Social Media Listening: Why It Matters and How to Do It

Did you know that the average person spends approximately 145 minutes every day on social media? That’s a lot of time, which they’re probably spending discussing the companies they love (or despise). If you’re one of those brands, don’t you want to be included in those conversations?

Imagine being able to not only hear those chats, but also comprehend the context in which they occur, and then using that information to shape your brand strategy. This is where social listening comes in.

What is Social Listening?

Social listening is the process of tracking conversations across the internet – social media, blogs, forums, and review sites – around specific topics, such as your brand, industry, or competitors. But social listening, as a strategic public relations and marketing practice, is more than just about hearing what’s said. It’s about understanding the emotions and context behind the words – so you can act on them. 

Brands big and small can benefit from social listening. It not only helps you spot trends and understand what customers really think, but it also evaluates your brand’s place within the market. 

Even better: These insights can inform strategies across your entire organization – from product development and customer service to marketing and operations.  

Social Listening Vs. Social Media Monitoring: What’s the Difference?

People often use these terms interchangeably, but they’re not quite the same. Here’s how they differ:  

Social Media Monitoring

Social media monitoring is mainly a reactive approach. The focus is on tracking social media conversations that are directly related to your brand, and responding to them in real time. Here are the key elements of social media monitoring:

• Enables you to react to comments or messages as they come in
• Focuses on quantitative data (followers, shares, likes, etc.)
• Is typically limited to monitoring social platforms
• Answers the question: “What are people saying?”

Social Listening

Social listening is a more proactive, strategic approach that looks for broader context and trends, truly actionable insights to help shape an organization’s strategy. These insights are derived from analysis of conversations related to your industry, brand, and any topics relevant to your brand across the full breadth of online platforms. The key elements of social listening include:

• Enables you to identify emerging issues or opportunities
• Gives qualitative insights (context and emotions behind the data)
• Extends beyond monitoring social media, diving into blogs, forums, news sites, etc.
• Answers the question: “Why are people talking, and what does it mean?”

Both have their unique value and, together, they help brands gain deeper insights – social media monitoring tells you what’s happening and social listening tells you why. 

Examples of Social Listening

Here are some real-world applications of social listening:  

• Product Development: A software company uses customer feedback to guide feature updates and bug fixes.
• Campaign Optimization: An automaker tracks engagement with promotional campaigns for a new model launch to tie their efforts back to revenue.
• Competitive Benchmarking: A beauty brand studies the reception of a competitor’s similar product launch. 
• Audience Expansion: A jewelry maker identifies influencers to reach new demographics. 
• Reputation Management: A fashion retailer quickly addresses quality concerns to maintain a positive brand image. 
• Customer Experience: A restaurant chain improves service based on wait-time complaints.

Why Is Social Listening Important?

No matter the business, it’s impossible to manage your customers/userbase without using social media. Any successful modern business will run a variety of social media pages, with the most common being Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.

Social listening is important as it allows you to:

1. Efficiently engage with customers.
2. Solve problems proactively.
3. Research keywords.
4. Drive sales.
5. Perform competitor analysis.
6. Gain industry insight.

Lots of the above are time-consuming endeavors. To expedite the process, there’s a wide variety of tools available that help businesses derive useful data from their social media platforms.

In public relations, social listening isn’t just a nice-to-have – it’s a must-have. Here’s why:

Competitive Analysis

Want to know what people love (or hate) about your competitors? Social listening can tell you. Use that intel to differentiate your brand and grab a bigger share of the conversation. 

Crisis Detection and Communication

Social listening is your early warning system. It helps you spot potential issues before they escalate, allowing you to shape your message proactively. This approach can mitigate damage and increase brand trust with your audience.  

Customer Insights

Forget the guesswork. Social listening taps directly into what your customers want, need, and struggle with. It’s not just about putting our fires or addressing complaints – it’s about building products and services people actually want. 

Real-Time Brand Management

Public opinion can shift in an instant. Social listening keeps you in the loop, allowing you to address concerns quickly. Early identification is the key to countering misinformation and safeguarding brand reputation. 

Strategic Insights and Influencer Identification

Need data to back up your PR strategy? Social listening delivers. It also helps you find the right influencers – people who authentically connect with your brand and can amplify your message. 

Trend and Opportunity Spotting

Stay ahead of the curve by identifying trends as they emerge. Social listening helps you understand what resonates with your target audience, so you can stay relevant and timely.

How to Build Your Social Listening Strategy

Here’s a roadmap to building an effective social listening strategy:

1. Set Clear Goals: What do you want to achieve? Whether it’s brand awareness or crisis management, your goals will shape your entire strategy, from the tools you choose to the metrics you track.
2. Choose the Right Tools: Select a social listening platform that fits your needs and budget. Look for features like sentiment analysis, trend tracking, and customizable dashboards to streamline your analysis and reporting. 
3. Define Your Queries: What keywords and phrases matter to your brand? Expand beyond your brand to include industry terms, competitor names, key employees, slogans/mottos, and relevant hashtags. Start broad, then refine over time. 
4. Analyze the Data: Look for patterns and themes in the data. What’s driving positive or negative sentiment? Who are the most influential voices? Understanding the story behind the numbers is key.
5. Take Action: Translate your insights into concrete actions. Whether it’s tweaking your messaging or addressing service issues, make sure that the data leads to specific action. 
6. Cross-Functional Collaboration: Share insights across departments to maximize the value and impact of your social listening. Establish a process for sharing relevant insights with the appropriate teams.
7. Benchmark and Track Progress: Establish baseline metrics and regularly assess your progress. This will help you measure the impact of your social listening efforts and refine your strategy.
8. Refine and Repeat: Social listening is an ongoing process. Regularly revisit and adjust your approach based on what you learn. 

Best Practices for Social Listening 

To make the most of your social listening efforts, keep these tips in mind:

• Act on Insights: Don’t just collect data – use it. Regularly review your results and adjust your strategy. 
• Be Consistent: Make social listening part of your daily routine. 
• Focus on What Matters: Learn to separate the signal from the noise. Is it a lone complainer or a brewing crisis? Not every mention is equally important. 
• Connect the Dots: Combine social listening with other data sources for a more comprehensive view of your audience.
• Respect Privacy: Always adhere to data privacy regulations to maintain trust.  

5 Best Tools to Make Your Life Easier

1. Awario

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Awario is a great tool for businesses of all sizes. With affordable plans starting from £24 per month, Awario allows for smaller businesses to get started with their social listening plans. It features a variety of tools that help you monitor mentions of brands, competition, your industry, or complex Boolean queries (algebraic expressions that help users narrow down searches to unique parameters).

Read Also: Leveraging User-Generated Content for Brand Growth

The latter can be used to identify plagiarism in your work. This works by searching for word-for-word copies from accounts other than your own. It can also identify mentions of your brand that are unlinked, allowing you to form relationships with those talking about you (but not giving you the super-valuable link!)

In addition to the above, Awario also offers a free social selling addon that uses predictive insights to locate users who are looking for products just like yours.

• Pricing

Awario has three pricing models: the £24/month Starter package, £74/month Pro package and the £249/month Enterprise package, helping cater to most businesses.

2. Sprout Social

Sprout Social offers a powerful, multi-faceted tool that provides an all-in-one social media management platform. With features offering a host of listening, publishing, engagement, and analysis functionality, Sprout Social provides a comprehensive social media management platform that’s suitable for a variety of businesses. 

Sprout Social prides itself on being able to streamline social media processes by allowing the user to plan, create, manage and deliver social content and campaigns across the entire team, before using powerful analysis tools to glean what you need.

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Sprout Social offers a powerful, multi-faceted tool that provides an all-in-one social media management platform. With features offering a host of listening, publishing, engagement, and analysis functionality, Sprout Social provides a comprehensive social media management platform that’s suitable for a variety of businesses.

Sprout Social prides itself on being able to streamline social media processes by allowing the user to plan, create, manage and deliver social content and campaigns across the entire team, before using powerful analysis tools to glean what you need.

• Pricing

Sprout Social offers a free 30-day trial to anyone considering using their services. Following from that, packages come in three shapes: Standard, Professional, and Advance, costing £70, £106 and £177/month respectively.

3. Falcon.io

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https://www.falcon.io/ is an all-in-one social media management and customer experience platform for established medium-to-large companies.

Falcon.io has all the features that you want social media listening tools to have, with engagement, scheduling, social listening, publishing, analysis, and advertising tools included.

This platform distinguishes itself by using a single dashboard to facilitate your social media requirements. Ease-of-use is key to Falcon.io, allowing users to find everything they need on a single, simple page.

• Pricing

There are two pricing options for Falcon.io: ‘Essentials’ and ‘Full Suite’. The ‘Essentials’ package comes in at £92/month and offers a more basic service for single users and small teams. There’s also a 14-day trial of this service if you want to get a taste before buying.

The ‘Full Suite’ package is the whole hog and features a plethora of features for larger companies. Pricing is done on a case-by-case basis for this package and requires a demo to be held to proceed.

4. Mention

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A highly competitive and powerful solution, Mention combines social monitoring, analytics and competitor espionage into one svelte package. With three key principles: Monitor, Listen and Publish, Mention aims to improve the social media experience for businesses/entrepreneurs.

Mention allows users to input competitor lists. This allows you to monitor your competitors, measure your share of voice and get insights on what social media content is working for them. This feature accompanies all the usual social crawling and management features that other options provide.

• Pricing

One of the most cost-flexible options on this list, Mention has pricing options that suit anyone, from individual entrepreneurs to large multi-national corporations. They’ve even got a limited free plan that allows a single user to experiment and learn the platform.

For annual subscriptions, the prices are as follows:

Solo – £18/month

Pro – £59/month

ProPlus – £119/month

Company –  £320+/month

5. Brand24

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Perhaps the most comprehensive social listening tool available on the market, Brand24 brings together all the most useful features into one easy-to-use platform.

Using their automated sentiment analysis functions, businesses can use advanced sentiment detection to separate positive, negative, and neutral mentions, allowing you to easily trawl through your social media interactions. Brand24 is one of the best tools on the market for a complete experience.

• Pricing

Brand24 offers three tiers: ‘Plus’, ‘Premium’ and ‘Max’, coming in at £35/month, £70/month and £142/month, respectively. Slightly pricier than some of their competitors, Brand24 might be prohibitively expensive for individuals or start-ups. As with many tools, they offer a 14-day free trial for you to get a taste before you commit.

Conclusion

It is more crucial than ever to have a comprehensive social media plan in place. Managing various social media channels can be extremely challenging without the necessary tools for efficient analysis.

Investing in social listening technologies will pay off in the long term since you can gather the data you need to stay ahead of the competition.