engagement rather than follower counts.

Key Capabilities

• Content discovery engine showing most-shared content by topic
• Journalist and media contact database
• Influencer finder based on content sharing patterns
• Question Analyzer finding real audience questions from forums
• Coverage across Facebook, X, Reddit, Pinterest, and YouTube

8. Meltwater

Meltwater supports media monitoring, social listening, journalist research, and related communications workflows.

Primary Focus

Meltwater combines social listening with PR and media intelligence features. The platform serves communications professionals monitoring creator coverage alongside traditional media.

Key Capabilities

• AI assistant capabilities
• Media monitoring across multiple channel types
• Combined social listening and journalist database
• Share of voice analytics across media types
• Coverage across social platforms, news, podcasts, and broadcast media

9. YouScan

YouScan provides social listening with Visual Insights for analyzing supported images, logos, objects, and other visual content.

Primary Focus

YouScan specializes in visual social listening and image recognition. The platform helps brands identify products in user photos even without text mentions.

Key Capabilities

• Visual Insights detecting logos and products in images
• Audio analysis for supported video content
• Conversational AI query capabilities
• Logo, scene, object, and demographic recognition
• Coverage across Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, X, TikTok, Reddit, Telegram, forums, and blogs

10. Awario

Awario supports keyword-based monitoring, mention alerts, reporting, and supported social and web source tracking.

Primary Focus

Awario provides brand mention monitoring with built-in lead generation features. The platform uses its own web crawler independent of third-party data providers.

Key Capabilities

• Awario Leads module identifying buying-intent mentions
• Boolean search capabilities
• API access available through eligible higher-tier or custom subscriptions
• Coverage across Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, news, and blogs

11. Mention

Agorapulse acquired Mention in May 2025. As of July 2026, Mention is no longer sold as a standalone product for new customers, with Agorapulse Listening providing the current listening offering. Existing users may continue on legacy Mention plans.

Primary Focus

Mention is a social listening and monitoring product historically associated with brand mentions, alerts, sentiment analysis, and online conversation tracking. The platform's Publish and Respond functionality was retired on January 30, 2026.

Key Capabilities

• Real-time mention monitoring (legacy product)
• Custom insights with detailed filtering
• Historical mention data based on subscription
• Automated discovery of related search terms
• Transition to Agorapulse Listening for new customers

12. Keyhole

Keyhole provides social analytics, hashtag monitoring, campaign tracking, and related reporting capabilities. Muck Rack acquired Keyhole in 2024, bringing its social listening and analytics capabilities into Muck Rack's broader communications technology portfolio.

Primary Focus

Keyhole specializes in hashtag analytics and campaign-specific monitoring. The platform supports real-time tracking and event marketing workflows.

Key Capabilities

• Real-time hashtag campaign tracking
• Campaign analysis and reporting
• Live event dashboards
• Trend analysis and monitoring
• Coverage across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and TikTok

How Archive Supports Creator Mention Tracking

Archive helps brands detect, organize, and review creator-generated content across supported social platforms. With Social Listening, creator discovery, content organization, and Campaign Reporting, marketing teams can monitor relevant community activity and use creator performance insights to guide future campaigns.

Capture and Organize Creator Content

Archive's Social Listening tools help teams detect and organize eligible brand mentions and creator-generated posts. Archive Radar analyzes supported video, audio, and text signals to identify certain brand and product appearances without direct tags.

Smart AI Fields help classify captured UGC by product, campaign, sentiment, and supported custom fields. Story monitoring supports ongoing detection of eligible Instagram Stories before they expire, helping teams preserve time-sensitive content that would otherwise disappear.

Discover Creators and Review Performance

Archive supports several workflows that help teams identify and evaluate creators:

• Social Listening: Detect and organize supported creator-generated content and brand mentions
• Archive Radar: Help identify eligible brand or product appearances in supported content, including some posts without direct tags
• Creator Search: Discover relevant creators using available profile and content information
• Creator Leaderboard: Identify active and high-performing creators based on supported activity and performance data
• Smart AI Fields: Classify captured UGC by product, campaign, sentiment, and supported custom fields
• Campaign Reporting: Review creator participation, engagement, impressions, content volume, and other supported metrics
• UGC Usage Rights: Support requesting and tracking creator permission before commercial content reuse

Archive provides connected workflows for eligible content monitoring, creator discovery, UGC organization, rights requests, and campaign reporting. These workflows support more informed decisions about future partnerships and approved content reuse.

Explore Archive's creator marketing platform.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between social listening and social media monitoring for creator mentions?

Social media monitoring commonly focuses on identifying and organizing relevant mentions, while social listening adds analysis of conversation patterns, sentiment, and audience activity. Creator marketing platforms may also support content organization, creator discovery, usage-rights workflows, and campaign reporting.

How can brands track Instagram Stories and TikTok content before it disappears?

Archive supports ongoing monitoring and automated capture of eligible Instagram Stories and other supported creator content. The content available to capture depends on the platform, account connections, monitoring scope, and applicable access conditions. Automated monitoring helps teams preserve time-sensitive content without manual tracking.

What features matter for creator-focused social listening?

Teams can prioritize the social platforms they monitor, the types of creator content they need to capture, the creators they work with, and the reporting required for their programs. Automated content organization, usage-rights tracking, and clear campaign metrics can help reduce manual work. Consider supported content formats, creator discovery capabilities, and integration with existing marketing workflows.

Can AI help identify creator mentions in video content?

AI can help identify supported brand references in videos through visual recognition, audio analysis, and text extraction. Archive Radar uses supported video, audio, and text signals to help detect relevant brand and product mentions, including some content without direct account tags. Visual and audio recognition can catch mentions that text-only monitoring would miss.

How do usage rights work with captured creator content?

Capturing content does not automatically grant commercial usage rights. Brands need to request permission from creators before using their content in advertising, on websites, or in other marketing materials. Archive supports requesting and tracking creator permission through usage-rights workflows, helping teams manage approvals before approved content gets repurposed.