Key Takeaways
- Social media listening is used to drive strategic impact and not just to track brand mentions. How to shape the messaging, how to improve customer experience, and modify product development based on the insights should be the key points.
- Be it improving the brand awareness or enhancing the customer experience, social media listening will enable meeting these goals and measuring the success metrics like sentiment and engagement.
- To be on track and updated with the latest news, you need to work on spotting the trending topics, identifying the negative sentiment and potential crisis at the early stages. All this can be imbibed in the overall strategy to market your solutions to the correct audience.
In the fast-moving low attention social world, waking up to viral moments is always a dream but not for the wrong reasons. Imagine going viral only to find your customer faced distress due to your product application. As a brand owner, you wouldn’t want that.
Though you are consistent with posting the content, making it reach audiences, creating campaigns and a lot more, that’s not it. What conversations are going around your brand and how the audience is reacting to them should be the extended scope beyond social monitoring.
Let’s understand how social media listening will enable you to look out for your brand beyond the social face value.
“The global social media listening market size was estimated at USD 9.2 million in 2024 and is projected to reach USD 20.18 million by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 14.3% from 2025 to 2030.”
What is Social Media Listening?
Social media listening refers to monitoring your brand’s social media presence and hearing the unheard feedback, discussions, trends, topics, or competitors’ activities to gain insights and grab opportunities to act faster and smarter.
By social media listening, you get:
– Valuable insights into customer needs and preferences
– Identify target audiences for targeting them with tailored marketing campaigns
– Address potential crisis before it escalates
– Gain insights into your reputation and identify areas of improvement
– Ideas to deliver personalized experiences
– A look into competitors’ activities and strategies to stay a step ahead.
Social media listening vs social monitoring
While social media monitoring is about watching, social media listening is about understanding and acting.
With monitoring, you can track mentions, comments, and brand tags to keep tabs on what’s being said in real time. It is useful for quick responses and online reputation management. On the other hand, listening goes deeper: it analyzes trends, sentiment, and broader conversations to uncover why people are saying what they’re saying.
How does social media listening work?
Social media listening requires the use of tools and software to monitor various online conversations about your brand on different platforms, blogs, forums, and other websites. By using social media listening tools, you can keep track of specific keywords or phrases your target audience is talking about, or the competitor brands on what they are doing in the business space and gain valuable insights.
Breakdown of how social media listening works:
– It starts with pinpointing the right keywords, like your brand name, product terms, or even competitor mentions. Then, specialized tools scan platforms like X, TikTok, Instagram, and relevant blogs, collecting posts and comments that mention those keywords.
– Make a list of relevant keywords and phrases to ensure you gather the most meaningful insights. Choose from the categories below and apply them to your social listening software settings.
o Your brand name
o Your social media handles
o Words and hashtags associated with your brand
o Topics your target market is interested in
o Industry buzzwords
o The names of your products
o Your product category
o Slogans you’ve used
o Audience insights you’ve gathered
– Next, the tool filters out irrelevant chatter and organizes the useful stuff by tone (positive or negative), platform, and topic. You’ll start seeing patterns emerge on what people love, what they criticize, and what’s trending in your space.
– Once that’s done, you can analyze the data to spot opportunities, compare against competitors, and understand how people feel about your brand. You can conduct sentiment analysis and topic analysis to get an in-depth understanding.-
Finally, everything gets compiled into digestible reports that help shape smarter marketing decisions, identify crises, better products, and sharper customer strategies.
Top 5 Social Listening Tools To Keep An Eye On
1. Locobuzz
A unified customer experience platform that blends real-time social listening with AI-powered analytics.
- Tracks brand mentions across social media, news, blogs, and forums
- Offers sentiment analysis, influencer insights, and competitive benchmarking
- Known for its intuitive dashboards and multilingual support
2. Meltwater
An enterprise-grade tool offering deep media intelligence across social, news, and broadcast.
- Covers platforms like X, Instagram, Reddit, podcasts, and more
- Features include sentiment analysis, influencer discovery, and crisis alerts
- Offers historical data and visual enrichments like image recognition
- Ideal for large teams needing cross-channel insights
3. Brandwatch
A powerhouse for consumer intelligence and trend analysis.
- Monitors 100M+ sources, including social media, forums, and news
- Offers emotion and sentiment analysis in 40+ languages
- Known for customizable dashboards and predictive analytics
- Great for market researchers and global brands
4. Buffer
Best known for social media scheduling, but also offers basic listening features.
- Tracks mentions and hashtags across platforms like Instagram and X
- Includes an AI assistant for content generation
- Ideal for small businesses and solo marketers
- Simple interface with affordable pricing
5. Onclusive, Inc.
Formerly Digimind, now rebranded as Onclusive Social, a leader in AI-driven social intelligence.
- Offers real-time monitoring across 82 languages and all major platforms
- Combines social listening with market and competitive intelligence
- Features include sentiment analysis, influencer tracking, and crisis alerts
Bring real impact and visibility to your brand with Spinta Digital
Social listening offers a goldmine of insights that can drive smarter decisions, sharper campaigns, and stronger relationships. Whether you’re tracking sentiment, monitoring trends, or scouting out your competition, Spinta Digital empowers your brand to turn conversations into conversions and bring real impact to your business.
