My two favorite social media tools used for listening/monitoring are Sprout Social and Hootsuite. Coincidently, they are also my two best tool sources of news and updates of interest to me.
I use three social media platforms for work: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, which form the bulk of all of the 30+ accounts that I have to monitor on a daily basis. Being able to use Sprout Social and Hootsuite make my life much easier.
I manage 8 Facebook accounts for my organization. It can become a hassle to post and follow the response of our followers. Luckily, Sprout Social allows me to receive all of that interaction into a more manageable stream of interactions. I can reply directly to public comments or private messages and schedule content.
I also manage 8 Twitter accounts for my organization and, for reasons mentioned above, Sprout Social allows me to receive all of that interaction into a more manageable stream of interactions (public replies or private messages, and schedule content).
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, Sprout Social allows me to manage easily our 4 Instagram accounts.
Now you might be asking yourself “Well, where does Hootsuite come into play since Sprout Social takes care of all of my needs”, and you would be right except for one important revelation that I have held back until now: LinkedIn.
If I could merge Sprout Social and Hootsuite, I would have my ideal kind of listening/monitoring social media tool. I love the interface of Hootsuite. I am able to customize the streams to give me the perfect combination of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram sources of news relevant to my workplace.
To be honest, I have tried to use the features of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at their source but Sprout Social and Hootsuite really make my job easier when it comes to managing multiple social media accounts and listening to various sources of news for updates.
Please share your opinions about my article in the comment box.
Algonquin College Social Media Certificate Program 
Hi Ralph,
Interesting article! What I found most interesting is that as an advanced user with quite a lot of accounts under your management, you still state that you wish you could merge the two applications. To me, this means that the companies haven’t perfectly honed in on exactly what it is their customers need.
From my own experience, I would agree with you! I use Hootsuite for Facebook and Twitter but I personally don’t find it as useful for Instagram.
I think it is interesting that different users use different social media platforms to suit their needs in the same way that different users use different listening and monitoring tools to gather they information they find pertinent.
Great article!