social listening case study

• Social Media Management
• Social Media Marketing

Three Social Listening Case Studies to Motivate You

Written by Anna Sonnenberg

Last modified Mar. 29 2022 · 13 min read

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For savvy marketers, social media is much more than a place for publishing posts and running ads. It’s also a channel for listening and responding to customers.

With a social media listening strategy, you can tune into what customers and prospects are saying about your brand. You also can grow your business in the process.

How does social listening work? How can you include it in your team’s workflow? Let’s use these three social media listening case studies as examples.

What Is Social Listening?

Social listening is the process of finding and analyzing conversations about your brand, competitors, industry, and marketing via social media. Then you use those insights to grow your business.

On the surface, social listening is similar to social monitoring, which involves identifying and responding to relevant conversations on social media. However, social listening takes the process a step further.

With social media listening, you also gather data and draw conclusions to make smarter business decisions.

Why Is Social Media Listening Important?

By listening to conversations on social media, you can gain valuable information about your brand, your competitors, and your industry.

Here are some of the best ways to leverage social listening.

Social media listening tip: 1. Assess brand health

How are customers and prospects feeling about your brand? Are they excited about the new product line you announced? Do they think your product quality has gone downhill recently?

Social listening helps you keep an eye on the health of your brand and gives you a sense of customer sentiment. As you gather social business intelligence , you can pass it along to relevant departments. That way, they can double down on existing efforts or make improvements as necessary.

Social media listening tip: 2. Provide support

When customers want help with product and service issues, they may reach out via comments, mentions, or direct messages (DMs). But in some cases, customers may use social media to vent about your brand—without mentioning your company directly.

Social listening identifies public conversations with certain keywords, so you can easily find more under-the-radar rants. Then you can reach out with a resolution and have a chance to recover a customer.

Social media listening tip: 3. Curtail crises

If you’re lucky, problems with your products or services will affect only a handful of customers. But in some cases, a bigger issue could lead to a spike in negative sentiment or a full-blown social media crisis .

Social listening can help you identify and address problems before they generate a lasting effect. Because you can track individual conversations and monitor volume, you can respond to major issues efficiently, without compromising your brand.

Social media listening tip: 4. Monitor campaigns

Whether you’re running marketing campaign s or hosting events, you need a way to monitor what’s happening. You may also want to join the conversation, so you can capture leads and drive business.

With social listening, you can track keywords across social media channels in real time. That means you can help your initiatives succeed and maximize the value that both you and your participants extract.

Social media listening tip: 5. Identify opportunities

From paid social to search engine optimization (SEO), your organization may use a wide variety of customer acquisition techniques. In many cases, you can add social listening to the list of options.

If you add the right keywords and hashtags to your social listening routine, you can find people looking for the solutions you sell. By responding to their social media posts, you can boost brand awareness, generate leads, and even win sales.

Social media listening tip: 6. Research competitors

Social listening lets you process virtually any public social media content . That means this technique can help you discover conversations on almost any topic. That makes it ideal for competitive research, too.

When you use social listening for competitive research, you can assess customer sentiment. You can also identify common customer issues your competitors are experiencing. Then you can use your insights to inform your marketing efforts, positioning, and support.

Social media listening tip: 7. Know your industry

Social listening is also ideal for monitoring industry trends and identifying popular topics of conversation. You can use social listening tools to track industry-specific keywords, phrases, and figures so you can stay on top of what’s happening.

Then you can use what you’ve learned to create thought leadership and offer informed opinions. You can also create better content for your digital marketing.

How Do You Do Social Listening?

With the right social media monitoring tools and a simple workflow, you can master social listening. From choosing a tool to gaining insights on social data, here’s how to do social listening successfully.

1. Decide on a social listening tool

With a social listening tool, you can automate keyword and hashtag searches. Many tools also provide reporting and dashboards to help you process data efficiently.

As a complete social media solution, Agorapulse has a built-in social listening tool. With this powerful tool, you can listen on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube—allowing you to tune in to key conversations across social media channels.

You can set up custom listening searches on Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. Rely on Agorapulse to streamline everything from market research to competitive research.

Agorapulse automatically identifies all public brand mentions on all supported profiles. So, you can depend on Agorapulse for customer support and reputation management.

In addition, Agorapulse helps you understand how trends pan out over time. With the integrated reporting tools and social media analytics, you can monitor conversation volume and assess how key topics affect your brand’s visibility.

A leading consumer intelligence platform, Brandwatch specializes in social listening. This dedicated tool supports a range of social media and channels, forums, and websites so it can track trends and conversations across digital spaces.

Brandwatch uses artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze trends, evaluate images, and classify sentiment efficiently. That way you can get answers quickly—and you can manage your brand, avoid crises, and evaluate competitors before you’ve missed a key moment.

Another top consumer intelligence platform, Talkwalker is designed to find and process the countless signals your target market sends out. With this social listening tool, you can monitor important topics on multiple channels simultaneously. That way you can develop a more accurate understanding of your customer base—and identify shifts as they happen.

Its AI-powered technology can analyze text and images. Users can keep track of what their audience is saying and how they’re feeling at any time. You can also use this listening tool for competitive and market research. This tool can help you grow your business and stay at the top of your field—despite changes in your industry.

2. Set up searches for handles and keywords

Once you’ve chosen a tool, you can start automating social listening searches and creating dashboards. To set up a social listening search in Agorapulse, open your social profile settings and select the profile that you want to configure.

Click to create a new search and give it a name to simplify tracking and reporting. Then enter all the keywords you want to include in the search.

Note that Agorapulse supports different search parameters for each platform. For example, Instagram allows hashtag searches, and Twitter allows custom searches for handles, keywords, and phrases.

You can also set Twitter listening searches to ignore select words, phrases, or handles. This option helps keep listening efforts on track and eliminates irrelevant content. If you need more focused results, you can always add terms to ignore later.

Agorapulse also allows you to incorporate select searches into your brand awareness score. You can also add users who appear in select searches to your Fans & Followers dashboard. That option is helpful for branded searches, as it can help you keep tabs on people who are talking about your business.

3. Respond to mentions and join conversations

Agorapulse automatically adds direct mentions to your listening tab. Once you’ve created custom social listening searches, you’ll find all the results in your inbox, separated by social profile.

To process results from one search at a time, open the Filters menu and select the search you want to view.

Then click on individual items to read and join the conversation. You can reply to listening items from select channels (Twitter) directly in Agorapulse. When the API doesn’t allow for direct responses in Agorapulse, you can click to view the post on the original channel.

In some cases, it may make more sense for a team member to reply to a social listening item. You can click to assign any listening content to a team member or bookmark it for future follow-up.

You can also add custom labels to listening items so you can refer back to them later. For example, you may want to save items that appear particularly helpful for market research. You can retrieve labeled items later by using the built-in filters.

In addition to monitoring conversations, Agorapulse also lets you track relevant users when the API allows.

For example, you can monitor brand mentions and direct interactions with Facebook users from the listening tab. If a user mentions your brand regularly, you can track sentiment over time and add internal notes about your interactions.

4. Process your social listening results

To see insights from your social listening searches, go to the Reports tab and select a social profile.

Agorapulse automatically tracks the number of listening items generated each day. That way, you can identify patterns and determine whether conversations are becoming louder over time or if other circumstances are causing spikes.

You can also see how certain hashtags and select other topics have affected your brand awareness. The dashboard automatically compares your brand awareness score to the prior period so you can see if this metric is growing steadily.

You can even use inbox labels for Agorapulse reports to track sentiment. So, you can understand if conversations are trending in a positive or negative direction. You always have the option to manually apply labels to social listening items.

To save time, you can set them to apply automatically instead.

Open the settings for the social profile in question and select Inbox Assistant. Click to create a new moderation rule and input the keywords that align with the various sentiments you want to track. For example, terms like “thank you” and “excellent” often signal a positive sentiment.

Once you’ve set up automated rules or applied labels manually, you can track sentiment in the Label Distribution section of your report. This label report incorporates listening and inbox items to give you a complete overview of how people feel about your brand.

Finally, work with your team to use social listening insights effectively.

For example, if you’ve found that customer sentiment has shifted in a negative direction, it may be time to identify and address the root causes. Or if you’ve found that the majority of your brand mentions relate to customer service inquiries, you may want to explore dedicated support channels.

Three Examples of Social Media Listening Case Studies

Now that you know more about social listening’s value, check out how established brands do it.

Take a look at three social media listening case studies and get motivated to jump right in.

Social media listening case studies: Tylenol

For decades, Tylenol products have provided people with much-needed pain relief. But over time, the types of conditions that require Tylenol have evolved.

Tylenol did social listening to learn the causes and the trends surrounding conditions that Tylenol can alleviate. Those findings help gude the company’s marketing strategy and grow the business.

While social listening, the company made an important discovery. People with hobbies requiring intense, sustained focus were increasingly reporting migraine symptoms. In many cases, knitters drove the conversation, stating that their hobby led to eye strain and migraines.

Using these insights, Tylenol adjusted its marketing and SEO strategy to incorporate this target group. The company created content designed for knitters and focus-heavy hobbies. It then reported increased website traffic.

Social media listening case studies: Fitbit

As a much newer company in the rapidly growing wearable technology space, Fitbit relies on social media for everything from customer complaints to feature requests. The company uses social listening to monitor customer sentiment and guide product development.

As director of community Allison Leahy states, “Customer experience is really paramount to everything we do here.”

To provide customer care, Fitbit monitors social media channels closely. The company aims to respond to customer questions and complaints quickly, with the goal of creating delight and inspiring loyalty.

With a comprehensive social listening approach, the company can also identify emerging problems and gather data to improve troubleshooting. Then the organization provides insights to product teams to consider for future releases.

For example, Fitbit’s Reminders to Move feature was inspired by customer requests. At regular intervals, this feature generates a notification reminding users to be active, helping them accumulate more steps throughout the day.

Social media listening case studies: Southwest Airlines

As one of the top three busiest airlines in the United States, Southwest Airlines easily receives thousands of social media mentions on a typical day. From questions about flights and products to complaints about delays and ticketing issues, the company has to process a wide range of customer interactions.

To manage all this data, Southwest has designated a Listening Center for social listening. Here, team members monitor real-time mentions using a color-coded system differentiating positive and negative posts and tweets.

Since the social listening team is tasked with providing customer support, team members aim to address negative mentions as efficiently as possible. In fact, Southwest has set a goal to respond to any inquiry in just 15 minutes.

To build relationships with customers, Southwest relies on brand monitoring tools that track past interactions. That way, team members know right away whether social media users have engaged with the brand before. That way they can use prior context to guide future conversations.

Social Media Listening: What We Learned

Because social listening can reveal critical information about your brand, the competition, and your industry, it’s an essential process for social media marketers to master.

Those social media listening case studies demonstrate just how valuable this technique can be. May they offer inspiration for setting up a workflow that fits your team’s needs and budget.

Get started on honing your social media listening skills! Check out our free trial of Agorapulse  to help you schedule, track, and measure all your social media efforts.

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Brandwatch Consumer Research

Formerly the Falcon suite

Formerly Paladin

Published December 11 th 2023

The Complete Social Listening Guide – Definitions, Benefits, and Actionable Tips

Want to learn about social listening and how to get started? Discover the benefits, learn the processes, and find out how to master it successfully.

The number of social media conversations happening at any given time is massive. They ebb and flow with the news and cover every conceivable topic. From grandparents sharing old photos on Facebook to endless pop culture debates on Reddit.

Social listening means taking all these conversations and getting meaningful insights out of them. This guide will take you through all aspects of social listening and how it could be of use to you.

In this blog, we’ll cover:

• A clear-cut definition of social listening
• The benefits and importance of social media listening
• The difference between social media listening, social media analytics, and social media intelligence
• Who can benefit from social listening
• How to get social listening right
• Using social listening data
• Using the right social listening tool

But first things first.

What is social listening?

Social listening, also known as social media listening, is the process of monitoring online conversations and collecting data from social platforms and forums on a chosen topic. This could be a brand, an industry, or anything at all. These insights subsequently inform and shape effective marketing strategies, positioning businesses to better cater to their audiences.

The collected data is then analyzed to find trends and useful insights to help brands understand their consumers’ mindset, evaluate the brand’s presence online, and further clarify its place within the market. These insights then get fed into product development, business operations, marketing, advertising, and many other areas of the business. 

It’s not an entirely new approach. Brands have been trying to gauge the opinions of the public and their customers with surveys forever. But with the right technology, discovering and analyzing unprompted and non-incentivized consumer opinions becomes a lot more efficient and cost-effective.

Social media is a crucial source to discover emerging trends before they get big and are covered in other media. Platforms like TikTok or Instagram are the place of origin of many trends in the past. They are a catalyst for trends, having the chance to go viral. Brands need to monitor these social media conversations to avoid missing out on opportunities.

The benefits and importance of social media listening 

Consumer behavior is constantly changing, and brands that don't pay attention risk making poor business decisions and losing customers to competitors. Social data provides valuable insights into consumer opinions, needs, and common pain points. With a smart social listening setup, brands can monitor how consumer behavior changes over time, what product features they like, and what they say about their competitors’ customer experiences.

Social listening can help identify emerging social media trends before they take off. Brands that jump on the bandwagon early can ensure they stay relevant and top of mind with their customers. Insights into the latest social media trends can inform a variety of different business departments, such as marketing, advertising, customer service, or product development.

Advanced social listening platforms can provide insights into social media trends at scale. They can help brands deep-dive into consumer opinions about a specific industry, such as food and beverage , their brand experiences , or how they communicate online .

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Here are some of the benefits of social listening and why it is important:

• Competitive benchmarking: Compare your brand with competitors to find their weaknesses and potential opportunities.
• Crisis management: Identify potential threats before they become crises.
• Customer experience: Identify areas where your brand excels and areas where you need to improve.
• Trend detection: Identify emerging trends in consumer conversations before they become mainstream.
• Product development: Use consumer intelligence insights to inform product development on what customers love about the product and how to improve product features.

We’ll get into more depth shortly, but first, we’ll use a quick example to show how important social listening is.

Ice cream on a cold night – A social listening success 

Imagine you’re Ben & Jerry’s, and you’ve got a big social media ad budget to get people buying your products. Following common sense, you put more money in during the summer, and you also keep an eye on the forecast. When it’s sunny and hot, you give your ads another boost and fine-tune your messaging.

All very sensible and a tactic that likely works very well. But then you notice something. A snowstorm that was talked about all week in the local press hits New York. In anticipation, you leave your ad budget for the city unchanged or even lower it, assuming the last thing people want during cold weather is a cold dessert.

But upon checking your ad’s performance in New York over the weekend, you see click-through rates have jumped up. When the sales figures come through for that weekend, you see they’re up as well.

What happened?

Using a social listening tool, you could easily find out. And this is exactly what Ben & Jerry’s did.

They looked at mentions about their products on sites like X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram and noticed there was an uptick during poor weather, particularly when it was rainy. By combining those data sources (weather and social), they found a massively valuable insight (this is one of the big benefits of consumer intelligence ).

It turned out that when rain forced people to stay in watching TV, they wanted ice cream to go with it. In other words, lots of social media posts like this:

This opened up a whole new area for Ben & Jerry’s to target. Now, they would look for rain in the forecasts, as well as sun, and adjust their marketing plans accordingly.

They even went a step further and created a flavor just for this purpose: Netflix & Chill’d.

This was all achieved with a straightforward social listening approach, which worked wonders for Ben & Jerry’s. Considering you can conduct brand management, track PR issues, and influence product design too, it becomes clear just how powerful and invaluable social listening is.

Want to get started with social listening?

From brand monitoring to crisis management, our Consumer Research platform will get you sorted.

What’s the difference between social media listening, social media analytics, and social media intelligence?

You may have heard these other terms and thought they were pretty much interchangeable. There is a lot of crossover between these terms, but there are differences. We’ve already defined social listening, so let’s go through the other two.

Social media analytics

Social media analytics (or analysis) is the process of actually analyzing that data, again, often with a tool like Brandwatch. 

The analytics part is finding insight from the data – What are people saying about your brand online? Who are the influencers pioneering these conversations? How is the industry changing? And where in the world do most of the conversations take place? That involves tools and features such as author analysis, page type analysis, and topic and sentiment analysis .

The term is often used to describe social media monitoring or social listening, as generally, you don’t listen or monitor without analyzing the data – and usually, you’d use the same tool for both stages.

Social media intelligence

Social media intelligence covers the knowledge or insights gained from analyzing social media data.

That could be, say, the knowledge that your customers hate a feature of your product, which can then inform your product development team. In one of our case studies, Fetch Rewards shared how with the help of Brandwatch Consumer Research, the Fetch team was able to quickly discover negative sentiment around its newly released app feature and inform the leadership team.

Social intelligence could also be the knowledge that your target audience really loves rap music right now, so that’d be a good thing to capitalize on in your marketing.

They’re the kind of insights that our clients have detailed in these case studies about their use of Brandwatch.

Social media intelligence is ultimately about helping make business decisions based on social media analysis and data. It’s often also called social business intelligence for this reason.

Who can use social listening? 

People talk about everything online. That means there’s scope for pretty much any company or organization to use social listening. As long as it’s done properly, there’s something to be learned.

If you’re a B2C company, then it’s a great way to hear what your customers are saying about your brand. Do they speak highly of you or are they praising your competitors’ customer experience ? You can see which products get discussed the most, collect feedback, and learn more about their demographics.

Not only that, you can use it to build research for your business strategy. Maybe you’re looking to branch out into a new product area. You could see what people are saying about it already, and even see if your existing customers would be interested in the new product, too.

For a B2B company, social listening can be great for competitive benchmarking as well. You can look at who of your competitors has the largest share of voice or keep an eye on the latest developments. That’s on top of learning more about potential customers.

For example, while you sell to businesses, you still need to connect with people to make that happen. You could work out your target decision-makers, such as CEOs or CTOs, and use social listening to see what they’re interested in, their demographics, and how to interact with them.

Charities / NGOs

From cancer awareness to the local museum, charities can also use social listening. Looking at conversations around certain topics can give great insight into the work you do. That’s not to mention brand monitoring, so you can be aware of anything negative being said about your organization.

Social listening could even feed into your next campaign, helping you identify and attract new audiences and potential donors. 

Here’s one example of charities leveraging social listening. The global youth charity Ditch the Label teamed up with Brandwatch to publish an insightful report based on analyzing 263 million online conversations to understand how hate speech evolved in the US and UK between 2019 and 2021.

Financial services sector 

With the right technology, gathering useful and actionable insights about investment decisions couldn’t be easier. Traditionally, when it comes to investigating potential investment opportunities or due diligence, private equity deals could take months to close because the research process around it is known to be labor-intensive and costly. Digital consumer insights can come in handy to those investors who are looking to gather intelligence at a quick scale while increasing confidence in their investment recommendations .

Government 

Even government departments can get involved with social listening: from understanding demographics to surfacing complaints and other feedback on new policies or strategies.

For example, the Abu Dhabi Department of Culture & Tourism (DCT) works on developing and marketing Abu Dhabi’s tourism industry, and it uses social listening to monitor conversations on social media to understand the type of content the audiences wish to see on each channel.

That’s just one example. You can see our full case studies here . They cover plenty of business types and industries.

Social listening: How to do it right 

Generally, you will need a dedicated tool or platform to carry out social listening. You could do some basic things by tracking mentions of certain terms using something like Google Alerts, but it’s always going to be surface-level.

A tool like Brandwatch Consumer Research covers everything you’ll need for social listening. You can find out more about it and book a free demo here . You can also check out some other social media monitoring tools here . While there are several free options, they’ll only let you scratch the surface. A paid solution, on the other hand, will help you uncover deep insights about your audience and industry. 

Once you’re ready to start, here are the questions you’ll need to answer in preparation:

• What are you trying to measure?
• What data will you need?  
• How much data will you need?  

Let’s explore each of these below.

​​What are you trying to measure? 

The first thing is to write down your goals. You can do so many things with social listening, so it’s easy to get unfocused. From simply seeing who talks about your brand to setting up a crisis alert system , you need to know exactly what you want to achieve from the beginning.

For some people, social listening will become part of an ongoing strategy. Others might be looking for the answer to a single question. Talk to your team and decide what you want to achieve.

Here are a few examples of what you can do:

• Crisis management
• Customer service
• Brand health and reputation
• Content creation
• Image recognition
• Campaign performance tracking
• Trend and demographic insights
• Pitch research (particularly relevant for agencies)

What data will you need?

Once you have clear goals, you can work out what data you’ll need. Speaking to stakeholders directly involved in these areas is very important.

Your customer service team will know the common talking points customers have. Your campaign managers know which metrics are important. Your business development department knows what potential clients like to hear.

Work with them to build a checklist of data points they’d find useful to achieve the stated goal. You then use that to set the parameters for your data collection. This could be looking for all brand mentions to conversations around a specific subject.

How much data will you need? 

You also need to decide how much data you’ll need or, in other words, how long of a period you’ll be “socially listening.”

For some projects, such as for customer service, this will be ongoing. But in other cases, you’ll need to get more specific. Do you need a year’s worth of data? Should it come from one country or globally? Do you want to collect data across the internet or just forums, for example?

What you’re trying to find out will determine all this. Covering a useful amount of time is one of the most important parts. You can’t identify trends in the space of a week. Make sure you’re capturing enough data to make proper insights you can actually action on.

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Using social listening data 

As we’ve said, there’s a whole range of reasons for conducting social listening. That means we can’t cover everything, but here’s some general advice when dealing with data.

We’d also suggest taking some free courses in data science to get you on the right track. There are loads of free courses online, but Coursera and edX are good places to start. If you are already a user of a social listening platform, check their website to see if they offer some training courses .

​​Cleaning data 

Social listening data can often be noisy and messy. You’re always going to pick up stuff that’s not relevant to your search criteria. Sometimes, this will be negligible, but often, it can throw any insights off.

The first thing to do is manually check what you’ve collected. You don’t need to look at every single data point, but if something’s gone wrong, you’ll be able to spot it.

For example, you’ve decided to collect posts on X (formerly Twitter) around the UK soccer team Chelsea. You pick up mentions of ‘Chelsea,’ but with it comes a load of stuff about the location, the TV show Made in Chelsea, and people called Chelsea.

That’s not ideal. Luckily, you just need to redefine what data you pick up. Instead, you only pick up mentions where ‘football’ is mentioned within five words of ‘Chelsea.’ You might include hashtags relating to the team as well.

After that, your data will be far more focused. The main lesson is not to take your first set of results for granted. You are never going to get it right the first time, and it will always be a process of constant refinement. Check and double-check your results before assuming your data is useful.

Analyzing data 

This is where the free courses we mentioned will come in handy. It can be tough to know where to start, especially with a large dataset. The goal of your project will be useful in guiding this process. Meanwhile, making sure there’s enough data is important too.

Advising on how to analyze data is a whole other blog post, but here are a few common things to look out for that offer some insight:

• Sudden peaks and troughs in the mention volume
• Seasonal trends
• Sentiment changes
• Differences between demographics
• Related topics
• Specific product conversation differences
• Conclusions that go against assumed knowledge

Ongoing monitoring 

If you’re going to be collecting data indefinitely, it’s important to get this right as early on as possible. If, after six months, you realize you’ve been collecting the wrong data or missing important areas, a lot of hard work is going to go to waste.

As we said before, get all of the relevant teams involved. Get continuous feedback to spot any problems quickly. Conversations online evolve rapidly. New words, products, and even memes could end up skewing your data unexpectedly. Always check your results.

You’ll also want to update what you’re tracking for the same reason. If a new competitor appears or you launch a new product, you need to make sure you’re collecting data to cover these events.

Using the right social listening tool 

Choosing the right social listening tool  .

Now that you have an idea of what social listening is and what kind of insights you can collect, you may ask yourself how to find the right social listening tool. Finding the right social listening tool is crucial to getting the best results for your money. Which social listening tool is right for you depends on several factors, including your budget, needs, team size, and use case. There are a variety of social media monitoring tools on the market, some of which are free with basic analytics that are suitable for smaller companies on a tight budget. 

But if you want social listening with deeper insights and more analytics capabilities, you should take a look at sophisticated social listening platforms with paid plans. With these social listening platforms, you can choose from a variety of data sources, data segmentation and visualization options, and workflow and user features to manage the responsibilities and access of your team members.

Advanced social listening tools, such as Brandwatch Consumer Research , also have alerting features that can email stakeholders when there are unusual changes in the data or a spike in negative mentions that could indicate a potential threat. AI capabilities and templates can help you save time and gain more valuable insights. Also, look at what kind of customer service they offer, such as a dedicated account manager. 

Depending on your social listening goals, needs, and budget, you should be able to come up with a catalog of questions to ask potential vendors to determine if they can meet your needs. For inspiration, check out our buyer's guide , which provides a list of questions you can ask.

Here are some areas your questions may cover:

• Data in general : coverage, speed, quality, compliance
• Search functionalities: filters to specify the search, operators, language-independent searches
• Data segmentation: categorization features, filtering options
• Analyze features: data visualization, AI-based analysis, flexible analysis
• Other features: Alerts, reporting, workflow, integrations 

Once you have the answers to your questions, the decision should be easy. The vendor that checks the most boxes is the right social listening tool for you and your team. Over time it can be worth reevaluating your social listening vendor in case your social listening needs have changed.

How to use a social listening tool 

Now that you've chosen the right social listening tool, it's time to put theory into practice. There are multiple steps, from data gathering to setup to analysis, that you will go through when you work with a social listening tool.  

Using a social listening tool can be broken down into four steps: 

• Segmentation
• Action 

Here’s a quick overview of what these four steps look like with Brandwatch Consumer Research:

1. Search 

Search is the first step in your social listening setup. It's the foundation of your analysis and will help you get the relevant data you need. In the search setup, you can use different filters and operators to refine the data. 

2. Segmentation 

Once you've set up your search and received your data, it's time to segment. Segmenting the data can help you visualize the data into meaningful graphs that can help you gain insights.

Social listening tools have a wide variety of features you can use to slice and dice your data. For example, you can see the sentiment of consumer conversations, the emotions they are expressing in their discussions, and demographic details such as location or age. 

3. Analysis

Next, you can begin to analyze the data and identify valuable insights. These insights will help you answer the questions you had at the beginning of your social listening setup.

You can answer questions such as:

• How is our most recent marketing campaign performing?
• What product features are most popular?
• How do we compare to our competitors?
• What are the most common customer service pain points?
• What trends are emerging in our industry?
• What is driving negative conversations about our brand?

4. Action 

Now it's time to turn your insights into action and make smarter business decisions. Sophisticated social listening platforms offer a variety of tools to help you keep stakeholders informed, such as email alerts or reporting features to make your life easier. This can help you put the insights at the fingertips of decision-makers so they can make smarter, data-driven decisions to improve the business.

That’s a wrap 

There you have it. Social listening can help you cut through the noise and monitor online conversations over time to stay on top of the latest changes and trends.

You should now have a good idea of what social listening is and how it can benefit your brand. Choosing the right social listening tool is important for getting the best results for your money.

Done right, social listening is incredibly powerful. Sophisticated social listening platforms offer a wide variety of features that allow you to dive deep into online consumer conversations. Social listening insights help you to get a better understanding of your consumers, improve your product and services, and ultimately boost sales.

Remember to take action after you have gathered your insights. Share your findings with relevant stakeholders so they can have an impact on future business decisions.

Do you want to learn more about Brandwatch Consumer Research and how your company can benefit from social listening? Get in touch for a personalized demo . 

Michaela Vogl

Marketing Content Specialist

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8 Social Listening Examples: How Brands Are Thriving Digital Landscape

All it takes is for one person to post a comment about your brand, products, or services on social media and suddenly, you’re the hot topic for the day. Before you know it, thousands of people are sharing their experiences to back up or contend with the original post.

If the comments are positive, then your brand has won some free publicity that will win you new customers. But if the conversations have a negative spin, your reputation will suffer, and you can expect to lose some existing and future customers.

Either way, you need to respond to show appreciation or a willingness to make changes. But you can’t do this unless you are already practicing social listening and can pick up on the trend when it begins.

Social listening allows you to stay abreast of every conversation involving your brand across different social networks. Forward-thinking businesses are taking advantage of this marketing strategy to engage audiences and manage brand reputation in real time.

Keep reading to get inspired by a few notable real-life social listening examples.

Table of Contents

1. Starbucks – Navigating reputational crises through social listening

2. sofi- turning negative sentiment into positive advocacy, 3. virgin trains – providing exceptional customer support, 4. tylenol – building customer loyalty, 5. ben & jerry’s – gauging market demand, 6. fitbit – innovating products through social conversations, 7. netflix – outsmarting competitors and seizing opportunities , 8. arby’s – making informed decisions , emerging trends, new challenges , how keyhole can power up your social listening, final words, 1. what is social listening, 2. what are the advantages of social listening, 3. what are the best social listening tools, the winners of social listening for brand reputation management .

From these social listening case studies, you can learn new ways to leverage online chatter and feedback to transform your business and the lives of your customers. 

When two black men got arrested while waiting for their friend in a Philadelphia branch of Starbucks, social media erupted with backlash and condemnation for the brand.

The video of the incident sparked conversations about racial profiling and generated a ton of negative mentions of Starbucks. Rather than pretending it wasn’t seeing the comments or just waiting for things to blow over, Starbucks took quick action to address the issue. 

The CEO of Starbucks had a meeting with the men to offer a personal apology. The company also put out a public apology via its social media platforms and announced that it would be reviewing its policies and conducting racial sensitivity training for employees.

This swift response allowed Starbucks to get out in front of the problem and minimize reputational damage.

SoFi is a fintech company that provides a range of personal finance services, including student loan refinancing and options trading . It was able to identify opportunities to engage customers and sell their solutions by monitoring conversations around business-related keywords.

Fintech companies like SoFi rely on data-driven insights to understand customer needs and guide business strategies. Fintech recruiters play a key role in helping these companies build teams with the specialized skills to leverage data analytics and technology innovations that propel growth.

This led SoFi to discover that a lot of its target audience didn’t understand how to go about structuring their finances and managing their student loans. Even though this sentiment wasn’t targeted at the company directly, SoFi saw the chance to create a new narrative and demystify these seemingly complex topics.

SoFi began producing and sharing easily digestible educational content that broke down everything consumers wanted to know about refinancing student loans. This proactive measure not only helped SoFi solve user pain points, it also established the brand as a reliable resource and thought leader in the personal finance niche.

Virgin Trains provides a good example of how social listening can be a vehicle for immediate change; a way to deliver outstanding customer service that will not be forgotten in a hurry. How did the company do this?

Well, it all started when a passenger on a train heading to Euston from Glasgow decided to use the restroom onboard. Unfortunately for him, there was no toilet paper in the stall and he didn’t realize this until after he had concluded his business. 

With no other (hygienic) options in sight, the passenger decided to tweet at Virgin Trains and tell them about his predicament. The company responded right away and made it their business to fix the issue for the passenger. 

To this passenger and anyone paying attention, the interaction was unassailable proof that Virgin Trains is the kind of brand that goes above and beyond to satisfy its customers. 

When it comes to pain management, Tylenol has been one of the go-to options for consumers for many years. However, the ailments that prompt users to take Tylenol have been evolving as the years go by.

Instead of operating on assumptions alone, the brand used social listening techniques to find out what was giving rise to ailments that people were using Tylenol to treat. 

The data that Tylenol gathered revealed that more and more people who engaged in hobbies that required intensive focus for extended periods were reporting experiencing migraines. Knitters were often at the forefront of these complaints. 

Tylenol leveraged this information to develop targeted content for these audience groups, which resulted in an uptick in traffic to their website.

At one time, the beloved ice cream brand spent most of its social media ad budget promoting its products during the summer. After all, summertime is the hottest and sweatiest time of the year and most people would crave ice cream more than ever. 

When the weather is cold and heavy with rain, it’s a reasonable assumption that people would favor hot treats over cold ones. So why not reduce the ad budget or just leave it as it is during these periods? 

Ben & Jerry’s noticed that this wasn’t the case after analyzing its ad performance in New York over a snowy weekend. Instead of falling as expected, the ad’s click-through rates soared and so did sales figures.

After deploying social listening tools to analyze brand mentions across various platforms, Ben & Jerry’s determined that the demand for ice cream also rose during poor weather. 

This is because rain meant people had to stay indoors, often watching Netflix or TV to pass the time and they liked having ice cream on hand. This discovery led Ben & Jerry’s to begin watching weather forecasts and tweaking their ads for both sunny and rainy days to maximize sales opportunities. 

The company even created a new ice cream flavor for the occasion called Netflix & Chill’d.

Since Fitbit is a newcomer in the health and fitness technology space, they have wholeheartedly embraced social media as an invaluable resource for optimizing user experience and developing new products based on customer desires.

The company constantly monitors everything customers say about it online to gather ideas, diagnose potential issues, and come up with the best solutions for them. Fitbit’s “Reminders to Move” feature owes its origins to customer feedback and requests. 

Fitbit users had trouble staying on track with their health routines and often wished for a feature that could remind them to stand up and move their bodies from time to time. 

Fitbit listened and created a feature that does exactly that, proving that you can use social listening to get to know your audience and delight, engage, and satisfy them better.

Have you ever fallen asleep while watching Netflix? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. 

Using social listening tools, Netflix identified that this was a common customer complaint. People would sleep off and wake up later to see that they missed several episodes of a show because it continued to play after they dozed off.

As frustrating as this is, it’s not Netflix’s fault that we can’t keep our eyes open so no one would have faulted them for not devoting a moment of thought to this problem. However, the streaming giant came up with a brilliant strategy to solve this problem and demonstrate how much it cares about users.

The company made an ad teaching users how to make smart Netflix Socks that would signal to their TV to pause the show once it suspects that the user has drifted into dreamland. 

This invention quickly went viral, getting plenty of press mentions, earning commendations from users, and even winning Netflix a Shorty Award.

Arby’s reputation for selling mouthwatering sandwiches has been firmly established for over five decades. After regularly monitoring brand mentions and customer sentiment, Arby’s became aware that one-third of the social media comments linked to the business were about their sauce.

Customers liked it so much that they were afraid of running out of it. How did Arby’s respond to this tasty bit of information? It began bottling and selling the sauce, opening another stream of business revenue.

The brand also built an ad campaign called “The Saucepocalypse” to promote the bottled sauce. As if that wasn’t enough, Arby’s invited people to share their worst stories involving sauce-less meals. 

It then used some of these stories to create campaign posters which were distributed online and on billboards in the towns where each featured story came from. The campaign was an instant hit and it influenced people to buy bottles of Arby’s sauce so sales numbers skyrocketed.

The future of social listening

The social listening landscape is constantly evolving. Each passing year presents a unique set of opportunities and challenges impacting the ways marketing teams implement this practice.

Let’s explore some of the innovative ways you can use social data analysis to improve your competitive intelligence, brand health tracking, campaign monitoring, and business promotion efforts. 

We’ll also highlight some roadblocks that might hinder your ability to take full advantage of social listening and reap the rewards it promises for your brand.

Here are the trends to know today to best equip your brand for social listening. 

1.  Application of social listening to boost SEO and influencer marketing 

Using a listening tool to crawl and analyze online mentions of your brand across the web can deliver beneficial SEO opportunities for your brand. 

Source: Influencer Marketing Hub

For instance, you might discover interesting methods and new keywords people are using to search for your brand/products that you can target. You may also find lucrative mentions that can be turned into links to drive website traffic or some kind of consumer action. 

Through social monitoring, you can identify guest blogging partnerships or discover and reach out to influencers who are creating well-liked content relevant to your niche whom you can collaborate with.

2. Locating high-quality user-generated content

User-generated content plays a huge role in shaping consumer purchasing decisions. To them, this kind of content holds more sway and authenticity than official content posts and copy from brands.

However, it can be tough to find quality UGC to show customers, especially when users don’t directly mention your brand in their posts. You can get around this problem using a social listening solution with image recognition monitoring features.

This will enable you to easily find posts that include images or videos of your products. Then you can reach out to the content owner and ask for consent to share and promote the content on your brand pages.

3. Leveraging AI-powered social monitoring 

Social listening tools are incorporating AI into their technologies to collect, analyze, segment, and extract relevant insights from mountains of data faster than ever before.

This increased speed means you can detect shifts in brand sentiment and take swift action to mitigate crises before they have a chance to damage your reputation. 

AI can also study historical data to precisely predict future user behavior and trends, so you can devise strategic plans to solve challenges and gain an edge over your competitors.

1. Quality and variety of data sources

According to the 2023 State of Social Listening report , 42% of marketers and social intelligence professionals cite data accuracy and quality as the most persistent social monitoring challenge that they face.

Due to API restrictions on platforms like LinkedIn and TikTok, you may not be able to gather data from all relevant sources. This can prevent you from gaining a thorough understanding of customer sentiments and conversations around your brand and products. 

Also, the lack of language capabilities for non-English speakers means that you may not be able to interpret data from certain customer segments if you’re selling a global product. As a result, your customer service, market share, and brand reputation management might lag in those regions.

2. Compliance and security

Compliance and data privacy are a top concern for marketers when collecting information about customers to inform their strategy. You have to take great care when handling customer data to ensure that their privacy isn’t breached and or their info isn’t used unethically.

Source: KPMG

How do you accomplish this? By properly securing your social media accounts with multiple authentication methods and access controls. Publishing a privacy policy also helps with detailing exactly how you intend to use customer data.

Don’t forget to research applicable privacy policies for your industry and the different locations you’re operating in to make sure your activities are compliant with the rules.

3. Budget limitations

The truth is that one social listening tool may not fully address your needs. Carrying out comprehensive and effective social media monitoring and data analysis will require substantial financial investments and it can be tough getting leadership to see the value in this exercise. 

Also, our current economic climate means that budgets are getting slashed left and right, so you may have less money to run your social media marketing initiatives while still being expected to generate increased ROI.

Imagine having a tool at your fingertips that not only listens to the online buzz around your brand but also empowers you to outshine your competitors. That’s where Keyhole comes in.

Trusted by industry giants like H&M, Mashable, Google, and Alibaba, Keyhole can be your backstage pass to the pulse of social conversations across various channels. From Twitter and Instagram to blogs, forums, and news sites, Keyhole offers a panoramic view of what’s happening, allowing you to track relevant topics and discussions using keywords and hashtags through its sophisticated boolean search.

You can also easily monitor the activities of your competitors , influencers, and industry leaders, gaining invaluable insights into their strategies. Keyhole also has a nifty unlimited publishing and scheduling feature that can streamline your social activities, enabling you to manage multiple channels seamlessly from one centralized platform. 

With Keyhole’s treasure trove of historical data and AI-powered insights, you’re not just looking at the past, you’re predicting the future. 

In a world where every tweet, post, or comment matters, Keyhole isn’t just a tool – it’s your secret weapon for conquering the social sphere.  

There’s a flood of conversations involving your brand taking place on social media and beyond. You can’t hope to keep track of all of them on your own. 

As the companies from the social listening examples have shown, you need tools to help you tap into this information stream to uncover hidden insights to rev up business success and strengthen customer relationships. 

Keyhole’s full-service social listening tool helps you monitor how people feel about your brand, identify patterns in your social data, and make data-backed decisions to outflank your competition and always stay ahead of the curve. 

Explore social listening with Keyhole. Unlock your free trial today!

Related Articles:

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16 Social Listening Strategies To Incorporate Into Business Strategy

Frequently Asked Questions

Social listening involves finding and tracking online conversations that relate to your brand on various social platforms and forums. This can direct brand mentions, product reviews, and discussions about your industry, products, services, or competitors.

Paying attention to audience feedback, comments, and sentiments related to your brand can help you: -Improve your brand image -Keep up with competitors -De-escalate crises -Identify growth opportunities -Monitor campaign performance -Align marketing strategy and product innovations with customer needs

Some of the best tools for social listening include Keyhole, Google Alerts, and Talkwaker.

Social Listening 101

Read our beginner’s guide to getting actionable insights from in-depth social media analysis..

read it now

In this comprehensive digest you’ll learn:

• Simple definitions of social listening and related keyphrases
• Why social listening is important to your brand
• A quick tutorial to your first social listening project
• The most common social listening strategies
• Social listening use cases
• Few tips from advanced social listeners

SOCIAL LISTENING 101

What is social listening? What benefits does it bring? Why do brands get involved in social listening? Where to start? As a company that provides one of the most advanced and precise tools for monitoring and understanding online media, we can offer a few tips. Read our beginner’s guide and get the answers to these and many more questions.

Table of contents

Social listening glossary, gathering information, data analytics, consumer engagement, brand development, market segmentation, brand awareness, competitor analysis, acquiring leads, crisis management, customer relationships, brand authority, product improvement.

• Best practices for social listening
• How brands are using social listening?

The “Brand” scenario

The “social profiles” scenario, the “other” scenario, filtering mentions and data analysis, chapter 1 what is social listening.

In a perfect business world starting a company would look more or less like this: you take a walk in the park and out of nowhere, an idea comes – a wonderful idea for a flawless product. Then, you simply make it. And since it’s a perfect product, people obviously were waiting for it for a long time.

Now that it’s here, they can’t stop themselves from buying all of your stock. You just sit by the fireplace with your cigar and watch your account numbers go up, doing nothing else for the rest of your life. Sounds nice, right?

Well, I hate to pop your bubble, but it’s totally fictitious. Even if your heart is pure, even if you close your eyes and visualise it with all of your might. Seriously. Not going to happen.

If you want your business to succeed, simply having the perfect idea is not enough. Simply put, you need to work hard, be persistent and humble. Obviously, there’s more – but let’s focus on the last quality for a moment. Why should you be humble to build a successful brand?

The thing is, at the end of the day, it’s the customer who chooses which brand to go with. This means that your product should cover the needs of your audience in the best way possible. The accepted practice is to create a Buyer Persona and understand its needs.

In the world where almost half of the population shares their opinions on social media, along with their wishes and desires, all you need to do is to listen.

“And if you listen to them you can soon improve all those niggly things which turns an average company into an exceptional company.” [Richard Branson]

In simple terms, social listening is discovering what your current and potential clients are saying on social media. Then, you turn this information into specific marketing strategies that will help you get your product or service to the most interested potential customers. This way, you can optimise your investments in acquiring new customers and retention costs.

Subscribe for more news from the world of social media

If you are completely new to the subject, we recommend getting accustomed with some social listening terminology. Below, you’ll find the most commonly used definitions, terms, and phrases used when talking about social listening. Consider this a baseline collection of terms needed to get going.

You can learn more social listening terms and definitions at social listening glossary .

When dealing with dozens of different platforms and literal billions of users, you need to cover thousands of different topics and conversations in order to stay up-to-date with trends and customer preferences.

This is why social listening tool , such as SentiOne, are so crucial. They utilise advanced algorithms for natural language processing , web crawling and parallel data processing. Don’t worry – you don’t need to know the inner workings of these tools.

The bottom line is that you get instant access to detailed results and an user-friendly interface which will enable you to complete your work easily.

But before we get to all that, let’s explain why social listening is so crucial for business.

Chapter 2 Benefits of social listening

The web brings countless opportunities – as such, it’s an indispensable resource for brands that aim to target specific groups, especially Millennials and Gen Z. The majority of people under the age of fifty use the Internet on a daily basis. The content generated by these people is an endless wellspring of valuable business insights (especially since the breakout of social media ). Provided you use the technique skillfully, social listening can help you on four basic levels.

Social listening allows you to get in touch with what your customers think. By analysing vast amounts of online discussions, you get incredible amounts of honest, unfiltered feedback about your (or your competitor’s) products and services. Managing all of that information by hand is impossible after a certain point – who has the time to go through hundreds of mentions?

The situation gets even more complicated if you’re tracking multiple keywords and topics. You also want to capture mentions that don’t tag your profile – and searching for them is a major headache.

Or it would be, were it not for social listening tools. They allow you to capture every single mention related to your keyword, even if they don’t tag your tracked profiles. This leaves you with an endless treasure trove of actionable insights – but how do you find what you’re looking for in this ocean of data?

Understand your digits. There’s no point in gathering thousands of online statements, comments, mentions if it doesn’t result in precise information. Vanity metrics – followers, likes, shares – aren’t the only thing that matters, after all. You should be interested in the people behind those numbers – after all, they are your potential customers.

Social listening tools can provide you with important data about your audience – their demographics, geographical location, sentiment analysis, the most popular communication channels… The list is endless . The information you gain in this manner should be the foundation of your social media communication strategy. It’s also a great source of consumer insights.

More on this topic: learn how to manage big data

With your online mentions gathered and filtered, you can discover the right audience and address them directly. You can join online conversations as they happen, reach out and react to your customers’ needs, and find exciting new sales opportunities. You can show that you truly care. After all, emotional perception plays a huge role in the sales process.

You can easily establish an emotional relationship with your customers by presenting yourself in an appropriate manner on social media. What’s more, social listening allows you to detect potential PR crises as they happen – and react before they can escalate.

Being engaged with your customers is never a bad thing – quite the opposite, in fact. By showing that you truly care about your customers, you can encourage more people to trust in your brand and commit to a purchase. Think of it as a long-term marketing strategy; in effect, that’s what it is.

More on this topic:

• empathic marketing
• social media strategy guide
• social media marketing guide for restaurants

Today, brands are expected to adapt to new circumstances almost instantly. This is why using technological solutions to save time is so crucial. By letting algorithms take care of the most recurring, time-consuming tasks, you get more room to breathe and figure out improvements to your processes.

With unlimited research results, precise analysis, brisk reputation management, you can show your agility. Social listening provides you with an unbiased evaluation of consumer preferences and needs. Use that information to optimise the way you communicate with consumers, get your ROI straight, and establish your position in the market.

In a nutshell, there are many ways you can use monitoring to your advantage. The key benefits of social listening are:

• Access to billions of online conversations
• Keeping up-to-date with real-time monitoring results
• In-depth social media data analysis
• Efficient online reputation management
• Preventing social media crises
• Building client relationships
• Discovering new sales opportunities
• Genuine feedback
• Optimising communication activities
• Control over brand perception online
• Learning trends for improvement

More on this topic: why online store owners should embrace online reviews

Chapter 3 Key objectives for social listening

As you can see, there are many reasons to use social listening. There are also many ways to do so. When you decide to try monitoring social media, make sure you devise a consistent strategy; preferably one depending on your goals and business niche.

It’s easy to get lost in the unlimited possibilities of tracking billions of online mentions. Stay focused in order to draw actionable insights from your social media data. Remember to think your projects through and keep your eye on the prize. You can mix and match all kinds of projects or choose to set them up one by one.

It’s all connected – if you join an online conversation about a subject that is connected to your product and provide a valuable voice, you’re simultaneously building brand awareness and authority, and finding leads. You don’t have to focus on separating these tasks. Simply take a moment, analyse your current position in the market, and prioritise your actions.

More on this topic: 12 types of social listeners

This is the approach for new businesses, new product launches – basically, all new things. To sell your product, address your audience using an appropriate approach. Speak their language! Change your tone of communication and design style depending on your potential buyers’ gender, geographical location, lifestyle, et cetera. Match your social media activities to your industry’s rush hours on social media. If you want to get to know your audience better with social listening, follow these steps:

• Pick keywords specific to your industry.
• Include these keywords in your search queries.
• Take a look at the statistics – gender analysis, geolocation, most popular sources, hour histogram.

This way you get the overview of who, where, and when is talking about the topics relevant to your brand and industry. You can then select the most representative group and create a targeted marketing strategy.

The takeaway: Use social media analysis to define your target.

Regardless of whether you are the only entity in your niche or if your industry is pretty much crammed, your brand needs to be recognisable. Perhaps you know all about the purchase funnel, also known as the marketing funnel, based on the AIDA model invented by St. Elmo Lewis in 1898.

The concept has obviously evolved since then – it had to adapt to new technologies. Still, it remains the basis of creating an effective product strategy. According to this concept, awareness is the first stage of a potential buyer’s metaphorical journey from not even knowing about your existence to falling in love with your product and binge-buying it.

Social media can be used as a space for subtle yet persistent reminders of your brand, whether by your community managers or your brand ambassadors – whom you can easily find using social listening. See who’s been talking about your brand online a lot while you’re tracking your brand mentions on the web.

The takeaway: Discover online discussions and join them to mark your presence or find brand ambassadors.

There’s this trend on the internet saying that you don’t need to trouble yourself with your business rivals. That when you concentrate on your goals, you will win in the long run. That you may lose your focus, time, and probably your mind, too, if you keep spying on them. But seriously, the things you can learn from your competitors – especially if you are a new player in the game.

Think of it as learning from others’ mistakes and achievements. A wise marketer will always stay aware of where their competitors are, if only to know that they’re ahead. In an ocean full of sharks, you need to find your niche and simply keep swimming to survive. This may sound harsh, but business isn’t just rainbows and unicorns, right?

Luckily, there are business intelligence techniques that allow you to spend just enough time to know what’s important and not waste time obsessing about irrelevant things. Social listening is one of these techniques. Gathering and comparing social mentions about you and your competitors can tell you a lot.

The number of mentions makes a difference but qualitative analysis is also important. Text mining algorithms let you see the sentiment of mentions; you can tell which sources are “it” for your industry. Additionally, precise mention analysis can show you where the spot for you to swoop in is.

The takeaway: Stay up-to-date with your industry thanks to social mention analysis.

More on this topic: business intelligence techniques

Remember door-to-door selling? There’s a big chance that if you told a travelling salesperson from the 1970s that one day people would sit at fancy offices and get leads through a big calculator connected to other big calculators, they would never believe you. Or that they would know which house in particular to visit because – given the interests of inhabitants – there’s a better chance that they will buy the product. Or that they no longer have to cover uncountable amounts of blocks because they could casually slip the topic of their product in a random conversation. Or even further, that potential buyers would ask all their friends and acquaintances which product to choose, allowing them to just swoop in.

The fact of the matter is, it’s almost impossible for a business to survive without the web. It’s not just about e-commerce, either! Even if most of your sales happen offline, you can try and find leads by joining discussions regarding your industry. Track keywords that reveal purchase intentions, filter mentions to match your target (e.g. by source) and gently try to connect with consumers. Remember to match your communication style to the people you are approaching; otherwise, you will look like an intruder or seem needy.

The takeaway: Find potential buyers on multiple sources specific to your industry and blend in.

The unlimited connections that the internet gives us sure improved the quality of life for most people. However, like all tools, the web should be used carefully. There are a lot of potential risks you’re facing when joining a social community: malicious behaviour, spiteful users, rumours, frustrated clients… It’s good to be aware of the potential threats and create a contingency plan.

With social listening and alerts triggered by negative mentions, you can avoid a crisis before it escalates. Sentiment analysis algorithms are based on linguistic expertise and natural language processing, which means that the system can automatically sort statements that are neutral, say nice things about your brand, or do you wrong.

Whether it’s rumours spread around the web or people’s negative reaction to your actions, you can never fully predict the extent of your activities. The important thing is to be ready to react, especially when you are taking a risk or your industry is facing hard times.

Sometimes it’s worth being bold rather than boring. Social listening should be your crucial asset in fragile times. Apparently nothing can break the speed of light – but have you ever seen a scandal spread?

By using a social media monitoring tool and properly setting up your alerts, you’ll be the first to know about any potential crises. This, in turn, allows you to take control of the situation before it escalates and resolve the problem before it becomes a PR nightmare.

The takeaway: Never underestimate the power of social media when it comes to a brand’s online reputation.

• how to manage social media crisis
• fake news, trolls, and other online issues guide

It’s no news that customer service and audience engagement via social media have become a must. This is the first line of brand-customer contact. Skilled PR and CS teams are a must – they are the foundations upon which you’ll build your brand reputation.

Social media is a space for both large players and their specific and well-targeted PPC campaigns, as well as new companies taking up the challenge. Whatever your approach, you need to consistently be present and responsive.

The more human-like the brand is, the better its perception by customers becomes. Tracking online conversations will help you discover your audience’s needs, likes, dislikes. Use that information to engage with your audience. Show them you care! By emphasising that your clients matter, you’ll enjoy a much higher retention rate.

The takeaway: Build relationships with your clients by discovering and satisfying their needs and preferences.

What is trust built on? A belief that you can rely on the person. It’s knowing that they won’t let you down. It’s a substantial confidence in their knowledge and abilities. Would you like your customers to trust your brand? Well, give them a reason – Be reliable, dependable, and competent.

Building brand authority is a must. People will more likely buy what you offer if you know your stuff. But how on earth are they going to know that you know? The secret of charismatic brands is – amongst other things – sharing their know-how. Provide enough value to engage your consumers to sit up and listen.

That’s why content marketing is so in. We want to learn and trust our teachers. Of course, it can be tricky. If you create content that’s merely related to your industry, you will get a lot of traffic and awareness, and maybe some authority too – but what you’re really aiming for is to win your clients over. You want to help them buy your product and stay with you for some time after that – because they trust you.

To do so, try a direct approach. Feel free to share your experiences whenever you discover some stray sheep. Try not to brag or appear as a buffoon, though. Join online conversations regarding your industry and mark your presence as an expert who is open to a scholarly discussion.

The takeaway: Improve your conversion rates with a mix of professionalism and charisma.

If you discover signs that your product (or service) could use an upgrade but you have no idea where to start, asking around is always a great idea. Create a survey and ask your clients, ask their neighbours, ask your mum. Ask anyone who is willing to share their opinion – the more feedback you get, the more fool-proof the statistics.

Imagine if you could get unlimited and totally unbiased feedback. Oh, wait. You totally can! Use social listening and find out precisely what your clients have to say about your product.

What you should consider, though, is that to take the effort of writing a post about a brand online, a person needs to have strong feelings. Sometimes they are not enjoyable feelings. Try to remember that your statistics might be influenced by more outliers than in offline surveys. That is the price of honesty.

The takeaway: Explore your social mentions and get a true view of how your brand is perceived to make progress.

Chapter 4 Best practices for social listening

If you are new to social listening, learn from the best. Out of the many different real-life use cases for online monitoring, these are the common characteristics that we’ve identified. Base your approach on these examples and build your own social listening strategy. To discover the true potential of social media data, focus on these points:

• Find social mentions about your brand and see if you are talked about – if so, how often? What are the common associations with your brand?
• When setting up your first project, try to gather all of the different variations of your brand’s name (from the SEM point of view even misspelt words may count) and put them into your query.
• Compare your numbers with sentiment analysis ; this may uncover a potential crisis (if the number of mentions is unusually high and most of them are negative).
• Don’t just listen – react! Think of social media monitoring as a vehicle on your way to brand image management and strong customer relationships. You can use it to get to the destination faster but you still need to steer the wheel. Respond to mentions of your brand (especially if they are negative).
• Draw general conclusions from social analytics . There’s a time for focusing on each mention and a time for taking a bird’s eye view of your audience. Match your product to their preferences and personalise your communication accordingly.
• Confront trends with your audience’s preferences . Discover the most popular sources among the people interested in your field and the general public. Make note of the difference.
• Compare your brand to its competitors in precise analytics like gender analysis, geolocation, hour histograms, and mention sources. Find your leverage and spot the niche.
• Double-check your ideas and decisions with your audience . Listen to the customers’ voices and show that you truly care.
• Find out what the rush hours in your market are – and double your efforts to make sure you are up-to-date and always on time.
• If you’re looking for an influencer to work with, take their reach and relevance to consideration and check their audience engagement. Don’t fall for vanity metrics! Instead, find a charismatic expert who matches your brand strategy.
• Carefully listen to the questions and issues your potential clients have and address them to become a trustworthy brand. Use these insights to create your content strategy to benefit from inbound marketing.
• Try social proof as a selling point , if you find it useful. Find out how many people were satisfied with your product or service and highlight the data.
• Use the possibility for one on one communication with prospects you discover on social media. Don’t underestimate any potential client. Do your best to contact them directly .

More on this topic: 10 reasons for social listening webinar

Chapter 5 How brands are using social listening?

There are more and more brands using social listening as a part of their business strategy. The reasons and ways to do so can be talked about at length – but there’s nothing like a real-life example. According to statistics ,

a brand can increase their activity rate by about 25% and decrease reaction time on social channels by 50 minutes in just a year of using online monitoring and reputation management platform.

The most spectacular effects of good social listening can be observed with the naked eye. Consumers that are exceptionally happy or frustrated with companies often share their experiences on social media. In a lot of cases, though, they won’t tag your profiles – as such, a social listening tool is your only way to find these mentions. That, or counting on another brand capturing your mention and notifying you directly, like what happened with Virgin Mobile:

Sincere efforts are always appreciated by consumers!

Of course, you should be on the lookout for competitors using social listening to capture your unsatisfied customers. All’s fair in love, war, and business, as they say.

Whether you’re at fault or not, it’s always a smart move to apologise. This way, you can demonstrate that you’re not afraid to take direct responsibility for a mistake and that you’re ready and willing to make amends with your customers. It’s also a learning opportunity – can you improve your processes based on conclusions drawn from any negative interaction?

Chapter 6 How to set up social listening?

When you decide to commit to our advanced social listening solution, make sure you take the time to learn all of its capabilities. Make the most out of SentiOne!

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The first step is always the same – you need to set up your social listening project. Open up the Projects module, click on the +Create a new project button and choose one of the following:

In this scenario, you simply monitor a brand name. Start small and focus on your own brand – as your social listening skills grow, use this to add competition analysis.

In the “include” box, type in your brand name and you will get a quick preview of the mentions concerning your brand.

To see all of the captured mentions, you need to save the project and go to the Mentions module – we’ll get to that later. Within the project set-up phase, you get a preview and the total number of gathered mentions as a sneak peek.

If you see anything you don’t want to insert in your analysis later on, simply exclude the relevant phrases using the “exclude” box or the drop-down in the upper-right corner of each mention. With the latter option, you can exclude the chosen author, domain or just the URL. Next to the total number of mentions, you can see how the numbers change with your changes.

The real fun starts after you save your project, so don’t forget to do so! At this moment, you can decide whether to create a dashboard for this project (which we highly recommend) and a daily summary of your mentions.

With this type of project, you can search for keywords within specified social profiles (like Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, YouTube channels etc.) The including and excluding part of the process looks basically the same as in the Brand scenario. If you authorise your social accounts, you get data from your private messages as well as the ability to track reviews and dark posts.

Here you can create projects that don’t neatly fit into a category. On a technical level, it doesn’t differ from the Brand scenario, but this option provides you with additional options in order to fine-tune your listening strategy.

Please note that there’s a difference when you put your monitoring phrase in quotation marks – in that case, the system will only look for the exact phrase. Otherwise, it will look for all words typed into the “include” box separately.

After you save your brand new social listening project, you will get taken to the Mentions module where you can play around. You can filter the gathered mentions by time, sources, sentiment, and more. Scroll away and read them carefully! If any of them catch your attention, you can go straight to the source and join the conversation.

The next step is the analytics of gathered social data. To do so, go to the Dashboard module and see a visual data analysis.

We highly recommend using the “Customize” button in the upper-right corner. It allows you to mix and match widgets to your needs and preferences. Also, each of the widgets gives you the ability to change its settings or download the analysis as raw data or an image.

One of the most important steps of social listening in terms of crisis management is setting up automated alerts. In SentiOne, you have many options to customise your alert depending on what you want to achieve. You can choose to get emails or in-app notifications, with the summary of social mentions divided by type and sentiment. This way, you will always stay up-to-date.

Follow the steps above to make sure your social listening goes smoothly. When you master the first stage and are ready for a higher state of enlightenment, SentiOne is ready to take the next step with you. Because it’s based on the most sophisticated proprietary algorithms, it provides its users with unparalleled capabilities.

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Go through the warm-up and double-check with our manual in the Help section if you need more technical information. Also, feel free to contact us with questions or more advanced needs, as you go further along this road.

The Ultimate Social Listening Guide - Never Miss a Social Mention

Philippa Dods

Mar 15, 2023

20 min. read

Every day billions of conversations take place on social media: tweets, posts, comments, blogs, reviews, podcasts, and much more. 

Whatever business you’re in, it’s almost certain that many of those discussions will be relevant to you. People talking about your brand , competitors, the industry you work in, the problems you could help them with, and many other topics that could provide valuable insights for your organization.

But how do you find and make sense of those insights, when they’re buried under a rapidly growing mountain of social media data? 

This is what social listening tools and social media monitoring tools are for. They search social media for you and sift through those huge volumes of social data to extract just the pieces that are relevant to you, by searching for specific words and phrases, such as your brand name.

This produces a smaller, more manageable dataset made up only of the social media content that is specifically relevant to you, which can then be analyzed to provide useful insights.

And this isn't only relevant for social media marketing . Any company can benefit from a social listening strategy, as it will help you to better understand your potential customers and create data-driven marketing campaigns that will align with your business goals.

Table of Contents

Making sense of social media data, what is social listening.

With the Right Social Media Listening Tool, Companies Can:

Why Use Social Media Listening Tools?

What are the Benefits of Social Media Listening?

What types of data can be measured through social listening, the different ways of using social listening, using social media reporting effectively, how to start your social listening project.

In a typical day on social media 1.4 billion people log on to Facebook , 500 million Tweets are sent, and 95 million photos are shared on Instagram.

Social media listening platforms give people the power to easily explore all of this data to find meaningful information that can help them make better-informed business decisions.

Social media listening tools enable companies to identify hidden trends and patterns (via trend detection , trend forecasting , and trendspotting ) amongst those billions of online conversations, spotting risks and opportunities that might otherwise pass them by.

This article will cover the basics of social listening and how you can use it to benefit your business and brand.

Social listening is also known as social media listening or social media monitoring . It refers to the activity of discovering and analyzing content published on social media platforms , usually by focusing on a specific search term such as a brand name.

Current social listening platforms aggregate data from a wide range of sources, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, Pinterest, blogs, discussion forums, and consumer reviews sites. With AI voice recognition technology, they can even scan the content of podcasts.

If you're looking for some podcasts to inspire you, take a look at the best financial podcasts , the best PR podcasts , the best retail podcasts , the best social media podcasts , the best SEO podcasts , the best Shopify podcasts , the best eCommerce podcasts , the top branding podcasts , and the best tech podcasts out there.

Tip: With social listening, you can easily find out about important social media statistics and make use of specific social media analytics like...

• YouTube Stats
• Twitter Stats
• Twitter Analytics ( Twitter Impressions & Reach )
• YouTube Statistics
• Instagram Statistics
• Instagram Analytics ( Twitter Impressions & Reach )
• Instagram Trends

With social listening data, you can also dig down regionally. You can for example find social media statistics for Australia , social media statistics for the Philippines , social media statistics for Hong Kong , social media statistics for Singapore , social media statistics for Indonesia , social media statistics for Malaysia , UK social media statistics , social media statistics for Sweden , South African social media statistics or UAE social media statistics .

Social media can be broadly defined as any kind of media that makes it easy for members of the public to create and share content online, without specialist skills or equipment. A Social listening tool like Meltwater , therefore, is always seeking to add data sources from new platforms as they grow in popularity.

Businesses typically use social media to gain a deeper understanding of how consumers feel about their brands and products . But they can also learn a lot of other things, like what people think about their competitors , what gaps there might be in the market for new products, and what rising social media trends could change their industry.

Simply fill out the form at the end of this blog.

With the Right Social Media Listening Tool, Companies Can: 

• Oversee their brand reputation
• Feed automated Social Walls for events, websites, or their intranet
• Fight fake news on social media
• Uncover competitive intelligence
• Analyze, predict, and detect trends (e.g. marketing trends , social media trends , or Instagram trends )
• Identify consumer insights

Thanks to increased computational horsepower, it’s now possible for social listening platforms to ingest data in near real-time . That means when something is posted on Twitter, that content is available for analysis within the listening platform almost immediately afterward.

The results of users’ search queries are presented to them in a number of different ways, depending on their requirements: 

• Social media reports – these can be automatically produced at regular intervals and distributed via email from the platform, usually in PDF format, containing all of the required metrics. Tip: You can use the Meltwater Social Media Analytics Feature or other social media analytics tools to automate your reporting process, take a look at our Complete Guide to Social Media Reporting , or download our Ultimate Guide to Social Media Reporting for free .
• Social media dashboards – provide a live view of your metrics using interactive widgets that enable you to explore the data from different perspectives, narrowing down or broadening searches, to uncover patterns and trends. 
• Real-time Alerting – when you just want to know if something important happens, like if there’s a sudden spike in brand mentions or a swing in sentiment, which could indicate a potential crisis that requires immediate action. 

Why Use Social Media Listening Tools ?

A lot of companies already use common ways of keeping an eye on their reputation — be it in the form of print monitoring , broadcast monitoring , measuring media coverage , or in the form of creating media analysis reports . So why not use tools for social listening in the same sense?

Social media use continues to grow year over year, even among the more mature platforms. In fact, since the pandemic of 2020, research found that people began spending even more time on social media, an unsurprising consequence of being in lockdown with limited opportunities to socialize in person. COVID-19 has also changed the future of marketing in that sense.

Social media is never static, it’s constantly growing and evolving. But one thing that doesn’t change is that when people use these platforms to create, share, and consume content, they leave a trail of digital breadcrumbs. That record of their online behavior is what we call social data .

--> Here you can read more about why Social Listening is important at all levels of business. Also, take a look at the best social listening tools and the best social media monitoring tools on the market.

Social Listening Case Study – Pride in London

Pride in London  use Meltwater’s social media listening tool to make sense of conversations taking place online. Stephen Ward, Deputy Chair and Communications Director at Pride in London discusses the value of social listening.

Social listening helps us better understand whether key messages are resonating or becoming lost in the noise. We measure messages using volume and sentiment metrics. Looking at the tonality of conversations is particularly helpful in ensuring we continue to be objective with regard to the success of our campaigns.

Pride also use Meltwater to track their community growth and ROI. Their tremendous growth, both online and offline, is clearly reflected in the numbers.

In 2013-2014 Pride grew by 135%, from 2014-2015 growth peaked to 215% and indications suggest 2016’s community growth will follow the same trend. I attribute such positive growth to authentic engagement- reflecting community views in our messaging and bringing them to a wider audience through fully integrated and interactive campaigns. Says Stephen Ward, Deputy Chair and Communications Director at Pride in London.

Social data includes the actual content of people’s posts and comments, and also their likes, shares, and other engagements. Almost everything that happens in social media creates social data, which can all be analyzed in a social listening platform like Meltwater's .

Social Insights and Social Media Analytics

When people talk about social listening, they use the word “ insights ” a lot, but what does it actually mean? It’s quite an ambiguous term, but in the context of social media analytics , it typically refers to valuable information discovered through analyzing social data. Generally speaking, this is information that has hitherto gone unnoticed, and probably would not have been easily identified through any other means. 

Insights from social analytics could be discovered as a result of a deliberate and methodical analysis with the purpose of solving a specific problem, or they can simply be found by luck when examining the data. 

Some examples of social insights could be:

• Comments expressing positive sentiment about your brand or product correlating strongly with a particular demographic.
• Negative sentiment being strongly linked to comments around a specific feature or attribute of your product.
• An increase in people talking about your brand, correlated to a particular time of the month, or coinciding with a regular event.

Tip: Learn more about how sentiment analysis works.

These are basic examples. Somebody who is skilled in the use of social media listening platforms would be able to perform a more sophisticated analysis of the data, to find deeper, less obvious insights.

Social insights are based on observation and analysis of social conversations around a brand or problem and, as we will see, can lead to strategic decision making .

In many respects, social listening has replaced focus groups as a source of market research for brands seeking to understand consumer’s opinions. There are a number of reasons for this: 

• Social listening makes it possible to listen to a much wider and more diverse audience – it enables you to tap into the ideas and opinions of billions of people all around the world.
• It mitigates the problem of response bias commonly found in surveys and interviews because the data comes from people expressing themselves freely on social media. 
• It’s a much quicker and easier option . Focus groups take time and resources to organize, whereas social media listening can be done very quickly, as often as required. 
• Social listening is real-time – it gives you up-to-the-minute data on what people are saying about a topic right now. 
• The process requires less budget , less time , and fewer human resources – only a computer and a social media listening tool are necessary.

Social listening can’t entirely replace market research , but it certainly makes it easier for marketers to get faster answers to a lot of questions. Professional market researchers are highly skilled in constructing research and surveys and analyzing responses, but this expertise comes with a cost overhead. 

This means that businesses now tend to use market research tools and consultancies for specific, large-budget projects where a high degree of certainty is required. Social listening is able to complement such projects and serve as a more accessible everyday source of market intelligence .

form at the bottom of this article

Simply put, quantitative data gets you the numbers to prove the broad general points of your research. Qualitative data , on the other hand, brings you the details and the depth to understand their full implications. The two are complementary and, in order to fully understand data, both are usually needed.

1. Quantitative Data

• The number of social mentions:  the number of times a specific keyword (a product, brand, expression, or hashtag ) is mentioned on social media
• The scope of the social mentions:  the number of Internet users potentially exposed to a message, calculated according to the audience of the people that have shared the message
• The number of engagements:  the number of interactions between users and content

Tip: Check out the most trending hashtags in Australia and the most trending hashtags in South Africa .

Quantitative data can be divided into two categories:

• Descriptive data:  Gives you a trend or key figures, such as the number of new subscribers, engagements, impressions, or clicks.
• Actionable data:  Contextualises this information by deepening the analysis. Answers questions such as; Where do my new subscribers come from? What type of content receives the most engagement? At what time should I post to get the most amount of impressions?

2. Qualitative Data

Qualitative data helps companies to better understand numbers. This is achieved by listening to online exchanges and conversations by consumers, which are undoubtedly full of useful information. If the quantitative data tells us what’s going on, the qualitative data helps us understand  why  this is happening.

There are two primary, or most useful, examples of qualitative data: sentiment analysis and trend analysis .

Sentiment analysis

The development of semantic analysis technologies has made sentiment analysis possible. This lets us know if a keyword, phrase, or name is mostly negative, positive or neutral, and is an extremely useful indicator for assessing the perception of a product, update, company, campaign, or CEO. By identifying peaks and dips in sentiment, we have a much better chance of understanding how audiences feel about a particular topic . It’s also useful in determining high positives – which may be due to an influencer having posted about you – or extreme negatives – which is often the tell-tale sign of a crisis.

Trend analysis

No one has the ability to read through the millions of posts shared every day, but it is possible to automatically analyze correlations between exchanges and extract conversational tendencies. This is perfect for companies wanting to understand the context in which your brand or product is being talked about, and with which themes it is associated.

How is social data recovered?

• On social media networks:  Most of the main social media networks have their own range of statistics and analysis tools, accessible through the users' business profiles. The data they provide can be great to use to understand the performance of your profiles and single posts.
• With social media engagement management tools:  Many social media management tools provide more advanced automated analysis for a more in-depth understanding of the data on social media. For example, Meltwater Engage enables companies to manage all social accounts from one platform and schedule posts to targeted audiences – saving social media managers time and effort – as well as benchmarking against competitors and measuring the impact of media strategies.
• With social media listening tools and social media monitoring tools :  For the most exhaustive analysis possible, it’s best to focus on not only your current community but those interested in your competitors and the wider industry.

Did you know? Salesforce Social Studio will soon be closed down. Learn how to prepare for the Salesforce Social Studio Sunset sunset.

• Reputation : Keep track of all social mentions of your brand and products to understand how your company is being perceived and what topics are surrounding it.
• Crisis Watch/prevention: Anticipate crises and limit the chances of them going full scale by tracking your brand’s sentiment and potentially negative keywords. This allows companies to react as quickly as possible if something comes up.
• Crisis Damage: Measure the scale of crisis damage and the impact of your recovery by benchmarking your brand sentiment in the months before and after a crisis.
• Competitive Intelligence : Analyze the communication, news, and reputation of your competitors. Social media listening can enable you to predict trends, remain up-to-date with industry innovation, and stay ahead of competitors.
• Trend Report: Identify key topics that drive conversations in your market. By understanding the relevant themes your target audience is talking about, you can discover technologies or trends that your company could be pioneers in.
• Lead Generation: Discover exciting new business opportunities by listening for any aspect of your product or business along with “How To” or “Which Tool Do I Choose,” and engage with these consumers and their community.

All of this social data isn't going to be very helpful unless it can be presented to people in a way that's useful to them, and that's what social media reporting is for.

Social media monitoring tools generally enable you to build reports that feature all of the key metrics and KPIs that are important to you and then have them automatically generated and distributed as often as required, whether that's weekly, monthly, or quarterly reports.

Once this functionality is properly configured and running on auto-pilot, it means that all of your stakeholders can receive their regular social media report that contains insights from you social listening efforts, without you needing to waste a lot of time manually pulling the data together and putting it into a presentation-ready format. The social media reporting tool should do all of the heavy lifting for you.

What kind of information should a social media report include?

• Keyword mention trends:  This most fundamental metric shows how frequently your brand (and other important keywords) are being discussed in social media, and whether that's trending up or down over time.
• Sentiment analysis trends : Are positive or negative discussions of your brand increasing or decreasing? This is another key metric that's a great indicator of brand health and can give you an early warning sign of a crisis or opportunity that requires a fast response.
• Related themes:  Tools like word clouds provide an easy-to-understand way of showing the most commonly used words and phrases in discussions relating to your brand in a social media report. They add context to the keyword and sentiment trends, by social reporting the topics that are driving those trends.
• Locations:  Social listening tools can help you understand where in the world people are talking about your brand. So if your social media report shows that there's a sudden unexpected spike of brand mentions in, say, New Zealand, you'll know that there's something interesting happening that needs to be investigated.
• Influencers:  A key element of social media marketing is understanding who are the most influential voices in your market. Social media listening software can identify the people who have the most clout in relevant conversations and include them in your regular social reporting.
• Social Media Channels:   It's important to use brand tracking (aka brand monitoring ) via brand tracking software / brand monitoring tools to know where people are talking about your brand the most. Twitter? Facebook? Blogs? Discussion forums? You can't engage with people if you don't know where they are, so your social media reports should include this information. For more details check out our blog about Facebook monitoring and learn how to stay on top of Chinese social media sites and apps like Little Red Book or Bilibili using the Meltwater Chinese social media capabilities . We also support the unique case of Korean social media and have a list of the top Asian News Channels & Websites to follow .

Follow our step-by-step process to get your company's social listening strategy off the ground!

1. Define your goals

• What do you want to get out of the tool?
• Do you want to know your consumer better?
• Stay ahead of your competition?
• Protect your reputation from a crisis?

2. Determine channels to monitor

Think about your goals and whether they are achievable on the social media channels where your audience hangs out. Any good social listening tool will be able to showcase which channels your audience is communicating on. If, for example, your goal is to drive people to your website, Instagram isn’t the best platform for this as you’re pretty restrictive when it comes to where you can post a link.

3. Choose the right tools

We’ve provided a few tips to help with your search for the perfect social listening tool below:

• Consider the search mode: Searches can become quite complex, so it’s imperative that you filter your searches to only what is most relevant (especially if you are a company with a generic name like Apple ). Get to grips with how the Boolean searches work to really amplify the impact that social media listening can have on your brand.
• Filter in customer service: Some social media listening tools, like Meltwater’s , come with dedicated Account Managers, enabling you to get the most out of the tool – not to mention the fact that Account Managers are especially helpful in times of a crisis, which you never know might hit!

4. Set up alerts

To really stay on top of your game, set up alerts so that you never miss an important social mention of your brand, competitor, or industry. You can choose whether you want to be alerted on all mentions or as soon as a crisis or major trend emerges.

5. Analyze and compare your social media metrics

In a couple of very simple steps, you can create a visually appealing page of insights that can be understood with ease. We call these dashboards . Social media dashboards enable you to see all your most important social media metrics at first glance.

Dashboards are custom-made, so you can be as high-level or granular as you want. This typically depends on the person using the dashboard to make sense of the conversation. For example, your social media manager will be interested in starting a conversation with influencers compared to your CEO who may be interested in seeing social media share of voice. The dashboard can analyze a whole range of metrics including trending themes, media exposure, sentiment analysis, or share of voice.

6. Share your results

Meltwater also offers a branded reporting service which is part of the social analytics you get, using the insights found through social media listening. Similar to the dashboards, the reports are compiled specifically for you and include whichever stats and insights you choose. You can then share your hard work and the results with colleagues, clients, or whichever department the results concern using our Newsletter feature .

Create an action plan : Social media listening is not just about social monitoring, but also about taking action. Some tools provide such thorough analysis and actionable insights that creating a plan of action is quick and easy. In the fast-paced, digitized world we live in, being able to make these kinds of plans and decisions quickly is crucial.

Get Started with the Meltwater Social Listening Suite Today

Want to learn more about social listening, reporting, and engaging with Meltwater? Fill out the form below and contact us today!

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Social Listening Case Study

Social listening case study.

For organizations that are considering adopting social listening, a social listening case study is a great way to get inspired and find out how other brands are using social listening platforms to support their business initiatives. A social listening case study can help you develop or refine your own social listening strategy and ensure that you get the full benefits of this powerful technology that global brands are now leveraging to grow their business and stay competitive. With the right tool and an effective strategy, social listening can help you uncover surprising opportunities to evolve your marketing strategy, expand your product line, engage consumers, and lead the market.

Social listening case study summary: Celcom uses Synthesio to support digital transformation

Celcom, a leading telecommunications brand based in Malaysia, was embarking on an extensive digital transformation at their company. They were planning to upgrade their social media and digital strategies and wanted to boost the performance of their digital marketing campaigns and the ROI of their social media marketing initiatives.

According to the social listening case study, Celcom used Synthesio, a robust social listening platform, to collect and analyze mentions of their brand, products, competitors, and industry-related keywords from across social channels. They employed social listening to measure and track brand health, better understand their target audience for ad campaigns, and find and evaluate the impact of influencers. Using Synthesio Beam, they created a social media command center to share real-time metrics and social media insights with internal stakeholders.

Social listening case study summary: Imagination partners with Synthesio to provide insights to clients

Imagination is an innovative marketing agency that specializes in creating experiences. Because of the nature of their work, they found social listening to be critical in showing clients the impact and value of their productions. They used Synthesio’s social media listening software to measure audience engagement with brand experiences, leveraging data on sentiment, share of voice, and share of interactions.

As shown in the social listening case study, Imagination worked with Synthesio to develop their own Connected Experiences Index, which is used to rank brand experiences and demonstrate how social amplification can bring other audiences into an experience even if its members are not physically present. Leveraging social listening data, they were able to prove that deeply engaging experiences foster greater brand loyalty and have a more positive impact on audiences. By sharing social listening insights with their clients, they have solidified their position as thought leaders in the marketing industry.

Social listening case study summary: Paprika leverages Profiler to double client’s marketing ROI

A creative agency that helps brands deliver high-impact campaigns, Paprika used Synthesio’s Social Media Intelligence Suite to assist their client in boosting the ROI of their Black Friday ad campaign. According to the social listening case study, they employed Synthesio’s powerful audience insights tool Profiler to identify their client’s most valuable audience and discover the demographic, psychographic, and other characteristics of their target audience to create more engaging messaging and content. They used anonymous customer data to build target personas, or profiles of the ideal customer, which helped them develop a more effective targeted campaign and double their client’s ROI. Synthesio enabled them to transform their client’s data into actionable insights that can be used to optimize their marketing campaigns.

Partner with Synthesio to get accurate insights into your brand, customers, and campaigns

Global brands choose Synthesio because it provides them with the robust social listening capabilities and enterprise-scale analytics they need to monitor their brand, their customers, and their competitors across multiple social platforms, regions, and languages. Synthesio supports social listening for over 80 languages and offers broad-reaching social data coverage.

Using Synthesio’s Dashboards for Social Listening, your teams can view and filter real-time mentions of your brand’s name and other specified terms by topic, media type, source, language, location, sentiment, and Synthesio Rank—alongside use-case based social media KPIs. With Synthesio Rank, you can focus on the mentions, sites, and people with the most influence. And leveraging Automated Sentiment Analysis, you can get notified when critical comments or rising negative sentiment is detected, letting your customer care or PR teams act fast to resolve the situation.

DDC Is Owning the Conversation Through Social Intelligence

“DDC partnered with Synthesio to incorporate detailed and comprehensive Social Intelligence into their client campaigns and is now leveraging the full power of social data to shape online results.”

What is a social listening case study?

What are some use cases for social listening, what is social listening and why is it important, share this story, choose your platform, related posts.

AI Social Media

Audience Analysis

Audience Insights

What Is Social Listening, Why It Matters + 14 Tools To Help

Learn how to use social listening to monitor social media channels for mentions of your brand, competitors, product, and more.

Table of Contents

If you don’t have a social listening strategy, you’re missing out on some of the most valuable data available to help build your business.

In fact, nearly two-thirds of marketers agree that social listening has increased in value in the last year.

Social media listening tools allow you to build a solid understanding of exactly how customers and potential customers think about you by analyzing what they say on social channels. You can also learn what they think about the competition. This is incredible market research readily available in real-time, as long as you know how to access it.

Watch Hootsuite’s own social media expert, Nick Martin, explain the three steps of social listening in the video below:

Bonus : Discover the best way to gather insights and intel from your audience, competitors, industry, and favorite aspirational brands in our complete guide to advanced social listening .

What is social listening?

Social listening is the practice of monitoring social media channels for mentions of your brand, competitor brands, and related keywords.

Through social listening, you can track every mention of your brand on social media in real-time. This will give you valuable insights into how customers feel about your products or services, what their pain points are, and what they’d like to see from you in the future.

But social listening isn’t just about tracking mentions of your brand. You can also use it to track competing brands , trending content , and sentiment analysis on topics related to your business.

This intelligence can be used to inform everything from marketing and product strategy to customer service and support, helping you make smarter, data-driven decisions that will have a positive impact on your business’s bottom line.

Create. Schedule. Publish. Engage. Measure. Win.

What’s the difference between social listening and social monitoring?

While social media listening is a proactive way to track, analyze, and respond to online conversations, social media monitoring is more reactive .

Social monitoring looks at specific brand mentions and sends alerts whenever your brand is mentioned online. It is sometimes referred to as brand monitoring . It can be useful for quickly responding to any negative sentiment or complaints , but it doesn’t give you a big-picture view of what people are saying about your brand or industry.

Social listening, on the other hand, gives you a complete overview of all online conversations related to your brand, products, industry, and competitors. This holistic approach provides valuable insights that can help you make strategic decisions about your marketing and social media strategy.

In short, if you want to stay on top of the latest trends and see what people are saying about your brand over time , you need a social listening strategy.

How can a social listening strategy help your business?

If you’re not using social media listening, you’re creating your business strategy with blinders on. Real people actively talk about your brand and your industry online . It’s in your best interest to know what they have to say.

Simply put, if you care about your customers, you care about the insights you can get from social listening . Here are some of the ways social listening can benefit your business.

Understand your audience

Social media listening helps you better understand what your audience wants from your brand.

For example, an existing customer might tweet about how much they love your product. Or, you might spot a conversation where people are looking for solutions your product or service could provide.

In both cases, you can use this valuable feedback to improve your offering and make your customers happier.

Spotify has built an entire Twitter account around this idea. @SpotifyCares actively listens and responds to users who have questions or concerns and offers daily tips, tricks, and feature updates to its followers.

This way, they can provide world-class customer service, build loyalty, and improve their product all at the same time.

Sometimes you need to switch things up 🔄 Here’s how to change your Spotify Premium plan: https://t.co/8Jh9CRNVzm pic.twitter.com/LQXuRQQw9d — SpotifyCares (@SpotifyCares) June 1, 2022

Business and product intelligence

Monitoring conversations around the industry also uncovers a ton of insight about what’s working—and what’s not—for existing and potential customers.

This information is a gold mine for your customer service, product development, and marketing teams.

For example, Zappos’ social team gained some important information here to pass on to the UX team:

Oh gosh, I am so sorry for any troubles you're having with using AfterPay + VIP shipping! If you send us a DM or call in, we can look into this for ya. 🤔 — Zappos.com (@Zappos) September 25, 2022

Why not tweak an existing product or add a feature to resolve problems people are talking about? Maybe what you learn will spur a new product idea.

Social listening can also help you learn about frustrations with your current products—and your competitors’ products. Can you modify products, shipments, or campaigns to help address customer concerns? If you do, tell people about it with a targeted marketing campaign .

Crisis management

Social listening allows you to track sentiment in real-time , so you can know right away if there’s a significant change in how much people are talking about you or the mood behind what they say.

Missed McDonald’s breakfast by two minutes pic.twitter.com/2LAo0gByPg — ☻ (@ewwwgeo) October 19, 2022

It’s like an early warning system that alerts you to positive and negative changes in how your brand is perceived online.

If you’re getting more engagement than usual , look for the reasons behind it. Your audience shares loads of helpful information about what they like and what they don’t. Those lessons can help guide your strategy across channels.

If sentiment is down, review the social feedback to try to identify the source of the change. While you’re at it, look for lessons that could prevent a similar misstep in the future. This can help you address PR disasters before they get out of hand.

Customer relationships and acquisition

People generally love it when you offer to help solve their problems. But strangers on the Internet most certainly do NOT love it when brands jump into their social conversations with a hard sell.

While social listening can help you uncover questions and conversations about your industry on social platforms, it should not be seen as an opening to jump in and try to sell right off the bat.

Instead, view the conversation you join through social listening as an opportunity to develop relationships with potential customers in your industry who you can nurture into relationships for social selling .

Yes to all of these. ESPECIALLY the third one 🦉 https://t.co/3QJ7IRlBDt — Hootsuite 🦉 (@hootsuite) October 14, 2022

Reach out, make a connection, and share helpful information. This will help establish your brand as the best resource when it comes time to make a purchase decision.

Collaboration opportunities

Monitoring social conversations about your industry will give you a sense of who the important creators and thought leaders are in your space. These are important people to connect with. They can have a huge influence on how people feel about you.

Remember: this is a two-way street. Supporting others in your industry makes it more likely they will support you in return. Rather than trying to barge into an existing community, connect through collaborations with people who already hold a meaningful place in the conversations you want to join.

Social listening will help you find ways to become a part of relevant online communities organically and in a way that’s perceived as helpful rather than sales-y.

You’ll also find people who already love your brand and are saying great things about you on social media platforms. These are natural brand advocates . Reach out to them and look for opportunities to collaborate in meaningful ways.

As stated in Hootsuite’s Trends Report:

“If people within the community see you as an active partner in supporting the creators they admire, they’ll be more likely to trust that you have their best interests at heart too.”

Competitor and industry trends

Social listening is more than understanding what people say about you. You also want to know what they say about your competitors and your industry in general. This gives you important insights into where you fit in the marketplace.

Social listening shows you what your competitors are up to in real-time. Are they launching new products? Developing new social media marketing campaigns?

For example, when Wendy’s made a play on the Facebook/Meta brand update , Arby’s was quick to jump in:

Chill @Wendys 🥶 – We Have The Meats 😉 https://t.co/64UnbhL3Zw — Arby's (@Arbys) October 28, 2021

Maybe the conversations you find will reveal a gap in the marketplace you could step up to fill.

Discovering these new opportunities and threats as they happen allows you to plan and respond on the fly.

Uncover market trends

We all know how fast the social media landscape changes. What’s viral one day is passé the next. Staying on top of these trends is essential to ensure your content strategy is current—and that you’re not missing out on key conversations.

By tracking relevant keywords and hashtags that are related to your industry, you can get a pulse on the latest trends in your industry and make sure you’re always ahead of the curve .

We’re so happy to hear you’re loving these, Ian — even happier that you’re part of #TeamPixel ! 🤩🙌 — Made by Google (@madebygoogle) October 18, 2022

You can also use social listening to predict future trends by analyzing not only what people are talking about now but also how those conversations have changed over time. This will give you a good idea of what topics are gaining momentum and which ones are losing steam.

These valuable insights can shape your content strategy, product development, and marketing campaigns.

Improve campaign targeting

Personalization is key to any social advertising campaign . Your audience wants to feel like you’re speaking to them directly  and not just churning out generic content.

Social listening can help you gain a deep understanding of your target audience. You can figure out what issues they care about , what kind of language they use , and what content resonates with them . Think of it like a survey that’s always running in the background.

This understanding will inform every aspect of your campaign , from the copy to the visuals, and help you create content that speaks directly to your audience.

• Customers talking about social burnout? Build a work-life balance guide to show you care.
• People in your target region complaining about the weather? Create a short-term sale on season-appropriate items.
• Seeing an uptick in small business for social media requests? Why not build an entire campaign to help them out?

14 social listening tools that will do the research for you

Once you know what you want to listen for, it’s time to start using some social listening platforms. Here are the best social media marketing tools for social listening you should be using.

1. Hootsuite

You can use Hootsuite to set up social media streams that monitor conversations, keywords, mentions, and hashtags. 

You can also monitor and respond to conversations or mentions immediately from your social media dashboard —instead of logging in and out of various social platforms.

Hootsuite also allows you to keep an ear to the ground in your industry by monitoring the competition and building relationships with social media creators (a.k.a. influencers ) and potential brand advocates.

Social listening is one of the features that Hootsuite customers love best about our product.

“Game changer for marketers” “…[with] streams, you can get any important activity from any and all platforms on all accounts with a quick glance, being freed from checking into every platform from every account; if somebody retweets or mentions you, you will know ASAP and be able to respond accordingly.” – Aacini H., CFO & Marketing Director

2. Talkwalker

Talkwalker offers robust social listening software features that analyze blogs, forums, videos, news sites, review sites, and social networks all in one dashboard.

Talkwalker draws data from more than 150 million sources to help you monitor conversations around your brand and measure engagement, potential reach, comments, and sentiment.

Advanced filters let you segment your data , so you can focus on the messages and audience that matter most to you. You can also set up alerts to notify you of any spikes in mentions or keywords .

Talkwalker is especially useful to spot activity peaks in conversations about your brand. This can help you determine the best times for your brand to post on social media .

Psst: Hootsuite is set to acquire Talkwaker VERY SOON . This means that you will get access to Talkwalker social listening and analytics directly in your Hootsuite dashboard!

3. Hootsuite Insights

Want to get more advanced with your social media listening? Hootsuite Insights takes listening a step further by giving you data from 16 billion new social posts every month .

Boolean search logic can help you find meaningful trends and patterns you might miss by monitoring keywords and hashtags alone. You can then filter your searches by date, demographics, and location to find the conversations most relevant to you.

Insights also makes it easy to track brand sentiment with intuitive word clouds and meters that gauge your sentiment and brand awareness against the competition.

Unlike most social listening platforms, Adview is used specifically for social listening on Facebook and Instagram ads. You can use it to monitor up to three Facebook Ad Accounts across unlimited pages.

When you add Adview to your Hootsuite dashboard, you can reply to comments on all your Facebook and Instagram ads in one place. Plus, you get detailed analytics on which ads are getting the most comments, so you can optimize your campaigns accordingly.

5. Synthesio

Synthesio is a social media listening tool that tracks conversations on highly specific topics in carefully segmented audiences . It allows you to segment your social listening data by language, location, demographics, sentiment, gender, influence, and more.

The reports also come with a handy social reputation score, so you know exactly how you stack up against competitors.

6. Mentionlytics

Track mentions, keywords, and sentiment across multiple languages with this social media listening tool. The Mentionlytics social media monitoring tool combs through social platforms, along with blogs and news sites, for mentions. Since it’s integrated with Hootsuite, you’ll be able to easily view them on your dashboard.

Mentionlytics also lets you easily find influencers across social networks and other online sources. You can easily track who your top influencers are, monitor keywords in different languages, and even detect emotion in every mention.

7. Netbase Social Listening & Analytics

NetBase uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) to help you focus your social listening on key conversations . It collects data from hundreds of millions of social posts daily plus more than 100 billion historical posts across the social web.

With Netbase, you can create custom streams to focus on the topics that matter most to you. It’s also easy to moderate and engage in both owned and earned conversations .

Plus, Netbase can help you improve response times , curate content, amplify brand advocates, drive opportunities down the purchase funnel, and boost customer loyalty. And if you need help driving and resolving internal workflow issues , you can use NetBase’s Assignments feature.

8. Audiense

Audiense allows you to identify any audience—no matter the size.

The app creates reports that tell you what your audience is discussing , what they like, and even how they think and behave. This information can be used to create marketing personas, understand shifts in customer sentiment, and even drive product development.

Audiense’s social listening tool also provides automated organic and paid campaign tools , so you can quickly and easily connect with your audience on the channels they prefer. Its audience manager also helps you find and understand specific audiences to ensure you have the perfect match for your brand.

9. Digimind

Digimind sources data from more than 850 million sources in 200+ languages.

Using artificial intelligence, it analyzes mentions to monitor trends and sentiment, presenting them in useful data visualizations.

It also offers research services to help you understand your industry, competitors, and consumers. You can use the Digimind platform to track brand reputation and discover new customer personas.

10. ForSight by Crimson Hexagon

ForSight by Crimson Hexagon allows you to filter your social listening streams by sentiment, opinion category, gender, geography, and influence score. With access to a data library of more than 400 billion social media posts , it allows you to engage with a large audience in real-time.

11. BrandMaxima Analytics

BrandMaxima Analytics offers Twitter analytics that let you monitor any hashtag, brand campaign, keyword, or event all in real-time.

With 50+ actionable insights and audience analysis, it provides valuable data that can help improve the performance of any social media campaign.

You can also create stunning infographics within the app, so you’re always presentation-ready when it comes time for stakeholder buy-in .

12. Cloohawk

Cloohawk is the social media listening tool you need to help grow and engage your target audience . By constantly analyzing your activities and target users, Cloohawk provides suggestions on how you can improve your social media engagement.

Cloohawk can help you track competitor profiles, identify opportunities for growth, and suggest ways to achieve your KPIs. Plus, the Cloohawk app integrates seamlessly with Hootsuite —so you don’t need to move out of one application to open another.

13. Crowd Analyzer

If you want to listen in on multiple social channels at once , Crowd Analyzer is your tool. Crowd Analyzer monitors sentiment across channels, including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. It also monitors online forums, news channels, and blogs, to ensure your brand is heard no matter where the chatter is.

With the Crowd Analyzer Hootsuite integration, you can Retweet, reply, or mention users right from your Hootsuite dashboard.

14. X (Twitter) search streams

X (Twitter) advanced search streams in the Hootsuite dashboard allow you to quickly find and track important conversations, hashtags, keywords, or locations. You can also save your searches as streams to revisit later or share with team members.

Hootsuite’s social media listening expert Nick Martin says:

Twitter search streams is one of the most underrated features within the Hootsuite dashboard if you ask me. I have a number of streams set up with queries looking for specific keywords, phrases, or Tweets from accounts I want to keep an eye on. It helps me quickly monitor what’s happening, discover engagement opportunities, or identify key customer feedback that I can share with the broader team. I even have a stream that follows popular brand accounts so I can quickly identify trending content and get inspiration for our own channel.

7 pro social listening tips

Here are our top ten social listening tips, sourced from Hootsuite social media expert Nick Martin.

1. Listen for the right words and topics

Successful social listening is all about choosing the most relevant keywords for your brand.

The keywords and topics you monitor will likely evolve over time. Using social listening tools, you will learn what kinds of words people tend to use when they talk about your business and your industry. You’ll also start to get a sense of what kinds of insights are most useful for you.

That said, here’s a list of important keywords and topics to monitor right from the start:

• Your brand name and handles
• Your product name(s)
• Your competitors’ brand names, product names, and handles
• Industry buzzwords
• Your slogan and those of your competitors
• Names of key people in your company and your competitors’ companies (your CEO, spokesperson, etc.)
• Campaign names or keywords
• Your branded hashtags and those of your competitors
• Unbranded hashtags related to your industry

You should also monitor common misspellings and abbreviations for all of the above.

For example, brands like Starbucks use social listening of their brand names to discover and respond to social posts even when they’re not tagged:

What a yummy choice! — Starbucks (@Starbucks) October 19, 2022

And KFC UK is clearly monitoring for a broad swath of keywords related to their business, jumping in here at the mere mention of gravy:

Same tbh https://t.co/dvWab7OQz8 — KFC UK (@KFC_UKI) November 9, 2021

2. Listen in the right places

Part of finding out what your audience has to say about you is learning where they have their conversations. That means casting a wide net for your social listening program.

Conversations around your brand or industry on LinkedIn are likely to be much different than they are on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. And you might find that people talk about you all the time on Twitter, but not at all on Facebook.

You need to know where people are talking about you and your industry and how those conversations vary across networks. This will guide your strategy for joining the conversation through both organic engagement and paid advertising .

3. Narrow your search

Once you’ve nailed down what terms and networks are important for you to monitor, use more advanced search techniques to filter your results.

For example, depending on your market, you might want to limit your social listening efforts by geography. If you run a local business in Iowa, you might not be concerned about the conversation in Greece.

You can also use Boolean search logic to create more targeted search streams for social listening.

4. Learn from the competition

While you never want to copy someone else’s strategy, you can always learn something by listening closely to your competitors and what other people say about them online.

Social listening can give you a sense of what they’re doing right and what people love about them. But most importantly, you can see where they misstep and get it wrong , or when they’re facing criticism in the press or on social media.

For example, Coca-Cola went through a rough patch after Cristiano Ronaldo removed two bottles of Coke from view during a Euro 2020 press conference. Mike’s Hard Lemonade jumped at the chance to parody the moment.

It’s a lot less painful to learn a hard lesson by watching your competitors make mistakes than by making them yourself.

5. Share what you learn

Social listening provides a wide range of information that is useful for your whole company.

Maybe it’s a customer’s post that needs a response right away. Maybe it’s a great idea for a blog post. Or maybe it’s an idea for a new product or a new feature for an existing product.

The customer service, content marketing, and product development teams could all benefit from what you learn when you’re listening on social media. Make sure to communicate those learnings and seek input from those teams, too. They might have specific questions you could answer by tweaking your social listening setup, too.

6. Keep alert for changes

As you start to collect social information, you’ll develop a sense of the regular conversation and sentiment around your brand.

Once you know how much people talk about you on a regular basis, and what the overall sentiment level generally is, you’ll be able to spot change .

Major changes in engagement or sentiment can mean that the overall perception of your brand has changed. You need to understand why so you can adapt your strategy appropriately. That may mean riding a wave of positivity or correcting a misstep to get back on course.

Hi there! We don’t believe in harming animals in order to create the perfect product. Period. In fact, we're proud to say that all our products are Cruelty-Free globally. — Dove (@Dove) October 18, 2022

Remember: If you don’t take action, you’re only engaged in social media monitoring, not social listening.

Social listening is not just about tracking metrics. It’s about gaining insights into what your customers and potential customers want from you, and how you can better address those needs.

Make sure to analyze patterns and trends over time, rather than just individual comments. These overall insights can have the most powerful effects in guiding your future strategy.

7. False positives are okay, within reason

When you set up a query to monitor for a specific keyword or phrase, some posts that might not be relevant will sneak into the results. We call these false positives.

It’s okay to see a few of these, within reason. Work to edit your search query so that the majority of your results are accurate to what you’re looking for, and that the false positives fall within a reasonable percentage of the results.

Nick Martin, from the Hootsuite Social Marketing team, always tries to get false positives below the 5% threshold . That way you get a better understanding of what is happening and the false positives (things that aren’t relevant to what you’re listening for) don’t muddle up the data.

Bottom line: A little bit of inaccuracy is okay, as long as it doesn’t skew the results too much.

Get started with social listening in 3 easy steps

Getting started with social listening is a three-step process.

Step 1: Monitor social media channels for mentions of your brand, competitors, products, and keywords related to your business using Hootsuite Streams or .

Step 2: Analyze the information for ways to put what you learn into action. That can be something as small as responding to a happy customer or something as big as shifting your entire brand positioning.

Step 3: Track industry-specific hashtags and keywords to get a pulse on what people are saying about your industry as a whole.

Hootsuite makes it easy to monitor keywords and conversations on social media, so you can focus on taking action on the insights available. Try it free today.

All your social media analytics in one place . Use Hootsuite to see what’s working and where to improve performance.

Become a better social marketer.

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Christina Newberry is an award-winning writer and editor whose greatest passions include food, travel, urban gardening, and the Oxford comma—not necessarily in that order.

Hannah Macready is a freelance writer with 12 years of experience in social media and digital marketing. Her work has appeared in publications such as Fast Company and The Globe & Mail, and has been used in global social media campaigns for brands like Grosvenor Americas and Intuit Mailchimp. In her spare time, Hannah likes exploring the outdoors with her two dogs, Soup and Salad.

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Social listening: what it is and why it is essential for your brand

Social listening : if you want consumers to listen to you, listen to them first. It is only in this way that you can truly understand their needs and be able to satisfy them. Every person online, whether consciously or not, produces data that is of vital importance to your brand. Being online means being constantly exposed to public opinion. This means that every day you need to ask yourself questions, and your online presence cannot be left to chance.

What do people think about your brand or your product? Do they talk about it positively or not? You need to engage in listening and research, you need to do social listening. This way, you will benefit from feedback about your brand and improve your offering, gaining an advantage over your competitors.

Let’s define social listening

We can think of social listening as a continuous and constant monitoring process, identification, and evaluation of online conversations relevant to specific keywords and phrases, your brand or competitors, your product, and your industry.

Why is it strategically important?

Using a social listening system allows you to know what your audience likes or dislikes in relation to:

• mentions of your brand
• industry trends
• competitors
• product/service

Social listening has significant strategic potential, not only online but also offline. This allows for implementing digital strategies to optimize social marketing campaigns and increase consumer engagement with your brand. You will be able to make accurate evaluations of your company’s social marketing activities and understand how to enhance your social digital strategy.

Having access to a range of qualitative and quantitative data allows for answering social media marketing questions from a different perspective and potentially leads to better results.

Social listening is one of the skills of a Social Media Manager. Find out if this is the right profession for you with a test!

Listen to the audience

In a reality where everyone is online, whether an individual or a company, and self-celebration is the order of the day, taking the time to listen seems to go against the trend. In reality, it is a winning move because your audience will only listen to you when you first listen to them.

Not just listening, but especially understanding consumer opinions. To do this, it is necessary to consider the context in which comments are made; when interacting with the public, your communication should be valuable and aimed at building relationships.

Being silent, doing social listening , listening to the market, and intercepting conversations is the basis of the circular process that leads to making decisions and implementing adjustments to the action plan.

Social listening: how to plan the strategy

Implementing an effective social listening strategy is important for your company to not miss any form of interaction with customers/users, to strengthen relationships with your customers, and to create new contact opportunities with prospects. As previously highlighted, conversations on social networks generate a large amount of data.

The social listening strategy serves to analyze and monitor conversations, to understand the level of affection users have for your brand and/or product. The main social channels for listening activities are Facebook, Twitter, blogs, forums, etc.

The social listening strategy can be summarized in 6 points:

• Define objectives: you need to ask yourself what you want to know from users. Do you want to know their opinion about your brand? About your products/services? Do you want to improve your company’s customer service? Do you want to know what they think about your competitors? Once you have decided the purpose of using social listening, you need to set up searches consistently.
• Identify keywords: determine the topics that are strategic for your business and identify the keywords to study for data to work with. For example, if you are working on a new social media campaign, it will be useful to find the most used hashtags and keywords that can help improve your content. Social listening will assist you with this and subsequently monitor performance. It is also possible to monitor entire phrases that may highlight brand-related issues so that you can intervene promptly.
• Social media monitoring: activities to collect data on mentions, likes, shares, sentiment, in order to compile a list and build our database. The most commonly used social media monitoring tools are Talkwalker and Mention.
• Conduct Reputation and Sentiment analysis: f rom the data extracted through social media monitoring, you can answer a series of important questions that will allow you to understand the context in which your brand was mentioned, how many times, whether positively or negatively, and whether users are satisfied or complaining.
• Choose influencers: this is an important step; finding the right influencers for your brand is a crucial element. Consumers perform extensive research on social networks before making purchasing decisions and rely on the opinions they find online. People listen to influencers, so you need to find those who are most suitable for your brand and your product/service and bring them on board.
• Develop an action plan: at this point, the analysis of conversations has been done, and you have obtained data that gives you a clear and accurate picture of how people perceive you and what aspects need improvement or opportunities to seize that may have escaped you so far. You can now move on to defining the actions that will allow you to achieve the objectives you set at the beginning.

Expand your digital glossary through this free ebook on social media marketing

Applications of social listening

The analysis and control of the collected data have an immediate impact on certain business activities where there is direct contact with the public or in situations where being timely is an obligation.

Customer service activities

Social listening is a fundamental element in customer service because consumers are increasingly inclined to seek assistance, ask questions, make complaints, and provide suggestions through social media rather than the phone. What could be more immediate than opening Twitter or Facebook and writing in real-time, eliminating phone wait times? In fact, more than 60% of users expect to receive support from brands through social channels and are inclined to speak positively about a brand that allows them to engage on a social network.

Customer service on social media is a tool you cannot do without for your company: since 2015, there has been an increase in the demand for assistance on social media, and Facebook and Twitter have proven to be the most effective platforms for customer service activities. Users expect a response to their complaints from brands very quickly, preferably within an hour.

Crisis Management

Effectively managing a crisis is crucial offline, but even more so online where everything happens in real-time. When facing a crisis management situation , it is good practice to have already planned the actions you need to take and established the tone of voice to use. You must not be caught unprepared. So, if you receive criticism or questions, you have limited options other than responding quickly, accurately, and relevantly. This way, the audience will have evidence that your brand listens to them and pays attention to their needs.

Competitor Analysis

Social listening is also very important for conducting a thorough analysis of your competitors, monitoring what they do and how consumers talk about them, what they think of their products, how their brand is perceived, and how they engage in social customer care activities. Having a tool that allows you to study the competition in real-time becomes a significant strategic factor for you and your brand.

If you want to delve deeper into the topic of Web Reputation, Digital Coach offers the Online Reputation Management Course .

Consult one of our consultants and learn how to create an effective social listening strategy!

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Social Listening Examples: 9 Brands Getting It Right

Home Blog Social Media Social listening Social Listening Examples: 9 Brands Getting It Right

Updated on April 12th 2024

Rebecca Barnett-Smith | 14 min read

The online consumer market is densely populated. With more brands fighting for the same customers as ever before, it’s no surprise that many are searching for new ways to get closer to their potential leads.

Brands that prioritize demographic values and gratifications are the most likely to see success in 2024. In fact,  84% of online consumers  now claim they will only engage with a brand whose values align with their own.

Therefore, in order to boost follower counts and conversion potential, smart brands must start social listening.

We have seen countless social listening examples that demonstrate the benefits of actively listening and learning more about what your consumers want.

Social listening can improve your understanding of demographic values and industry trends. It even gives you the chance to engage with brand mentions head-on to boost engagement and raise customer sentiment.

Experts at Everyone Social claim businesses can increase customer loyalty and advocacy by a staggering  25%  when they monitor and respond to brand mentions on social media channels.

On the back of  61% of businesses  now planning to implement social listening into their sales strategy in 2024, we’ve listed nine social listening examples to take inspiration from as you get to know your customers inside and out.

9 social listening examples to follow

Ben & jerry’s: analyzing ad performance.

Ben and Jerry’s is a great example of a brand that listens. Responsible for numerous campaigns that have directly targeted consumers’ values and demographic trends, the ice cream brand is known for creating new flavors and designs based on key conversations and topics that keep its consumers talking.

However, for this social listening example, the brand stepped away from traditional media monitoring. It looked directly at its ad engagement for more clues on how to strengthen its social media strategy further.

After analyzing their ad performance outside of what they thought was their most profitable season, Ben and Jerry’s discovered that more consumers were clicking on their social ads during the winter season and increasing spend on their ice cream products.

Taking to social media with this news, Ben and Jerry’s analyzed brand mentions that showed increased demand for ice cream during the bad weather.

As more people stayed inside to watch Netflix, the brand found that their potential to target actually rose during the winter, as a pose to the summer months.

The brand has since tweaked its ad strategies to accommodate winter snack-ers. They have even released a targeted ice cream flavor known as  Netflix & Chill’d  to play on the exact brand mentions they discovered in this fantastic social listening example.

McDonald’s: Multi-Platform Monitoring

McDonald’s is also a great brand to consider as a positive social listening example. The fast-food brand excels at social listening.

Not only do they use social media platforms listening to hop on numerous social trends, but they are known for bringing back fan favorites on the menu on the back of social media mentions alone.

With this said the social listening example we’re focusing on is McDonald’s 2023  Grimace shake trend . After releasing their newest campaign based on the popular mascot, Grimace’s birthday, the brand saw a lot of love rush in for their themed meals and shakes.

However, this soon spread further across multiple social platforms.

When McDonald’s marketers leveraged their social listening skills, they discovered that the Grimace shake trend has gone live on TikTok and other platforms, such as Instagram Reels and YouTube shorts.

Their consumers had created numerous sharable videos and memes that the brand was able to republish on its own platform to boost social engagement.

Taking a witty response to the TikTok trend, McDonald’s posted their own Grimace meme with the following caption:  me pretending I don’t see the grimace shake trend.

Not only did this stir up more social shares and mentions, but it also proved that the power of cross-platform social listening could help shape multi-sharable marketing campaigns.

Here’s another inspiring social listening example :

Stratascratch: Adapt the pricing

Pricing changes.

During 2023, Nathanael Rosidi, the CEO of StrataScratch, a data science interview platform, noticed something when reviewing the mentions of his brand :

There were conversations online talking about his pricing. With the tech market bursting in 2023, having a good price positioning was one of the keys to survival.

Thanks to Mention, he could start a conversation with these customers and get all the feedback to guide my thinking on the pricing overhaul.

Customer feedback

He’s also actively using social listening tools to connect with customers on unofficial channels. This way, he can monitor customer feedback and issues that would otherwise not have been addressed.

If you want to learn more about how StrataScratch uses Mention, check the full case study here: StrataScratch Case Study

Amazon: Personalized Recommendations

Amazon must also be mentioned as a social listening example from which to take inspiration.

As one of the largest online retailers on the planet, it certainly knows how to keep its worldwide consumer base returning.

Amazon uses social listening strategies to enhance its online storefront experience.

Using a number of monitoring tools, mentions, and social media data, Amazon’s powerful algorithms decide what each customer is most likely to click on before displaying it right in front of them as they enter the app.

This is a perfect demonstration of the use and benefits of  artificial intelligence in social media .

As consumer bases become bigger, using AI tools to listen to conversations on every platform is essential for large brands like Amazon.

Better still, Amazon takes the social listening game one step further, looking at consumers individually as a pose to a whole demographic group.

For instance, a social media user who posts a Tweet about their favorite skincare product is likely to see similar products popping up on their Amazon account.

They can even track the prices of the hottest-selling products mentioned by their targets and automatically adjust their prices to match competitors you may choose instead.

This is a great social listening example for brands looking to explore social listening to improve their consumer personalization and customized targeting strategy.

Fitbit: Consumer-Inspired Product Development

Fitbit is next on the list of the best social listening examples we’ve seen in action. Fitbit demonstrates how a brand can use a social listening tool to improve product development.

According to Allison Leahy, Fitbit’s ex-director of community,  “Fitbit is trying to be everywhere you are and more” .

She explained that the brand is using social listening techniques to help improve product development and troubleshoot any issues consumers may face with digital displays and performance tracking.

However, Fitbit takes its social listening strategy to the next level using its own  ‘communities’ page . Set up as a forum where customers can directly talk to other users about their experiences with the Fitbit brand, the communities page is a goldmine for its social listening efforts.

Since then, the brand has focused on customer service and uses the data it gathers in the community forum to improve its product functionality. Better still, it likes to let its consumers know about it, making them feel as if their voices are taken seriously and playing a big role in developing new products.

A great example of social listening in action is the brand’s new  “Reminders to Move”  feature.

After a number of community members talked about the brand introducing reminders for them to get up on their feet, the buzzing reminder was added to newer models and has seen great success!

Duolingo: Newsjacking

This next social listening example is rather chatty. Leveraging viral social trends and stories as an opportunity to start conversations, Duolingo has all but mastered its social engagement strategy using this tactic.

Take this example, for instance. After a story about actor Cillian Murphy learning Dutch went viral in online chatter, Duolingo saw its opening and jumped into the conversation.

As a language learning platform, this was a great opportunity to promote the brand using the powerful magic of newsjacking. By simply sharing a witty response to a tweet, the brand managed to garner viral engagement without directly promoting its services.

This demonstrates the benefits of engaging in social listening.

If you can continuously monitor social media conversations and platforms for trending stories, posts, and mentions, you’ll be able to respond quickly and insert your brand into a trending conversation.

Barbie: Leveraging The Power Of Celebrity Influence

Barbie the Movie, in 2023, gave us a great social listening example with its influencer marketing-led approach to social media monitoring.

After employing social listening to its brand mentions, Barbie marketers found that the majority of trending UGC content was meme-worthy comparisons of fan-favorite Ken’s wardrobe choices and an outfit sported by BTS star Jimin in 2021.

In response, Barbie’s marketing team took the opportunity to play on this fun comparison by getting lead actor Ryan Gosling involved.

Ryan Gosling, who played Ken in the movie, created a lighthearted piece of social content in collaboration with the team, acknowledging the great fan comparisons and copying some of Jimin’s famous moves.

Jimin himself also reacted to the post in his own video reply, saying:  “Hi Ryan and hi Ken, it’s Jimin. Congrats on your big release. My fans are excited to see your video, so thank you so much. I could see that you look great in my outfit.”

This is a great social listening example in action and scored Barbie their best tweet engagement yet, with a total post lift of 744% in comparison to other tweets posted.

Better still, the team also leveraged multi-platform posting, receiving a whopping  149 million impressions on Instagram Reels . This demonstrated the powerful effect of combining social listening strategies with influencer-led responses.

Engaging with large platform influencers through the power of fan monitoring is a great way to keep the conversation flowing about your brand.

While many of the Barbie followers were well acquainted with Ryan Gosling as Ken, introducing a new group of BTS fans to the conversation helped double the exposure of this social media marketing tactic.

Starface: Leveraging User Generated Content

Let’s take a closer look at the skincare brand Starface. This social listening example demonstrates how monitoring UGC content can help you identify trends and enhance your social strategy.

After scanning their brand mentions on platforms such as Twitter and TikTok, they found numerous videos that showcased their product organically. These reviews and content simply showed users wearing their famous pimple patches.

Rather than creating promotional content for their products, Starface decided to leverage  the power of UGC  and repost certain videos on their own platform.

Not only does this promote the brand more organically, but more users were inspired to create review-like content for a chance to be featured on their high-engagement feed.

Take this example of TikTok repost. Starface expertly chose a video that was not directly about their product but rather another beauty topic and used humor to bring attention back to the stars on the face of the TikTok influencer.

The post generated humorous conversation in the comments, boosting engagement and providing social proof for their target audience.

Hunter: Generate 200+ High Quality Backlinks

Last but not least, let’s talk about Hunter. As part of their SEO strategy, the Hunter team was trying to enhance their backlink profile to improve their rankings. One way they consistently got backlinks is through social listening. They’ve managed to identify unlinked mentions with Mention.

Then, they manually emailed websites that weren’t linking to Hunter to reclaim those unlinked mentions.

“After reviewing some of these mentions, we’ve noticed that not all websites provide a backlink when they mention us. This is where Mention becomes invaluable.

It automates the detection of these mentions, which we then use for personalized outreach efforts to convert unlinked mentions into valuable backlinks. This strategy helps us grow our brand and increase our organic traffic.” Antonio Gabric Outreach Manager @ Hunter.io

You can check the full case study here.

What’s Next For Social Listening In 2024?

As we step into a new era of social monitoring and listening, it’s becoming easier than ever before for brands to monitor and listen to their customers online.

The question is, where will it go next?

“The proliferation of digital access and its integration into the routines of billions of people worldwide means that there is now an abundance of information on what people want and need,”  says Paul Herrera, COO and co-founder at Maven Road.

Industry leaders have embraced these developments and become more data-oriented than ever before.

They base their decision-making on a thorough understanding of their target audiences, an understanding that continuously evolves, informed by data that reveals valuable insights about their audiences’ changing behaviors and preferences.

Following Amazon and Netflix, marketers will use social listening data to enhance AI-powered brand customization in the future.

Drawing data from brand mentions, social engagement and demographic trends, social listening will inform product preferences and enhance personalized experiences for the best engagement results.

Social Listening With Mention

Social listening successes will become more data-driven in 2024. Using powerful  social listening tools  such as Mention, you’ll be able to listen and learn from social media users using data alone and can rely on an expert tool to monitor conversations across every social platform seamlessly.

Using Mention, you’ll quickly receive a comprehensive analysis of your social sentiment, key online conversations and trending topics. These are then automatically compared to your competitors, giving you an opportunity to get competitive intelligence and benchmark your social success.

As social media consumer groups grow, maintaining your brand reputation online is essential in the race for conversions. It’s no secret that the brand closest to its consumers will win the targeting war in 2024. Try Mention for free!

Rebecca is a freelance journalist and multi-media marketing executive, specialising in the future of SEO marketing and user experience in business.

Guest Blogger @Mention

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Table of Contents

State of Social Listening 2023

Earlier this year we released our annual survey to understand how the global social listening landscape has evolved over the last 12-18 months. More than 200 professionals took part in 2023 and shared their experiences of how they’re using social data to support business decision-making. Download the full report to learn about the current state of social listening.

Welcome to the State of Social Listening 2023

During April and May 2023, we surveyed more than 200 social listening professionals from around the world, including from the US, the UK, Europe, India, Asia and Latin America. We wanted to understand how the practice of social listening has changed since our last survey because, whilst it has been just a little over 12 months since the last report was released, the industry has seen some significant changes: the purchase of Twitter by Elon Musk, the rise of generative AI and increasing financial pressures resulting from the current economic climate. As such, we wanted to understand the impact these factors have had on how social listening professionals work with social data. We also wanted to learn more about how the practice itself has matured. Last year we saw that there was inconsistency in the way professionals were approaching social data analysis and interpretation and so, this year we asked some more probing questions to ascertain the varying maturity levels of practitioners.

Throughout the report, we share the latest social listening statistics and insights gathered from the survey responses. We’ve highlighted the key facts and figures from the survey throughout this page, but for the complete analysis make sure you download the full report. We hope this will give you a clearer understanding of the state of social listening globally and how you and your organisation fit within the global practice.

Key Statistics from the State of Social Listening

Throughout this page you’ll find more information and context about this year’s State of Social Listening, and you can download the full report at the end. But, if you’re just looking for some top-line figures, here are five key statistics from study:

• The five most important social data sources for practitioners in 2023 are Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and LinkedIn.
• 51% of respondents state they select the appropriate data sources depending on the question or problem they’re answering or solving for .
• The majority of respondents use social data for marketing-focused use cases : 36% mainly work on projects around detecting trends and 25% are focused on brand monitoring and tracking. ‍
• Almost 25% of respondents plan to invest in dedicated agency support. ‍
• Just 35% of respondents believe their leadership fully understand and support what they do compared to 44.5% in 2022.

How Much Experience Do Social Listening Professionals Have?

The social listening experience of the respondents to the 2023 survey is once again varied, with the highest proportion having worked in the industry for three or four years. This year, 61% of respondents have worked in social listening for five years or more , which is lower than in 2022 when 65% stated they had at least five years’ experience. This suggests that there continues to be new talent entering the sector as the practice continues to develop. Like last year, though, 24% of respondents have worked in the industry for ten years or more . Statistics from this year’s report also show that just under half (43%) of respondents hold Senior Manager, Director or C-Suite job titles .

While people still question how old the social listening industry is, we need to remember that the analysis of data gathered from the internet – not just from social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter – has been used to better understand consumer behaviour for decades now. This is how we at the SI Lab define social data: any type of internet data that reflects human interaction online. And despite the fact that this year’s survey revealed the most important data sources for social listening practitioners to be the mainstream social media platforms, the use of forums (including Reddit) and review sites still remain in the top ten . This suggests that whilst the majority of respondents are using social data for marketing-related use cases, there is still interest in understanding the broader context of the conversations happening online.

Investing into Social Listening Tools and Technologies

Once again in 2023, social listening technology proves to be an important part of the social listening practitioner’s toolkit and investment into social media listening tools has continued to increase, with 39% of respondents spending more than $100K compared to 33% in 2022. This year we wanted to answer the question ‘how much do businesses spend on social media listening’, particularly at this top end. That’s why we decided to provide more options beyond $100K, to get a clearer breakdown. And figures show that 15% of the social intelligence professionals surveyed spend $100-199K on social listening technology – the third most common response. When we look at enterprise companies in isolation (those with 1000+ employees), the proportion increases – 16% spend $100-199K. In fact, enterprise respondents are the only group to spend more than $500k on technology, with 18% spending between $500K and $5M.

Like last year, the majority of social intelligence professionals (71%) hold licenses for three or fewer social listening tools . Just 16% use one tool , again indicating that there are very few technologies that are able to cover all the users’ needs completely. On the other end of the scale, only three respondents (1.7%) use more than ten social listening tools . This reflects one of the limitations highlighted later in the survey – the lack of integration between different technologies. It is clear, therefore, that the more social listening tools an organisation uses, the more complicated it becomes to analyse data across them all.

With regards to limitations of social media listening tools, many of this year’s respondents again mentioned the quality of data and the variety of the data sources covered , despite once again being listed as the two most important features for practitioners when choosing a social listening tool. It is worth noting, however, that many reference the lack of LinkedIn and TikTok data speficially, which is due to API restrictions from the social media platforms themselves. Whilst some respondents acknowledged this, it still shows that many aren’t fully aware that these data restrictions are beyond the technology providers’ control. Other technology limitations include models and analysis capabilities, cost limitations, audience analysis capabilities and geographic and language capabilities beyond English. Getting meaningful insight from the tools was also referenced several times, raising the question of where the role of the technology ends and that of the professional begins.

When it comes to future investment, again the highest percentage (46%) of respondents plan to focus on new data analysis technology . Interestingly, 24% plan to invest in dedicated agency support , pushing it into the top five in 2023. If we look at where enterprise organisations specifically are planning to invest in the future, the top area is staff training and development. This suggests that whilst technology remains key for doing social listening, there seems to be an understanding that having the right people and skills to use it is also important. And 24.2% of enterprise companies plan not to increase spending at all compared to 17.8% of all respondents .

Overall, there has only been a slight change in how respondents are investing and using social listening technology. Their expectations of what these tools should do and the frustrations of their limitations are also not that dissimilar to those in 2022. What is particularly emphasised this year, however, is the lack of clarity around the role technology should play in extracting insights from social data.

The Most Used Tools By Social Intelligence Professionals

The social listening technology sector continues to expand with more vendors developing tools to tackle specific aspects and challenges of social intelligence. As a result a wide variety of technology providers was mentioned in this year’s survey. The specialisation of many of these technologies, and the targeting of niche applications could explain why many organisations purchase licenses to multiple social media listening tools. This perhaps reflects a maturing social intelligence industry with increasingly specific and complex use cases that is looking to technology to help.

The most mentioned tool that respondents regularly used in 2023 was Brandwatch (mentioned by 23% of respondents) followed by Sprinklr (18%) , Talkwalker (16%) and Meltwater (11%) . This is a slight change on the 2022 results, when Sprinklr was reported as the most used. However, when we look at statistics around which tool was mentioned most by respondents who only use one social listening tool , Sprinklr came out on top (25%) followed by Talkwalker (21.4%) then Brandwatch and Synthesio (17.9% each) .

In general, the percentage of respondents who mentioned these technology providers is lower than last year, which perhaps reflects the much wider range of choice when it comes to social listening tools.

Which Social Media Platforms are Social Intelligence Professional Taking Data From?

Statistics from this year’s survey show that the variety of social data sources is one of the most important features that social listening professionals look for. When we asked respondents in 2023 which are the most important social data sources for their organisation’s social listening efforts the top five are Instagram , Twitter , Facebook , TikTok and LinkedIn . This shows a return to a focus on mainstream social media platforms as a key source of insight, compared to last year where there was more variety.

It is unclear whether this shift is linked to the fact that the most common use cases for social data this year seem to be more marketing-focused. Data from social media platforms can help provide metrics for marketing related activities, such as campaign measurement, crisis management and brand monitoring. The shift could also be related to the fact that there is still a misunderstanding around the definition of social data, with many people still associating it specifically with social media platforms. This is supported by the fact that search data was listed as a less important social data source, but was considered the most important alternative data source.

The statistics change slightly when we look at different audience groups. For example, for enterprise organisations, Reddit is considered a more important social data source than LinkedIn . Breaking respondents into groups based on their discipline, social listening and research and insights professionals also include Reddit and forums in their top five . This suggests there is more work being done to understand the broader context of online conversations beyond simply tracking what’s happening on social media.

The Challenges Facing Social Listening Teams

When we asked social listening professionals in this year’s survey what their biggest social media listening challenges are, the top three related to data accuracy and quality , budget , and compliance . This is unsurprising given the frequent references to data quality when discussing the requirements and limitations of social listening technology. Budget is also unsurprising, given the current economic climate and that this was also a key challenge for social listening professionals in 2022. The fact that compliance makes it into the top three this year, however, is interesting given its much lower ranking last year.

When we break responses to this year’s survey down to look at those working in agencies versus those working in-house, we see the challenges are slightly different. For agencies , the main challenges are around budgets , and there are more concerns around integration with other data sources than compliance issues. For social intelligence professionals on in-house teams, however, data accuracy and quality is the biggest challenge, followed by compliance issues then budget .

Perhaps more concerningly, both groups list a lack of organisational wide vision for social listening within their top five challenges. This suggests that there is still some way to go before the practice of social intelligence is fully integrated into businesses as an important, strategic function.

Download the Full Report for More Social Listening Statistics

We’ve already shared some of the key insight from the State of Social Listening 2023, but you can download the full report to get deeper analysis of the data we’ve shared here and to discover further insight including:

• The different approaches to social data analysis that are emerging.
• How the maturity levels around the practice of social intelligence vary across the industry.
• Top use cases for social data and the most common social intelligence projects.
• How professionals are choosing the data sources for their social listening projects, and the metrics or frameworks they use to analyse this data.
• The ways that in-house social listening teams are working with external agencies.
• What the current level of leadership buy-in for social listening is across the industry.

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Using social listening to make business decisions: two great case studies

A week ago I attended a Social Listening Roadshow in London, put on by Conversocial and Synthesio , which featured some interesting insights and two case studies – from car company, Nissan, and airline, Aer Lingus. Here’s the low-down…

Firstly, for those that don’t know – Conversocial is a social customer service tool and Synthesio is a social intelligence tool used for social  listening. They’ve partnered up to share best practice.

Chief Strategy Officer at Synthesio, Matt Zito kicked off the roadshow on the topic of social media data. Anyone working in digital marketing today is bombarded with data, but what are we doing with it? This is what Matt called the ‘so what moment. ’ We need to use the insights we get from social media and make it strategic to our business.

If you aren’t convinced of the benefits of social listening, here are a few facts that illustrate the impact social has on the consumer buying decision.

• 93% of marketers use social media for business
• 50% of consumers are more likely to buy a product from a company that they can contact via social media
• 31% of consumers say their decision to buy a product was influences by something they read in a blog
• 56% of consumers who actively use social media to interact with businesses feel a stronger connection to those businesses

These obviously suggest social has a big impact on the buying decision and that social media can be a hub for conversation.

Do you listen to what your consumers are saying?

With this in mind, first up, you need to figure out where people are talking about your brand. It might be where you least expect it, so don’t just check Facebook and Twitter; it could be in blogs or forums too. Using a tool like Synthesio enables you to find out what people are saying about your brand across all channels .  More important than just collecting this data is turning it into real, valuable insights that are relevant to the wider business. The message of this session was: don’t just keep the insights within the social team, tie them back to real business.

Head of Digital for Africa, Middle East and India at Nissan , David Parkinson, then gave an example of when Nissan launched the Datsun in India. Nissan used tools to listen to what people were saying about the car. Nissan found that people liked the size of the boot but didn’t like the interior . They couldn’t change anything on the car, but they knew it was useful information. Nissan took these insights to the marketing team and started to market the boot size – in other words, they used their social insights to power a business decision .

Head of Social Media at Aer Lingus , Paul Buckley gave an example when the airline removed their chicken and stuffing sandwich from their in-flight menu. People were instantly complaining about it on social media (I personally am a big fan of a chicken and stuffing sandwich so I would be tweeting my sorrows too).

After a few days they were still complaining about it.  As a result, Aer Lingus spoke to the production team about bringing it back. Aer Lingus reached out to their customers via social to announce that it was back. Announcing the return of the sandwich via social allowed them to publicly resolve the issue – which is another nice opportunity that social media offers.

Professional Services Director at Conversocial, Chris Venus, then spoke about the importance of customer care on social media, i.e. how moving social data out of the social media team can also impact on your social customer service .

Apparently, 80% of UK consumer conversations with brands currently happen on Twitter and not talking to consumers on social media can lead to a 15% increase in your churn rate.  In short, you expect a response to your social content and ads and customers expect you to reply to them too.

Chris gave five helpful tips on implementing social customer service:

• Select an experienced team with in-depth knowledge of your brand/business to respond on all social channels
• Respond to consumers in a timely fashion
• Report the success of social responses and resolution of a query
• Have department buy-in. How does your social customer service approach resonate with your other colleagues/departments?
• Be aware that the consumer can choose when they interact with a brand, so they are in charge.

It was a really insightful day and, while here at OST Marketing we have a pretty strong handle on social media monitoring tools and processes, I took away lots of pearls of wisdom. Big thanks to Conversocial, Synthesio, Paul from Aer Lingus and David from Nissan for an insightful afternoon.

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A comprehensive guide on social listening report.

Imagine this: You’re the owner of a confectionary business, scrolling through your Instagram feed, and you come across a post about a snack you’ve just launched. Out of curiosity, you decide to click on the comments section. Before you realize it, you’re sucked into a world of opinions, thoughts, and feelings about that snack.

Some people love it, some hate it, and some are just downright confused. Imagine being able to capture all of that chatter and turn it into valuable insights for your business. That’s social listening in a nutshell.

No social listening strategy is complete or successful without a comprehensive social listening report. A social media listening report is like a treasure map for companies looking to understand what people say about them online.

Simply put, it’s a way of eliminating the noise and boiling down insights about a particular topic or brand that can inform decision-making.

So, what exactly is this social media listening report that we’re raving about? Let’s find out.

What Is a Social Listening Report in Marketing?

Social listening is the process of monitoring and analyzing online conversations related to a brand, product, or industry. It involves tracking social media platforms, online forums, blogs, and other digital channels to understand what people are saying about a particular topic.

A social listening report is a document that provides a comprehensive summary of the insights and data gathered through social listening efforts. Essentially, it compiles all the information collected through the social listening process.

The social media listening reports typically include the following:

• an overview of the most important conversations and trends,
• the sentiment (positive, negative, or neutral) of those conversations, and
• a breakdown of the most active users and influencers.

Social listening reports may also include recommendations for how businesses can improve their online presence and customer engagement based on the insights gathered. 

They help companies better understand their target audience, how they perceive the brand, and what topics are currently trending.

Learn about: How Can Social Listening Improve Marketing Strategies?

Additionally, these reports can provide insights into how the company can better serve its customers and improve its marketing tactics.

Social Listening Report: Some Examples

To get a better understanding of social listening reports, let’s take a look at some examples.

1. Brand Reputation Report

A brand reputation report is a social listening report focusing on a particular brand’s perceived reputation. It provides insights into how customers perceive the brand and identifies areas where it can improve.

For example, a brand reputation report might show that customers are frustrated with a particular product feature or have had a negative experience with customer service. The information might recommend specific actions the brand can take to address these issues and improve its reputation.

2. Industry Trend Report

An industry trend report is a social listening report that provides insights on emerging trends and topics within a particular industry. These reports can help businesses identify growth opportunities or adjust their current strategies to better meet customer needs.

For example, an industry trend report might show that customers are increasingly interested in eco-friendly products and that there is a growing demand for a specific type of service. 

The report might recommend specific actions businesses within the industry can take to capitalize on these trends and gain a competitive advantage.

Do you know about these 6 Popular Social Listening Trends of 2023?

3. Competitive Analysis Report

Social listening can help gain competitive advantage and through a competitive analysis report, you can provide insights into how a particular brand compares to its competitors. This report can help analyze direct as well as indirect competitors.

Based on the data gathered in this report, companies can take appropriate steps to improve their standing compared to other businesses.

For example, a competitive analysis report might show that a brand is losing market share to a competitor due to the competitor’s pricing. As a result, the report might recommend specific actions the brand can take, such as reducing its product prices, to regain its competitive edge and win back customers.

What Is the Purpose of Creating a Social Listening Report?

The multi-dimensional social listening report helps organizations better understand the current state of their brand, their competitors, and the overall industry.

Here are some specific purposes for creating social listening reports:

Reputation Management

Social listening reports can be valuable for managing your brand’s online reputation. By monitoring online conversations about your brand, you can gain insights into what customers are saying and how they feel about it.

In addition, social listening reports can help you identify any negative sentiment or issues that customers are experiencing, allowing you to address those concerns and improve your brand’s reputation.

Customer Insights

Social listening reports can provide valuable insights into customers’ needs, preferences, and opinions. By analyzing online conversations about your brand or industry, you can gain insights into what customers like and dislike about your products or services.

This information can help you make data-driven decisions about product development, marketing, and customer service, ultimately improving the overall customer experience .

Competitive Intelligence

Social listening reports can also provide valuable insights into competitors’ online presence. By analyzing online conversations related to your competitors, you can gain insights into what customers like and dislike about their products or services and identify opportunities to differentiate yourself from the competition.

This information assists you in developing a more effective marketing strategy and gaining a competitive advantage.

Measuring Social Media Effectiveness

Social listening reports can be a valuable tool for measuring the effectiveness of your social media strategy. By tracking key metrics such as reach, engagement, and sentiment, you can gain insights into how your social media efforts are performing and how you can improve them.

Social listening reports can also help you track the success of specific campaigns or promotions, allowing you to make data-driven decisions about your social media strategy in the future.

Overall, social listening reports can serve a variety of purposes, from reputation management to customer insights to competitive intelligence to measuring the effectiveness of your social media strategy.

You can make data-driven decisions that drive business success by using social listening reports to gain insights into online conversations.

How to Create an Outstanding Social Media Listening Report?

While creating social media listening reports may seem daunting. However, it can provide invaluable insights for businesses if done correctly.

Here are some tips to ensure your report is as effective and actionable as possible:

Define Your Objective

The first step in creating a social media report is to define your objective. 

What questions do you want to answer? What insights do you want to gain?

By having a clear purpose in mind, you can design your social listening strategy to collect data that is relevant to your goal.

To define your objective, start by identifying the business problem you want to solve or the question you want to answer. 

For example, if you are a fashion brand, you may want to know what people say about your latest collection. 

Or, if you are a restaurant, you may want to know what customers think about your new menu items. Once you have defined your objective, you can design your social listening strategy to collect data that is relevant to your goal.

Also Read : 8 Pain Points Social Listening Solves for Business

Choose the Right Social Listening Tools

When choosing a social listening tool, consider the features that are most important to you. 

Some agencies offer more advanced analytics, while others may be more user-friendly. Look for some most important features in tools such as real-time monitoring, sentiment analysis, and the ability to monitor multiple social media channels.

For example, Konnect Insights offers a robust social listening tool that allows you to monitor social conversations, identify sentiment, and track keywords and topics related to your brand. 

With Konnect Insights, you can quickly identify trends in the data and analyze how your brand is performing across different platforms.

Do you know these common difference between Free and Paid Social Listening Tools?

Collect and Analyze Data

Once you have identified your objective and chosen social listening tools, it’s time to collect and analyze the data. 

First, set up your social listening tools to monitor relevant keywords, hashtags, and mentions and collect data over time. Then, use data analysis tools to analyze the data and identify trends, patterns, and insights.

For example, considering the criteria discussed above, if you are a fashion brand, you may want to monitor keywords such as “fashion,” “style,” and “trend” to see what people are saying about your brand.

Next, use social listening tools to collect data over time, then use data analysis tools to identify trends, patterns, and insights. For example, you may use sentiment analysis tools to determine whether the overall sentiment toward your brand is positive, negative, or neutral.

Read more about: The 20 Benefits of Using Social Listening Tools for Your Business

Organize Your Findings

Once you have analyzed your data, it’s time to organize your findings into a clear and concise report. Include critical metrics such as reach, engagement, sentiment, and demographics, and use charts, graphs, and other visual aids to make your report easy to understand.

For example, you may use a pie chart to show the sentiment distribution towards your brand or a line graph to show how engagement has changed over time. 

No matter what type of data you must present, ensure the presentation is clear and visually appealing. The critical point here is to communicate your findings in a way anyone can understand.

Draw Insights and Conclusions

Use your findings to draw insights and conclusions about your brand’s social media presence. For example, what are your strengths and weaknesses? What opportunities and threats exist? What changes can you make to improve your social media strategy?

To draw insights and conclusions from your findings, look for patterns and trends in the data. For example, you may notice that certain types of content generate more engagement than others or that specific demographics are more likely to engage with your brand.

Once you’ve identified these patterns, think about how they can be used to enhance your social media strategy.

Create an Action Plan

Finally, create an action plan based on your insights and conclusions. Then, use your report to identify specific actions you can take to improve your social media strategy, such as refining your content strategy, increasing your engagement, or investing in paid social media advertising.

For example, you may decide to invest in paid social media advertising to increase your reach, or you may choose to create more video content to improve engagement. Be sure to set specific goals and metrics to measure the success of your action plan.

By following these steps and incorporating these examples, you can create a unique social media report that provides valuable insights and helps you achieve your business goals.

A social listening strategy without a social media report is like a fish without water. Reports are essential for any business that wants to measure the success of its online presence and campaigns and ensure that resources are used effectively.

A social listening report can help you track the performance of your campaigns, understand the sentiment around specific topics, identify opportunities for improvement, and devel op more effective social listening strategies .

With the right approach and a few tips from this article, you can create a comprehensive report that provides valuable insight into your brand’s performance. 

As you measure the success of your social media campaigns, you’ll be able to reach and engage your audience more effectively.

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Sprout customers are industry leaders who embrace social media as a vital & permanent part of their communications strategies. We help thousands of enterprise, agency and small to medium sized businesses manage and improve social relationships. We invite you to explore our customers’ success stories.

How the Royal National Institute of Blind People Found a Dedicated Accessibility Partner in Sprout

How Sprout improved its global social customer care with its own insights

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Salesforce’s social media team saves 12,000 hours in first year using Sprout Social

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Edgio sees $126,000+ in earned media value with Employee Advocacy in just 3 months

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Good connection: How Boingo Wireless seamlessly switched to Sprout Social

How Simpli.fi drove 7x ROI in 3 months of using Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social

How Plaid grew its LinkedIn audience by 60% in one year with Sprout

Hudl drives all-star customer support by switching from Social Studio to Sprout Social

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Medallia reignites employee advocacy and sees exponential growth with Sprout

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How Nutrisense grew its social media community by over 400% with help from Sprout Social

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How Sprout Social helps Goally engage with and learn from parents of neurodiverse children

How Sprout Social helped Ivanti quickly create a best-in-class brand ambassador program

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How the Atlanta Hawks created a slam dunk social strategy using Sprout Social

All aboard: How Purdue University increased their social media engagement by 24%

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Table of content

1. about the client, 2. objective, 3. how uber uses social listening in product development, 4. social listening roi, how uber increased online exposure by 24% with social listening.

We spoke with:

Uber is a prominent and globally recognized transportation network company that has revolutionized the way people move around in cities. By leveraging technology and innovation, Uber has created a user-friendly mobile app that connects riders with drivers, offering a seamless and convenient transportation experience.

With Uber, users have the flexibility to request a ride at any time and from any location, eliminating the need to hail a traditional taxi or rely on public transportation. The app provides real-time information about available drivers nearby, estimated arrival times, and fare estimates, providing transparency and convenience to riders.

With the release of its new app, Uber saw a massive increase in social media buzz. Here's how they used Brand24 to measure the effectiveness of their strategies.

At Uber, we use social listening on a daily basis, which allows us to understand how our users feel about the changes we’re implementing. As soon as we introduce a modification, we know which parts of it are greeted with enthusiasm, and which need more work. We’re happy that the new app was received so well because we’ve put a lot of work into it.

Krzysiek Radoszewski

On November 2, 2016, Uber released their new rider app, which was greeted with enthusiasm by users worldwide. The rollout got people talking and the subsequent increase in online conversations mentioning “Uber” was instantly visible in their project dashboard.

Within 2 days of the rollout, the amount of online discussion about Uber increased by 100% , from approximately 8-9k mentions to 16-22k in just the first three weeks following the initial release.

The volume of discussions around Uber didn’t increase during the next week or so, but remained high for an extended period of time.

Engagement also increased significantly  in the days following the introduction of the new app, reaching a peak between November 7 and November 11. As you can see on the graph below, the  number of likes  (marked in pink)  increased by 90%  in comparison to peaks from the end of October. Similarly, the  number of shares  (marked in green) rocketed following the app rollout - they  increased by 250% in comparison to the end of October.

While many riders expressed their love for the brand new app, Uber was also on the lookout for the not-so-happy ones so they could use their feedback in the future.

Uber keeps an eye on their driver and rider opinions because this allows them to continuously optimize their product.

Thanks to the real-time feedback that Uber collects with social listening, they know which features are frequently requested by their customers. Simultaneously, Uber can also use this feedback to decide which features have been unsuccessful and require further modification.

While working on the new app, we were interested how our users were using the older version, and how they would like to do it in the ideal world. To find out, we used Brand24 social media monitoring - we simply took a look at markets where were present.

Well done. Some good looking #UX updates there pic.twitter.com/l3pyEMcP0E — Jeremy Wight (@JeremyWight) November 2, 2016

Uber  uses data gathered with Brand24 to estimate the effectiveness of their current activities , as well as in making recommendations regarding the future of Uber. These include product development, entering new markets, and new features of the app itself. Once they make a decision to go ahead, Uber uses social media monitoring to discover how their current customer base feels about the change. They also continue to monitor customer satisfaction from using Uber on a regular basis.

@SuperMobility Great changes. All the little changes are fantastic. Nice work. — Brian Stucki (@brianstucki) November 2, 2016

We know we can always count on them, even with the most difficult inquiries, not to mention challenging deadlines. Thanks to their input, working with Brand24 is not only a wise business decision, but a source of great satisfaction.

The global rollout of the new rider app started in early November 2016 and will take several weeks, so Uber will only be able to sum up this particular project in terms of sales growth after it’s been completed. Thanks to social listening, they can estimate social ROI, which, as stated previously, equals:

Growth in discussion volume

Growth in number of likes

Increase in number of shares

Radoszewski states that at Uber, they “see the value of social listening every single day”. Let’s take the uberIceCream campaign organized worldwide as an example.

Thanks to social listening, we were able to satisfy the needs of riders & drivers worldwide, and with a 1-day event, we observed a 24% increase in engagement in social media. The action had a direct influence on our business results, with an 11% increase in new users, and a 7% increase in average number of rides per user.

Nice to see you scrolled all the way down here! Here at Brand24, we really enjoy hearing our customers' success stories. This assures us of the tool's utility and makes us proud that we can help you with whatever you use our tool for.

Maybe you also happen to use Brand24 in your day-to-day work and want to share your case with the world. If so, feel free to write me!

Till the next case study. Toodles!

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