Social Media Listening vs. Social Media Monitoring Differences: What, Why & When

How is social media monitoring different from social media listening?

Social media listening is a strategy-based approach for generating actionable insights from online conversations. Social media monitoring is a tactic-based process for responding to customers efficiently. Both marketing strategies involve collecting information about a brand, its competitors, or the industry trends from the web.

As a beginner social media analyst, telling these two strategies apart can be confusing. This guide discusses the differences between social listening vs. social monitoring and their applications

Social media listening vs. social media monitoring

Have you ever used social listening and social monitoring interchangeably?

If so, here’s a breakdown of social media listening vs. social media monitoring.

Social media monitoring tells you “what” people say on social platforms. But social media listening helps you understand the “why” behind those online conversations. 

In the next section, we’ll dive deeper into the differences between social media listening and social media monitoring. 

But first, let’s understand what each approach involves.

What is social media listening?

Social media listening, or social listening, is analyzing conversations on social platforms to get actionable insights. 

It involves hearing and interpreting people’s conversations to understand their thoughts and feelings about a brand, its products (or services), and the industry. You can use an AI-powered social listening tool or hire analysts to do the process manually.

Social listening helps brands analyze people’s sentiments or behavior and make insight-based decisions to improve customer service, content planning, and marketing strategies.

For example; 

Kiddy Place, a kids’ clothes store in Manhattan, has been tracking and analyzing conversations related to kids’ wear. A few months ago, the store’s social media analysts noticed a spike in discussions mentioning a particular type of fleece sweatpants. Some consumers tagged one kids’ store and accused it of selling sub-standard sweatpants.

Kiddy Place’s social media analyst informed relevant departments about this emerging issue. The sales and marketing team identified a gap in the market and consulted the store’s management. The kids’ store introduced a new line of high-quality fleece sweatpants to solve the consumers’ pain points.

The marketing team used the store’s social channels to promote this new product with the hashtag #kids’sfleecesweatpants. A few days after the launch, Kiddy Place noticed a surge in new customers and positive comments about the new line of fleece sweatpants on social media platforms.

Kiddy Place’s management thanked the social media analysts for using social listening to help increase the store’s revenue during that month.

What is social media monitoring?

Social media monitoring (or social monitoring) is the process of tracking mentions related to a brand on social media channels and responding to them. It involves gathering insights about brand mentions and industry trends from online discussions. 

Social monitoring allows a business to get feedback from their customers/followers and respond promptly. Brands that act improve their customer service and build loyalty.

For example;

Tastybits Diner, a small restaurant in Chicago, actively monitors its social channels to know what customers say about their services. At some point, the restaurant’s social media manager saw a Tweet that tagged the restaurant. 

It read, “Had a great time @Tastybits Diner last evening! I loved their customer service, but they should consider introducing more vegetarian options to their menu.”

The social media manager quickly responded to the customer’s tweet.

“Thanks for the shoutout, @CustomerX. We’re definitely adding more vegetarian options to our menu. Please drop by our restaurant any day for tasty bits of your favorite veggie dish. :-)”

Tastybits Diner’s quick and personalized response to the customer’s tweet showed that the restaurant cared about customers’ needs. 

Now, let’s look at the key differences between social listening and social monitoring.

Social listening vs. social monitoring goals

Social listening and social monitoring have different goals, although both are digital marketing strategies.

Social listening aims at understanding customers’ perceptions and sentiments toward a brand, its competitors, or an industry trend. On the other hand, social monitoring focuses on identifying brand mentions and responding to them.

Here’s an example of a social listening goal.

A car manufacturing company introduces a new car model to the market. It wants to understand what customers think about the model and identify problems from their experiences. So the company tasks its social media analysts to conduct social listening on all social platforms. The insights received from this analysis will inform their future marketing decisions.

Here’s an example of a social monitoring goal.

The same car manufacturing company wants to know what customers say about their brand and the new car model they released. Hence, its social media analysts monitor the company’s social channels to identify and respond to any mentions of (or related to) the brand or its new car model. The information collected will help the company handle customer issues effectively, improve engagement, and solve any reputation crisis.

Social monitoring vs. social listening scope 

To what extent do social monitoring and social listening go?

Social listening has a broader scope than social monitoring. It identifies, analyses, and interprets the root cause of customers’ perceptions and sentiments about a brand. On the other hand, social monitoring addresses the symptoms by only identifying customers’ mentions of a brand. It also focuses on one brand, product, or topic at a time. 

So, social monitoring works on a micro level, while social listening operates at a macro level.

Below are examples to explain this further.

Scenario 1: Social monitoring 

You own a coffee shop and want to know what customers think of your iced latte. So you use a monitoring tool to check if your iced latte or coffee shop’s name appears in online discussions. You might come across conversations showing that customers love or hate the drink. 

Scenario 2: Social listening

You want to understand why customers love or hate your iced latte. Therefore, you request your social media manager to execute a social listening strategy. The social media manager uses a social listening tool to analyze online discussions related to your iced latte and coffee shop. They’ll also analyze what customers think of iced lattes from your competitors and what other products they’d wish to get in the same industry.

Social listening vs social monitoring process

Social listening and social monitoring processes differ.

Social listening is a proactive process since you listen to customers to identify gaps or crises and resolve them before they blow up. But, social monitoring is responsive because you respond to customers after they’ve talked about your brand (or product). 

Social listening also has these aspects:

• Thorough research. Social listening involves a deep investigation of conversations or trends. There’s also the interpretation of information to generate actionable insights.
• Strategy-based. Social listening is an aspect of strategic planning. You use it to get insights that influence your future decisions.
• Long-term. You execute social listening over time to get a deeper understanding of customers’ perceptions. 

A good example:

McDonald’s wants to get a comprehensive understanding of its brand performance on its social channels and how it compares with its competitors. So it uses a social listening tool to gather structured data from online conversations. 

With the tool’s help, McDonald’s investigates over 300 social accounts. The brand gathers actionable insights about its social performance and competitive advantage. These insights will help McDonald’s learn about its position in the industry and improve customer experiences.

On the other hand, social monitoring is:

• Superficial research. Social monitoring doesn’t dig into the context of online discussions. A social monitoring tool will only give real-time alerts of mentions related to your brand so that you can respond promptly.
• Tactic-based. Social monitoring involves tactical actions. For instance, when you get an alert that someone has posted a question on your Facebook page, you’ll respond quickly to increase your page’s response time. Or, answering a customer’s query will be a sign of good customer support.
• Short-term. There’s a sense of urgency in social monitoring. If you’re using a tool to track mentions on your social channels, you’ll receive real-time alerts and act accordingly.

Here’s an example:

A commercial bank launched a new mobile banking app. A few days later, the social media analyst noticed a spike in negative comments about the app. Customers complained that the app was glitchy most of the time. The social media manager quickly responded to all the comments and promised the customers that the bank would resolve the issue urgently.

You can also check another example of social media monitoring on Qourage.com

More about social media listening

Most brands don’t conduct social media listening because it’s an intensive process.

However, it’s a vital marketing strategy for brands that want to maintain a good reputation and stay ahead of their competitors.

So, how do you execute a social media listening strategy?

1. Set clear goals and objectives. What do you want to achieve? Do you want to know what your competitors are doing? Or do you want to stay on top of industry trends?
2. Choose a social listening tool. It will help automate the social listening process. Find a tool that matches your goals and budget.
3. Identify your search term/keyword. It could be your brand name, a competitor’s name, or a topic related to the industry.
4. Search and keep track of mentions. The social listening tool will search the keyword and provide results. Monitor this data and use filters to refine your results.
5. Segment and analyze the data. Divide and group your data to visualize it. Then, analyze it to get valuable insights. You could use the help of a data analyst at this point.
6. Take action. Most social listening tools allow you to create custom reports from the obtained insights. Use these reports to influence decisions that matter to your business like your content or marketing strategy and customer service.
7. Measure your efforts and adapt. Take note of how your insight-informed decisions have impacted your business and adapt accordingly.

Why is social listening important?

Below are the reasons why social listening matters.

Social listening provides valuable information about your audience 

Insights from this process help you understand your audience’s needs and preferences.

For instance, you’ll know their favorite content types, social media platforms, emojis, and hashtags.

Also, insights like social media sentiment analysis show how your target audience feels about your brand, competitors, and emerging industry trends.

Social listening can help increase brand awareness and loyalty

For instance, you’re tracking mentions related to your brand. Then, you notice questions about your product or service. 

Responding promptly to such queries is a great way to acquire customers and build relationships. People will recognize you as an expert in the industry and can trust you to offer solutions.

Social listening helps you gather information about your competitors

You’ll gain insights into what your competitors are doing, what platforms they use, how they engage with their audiences, and their strengths and shortcomings.

Studying your competitors allows you to identify gaps and opportunities in the market.

For example, one of your competitors offers poor customer support. You can take advantage of their shortcomings and provide top-notch customer services to get a competitive edge.

Social listening is a great way to gather data on what’s happening in the industry.

Tracking keywords or mentions across different platforms allows you to identify emerging industry trends and how they may affect your brand.

For instance, you’re a solar panel manufacturer and notice a spike in conversations about green, clean, or renewable energy. This trend shows an opportunity to promote solar panels since people are shifting from fossil to renewable energy solutions. 

You can identify your biggest fans and brand advocates using social listening

People talk about brands, products, or services they genuinely love. And others will be willing to try out these products or services from honest reviews. 

Many brands rely on influencers and advocates to spread the word about their offerings.

So, locating people who adore your brand can be a great way to collaborate with them to promote your products and services.

When do brands use social media listening?

Brands use social listening when they want to prevent problems or manage crises.

Below are examples of how and when brands use social listening:

Microsoft: To understand and adapt to customers’ needs

Microsoft, a technology giant, used social listening to conduct market research. 

Its Social Intelligence Practice Team (SIP) used a social listening tool to gather information about customer product preferences and emerging industry concepts.

The collected data helped Microsoft understand that customers needed flexible working environments. So, the company decided to create products, environments, and solutions that facilitate hybrid work.

Chick-fil-A: To identify and manage crises 

Chick-fil-A, a group of restaurants, used social listening to identify and resolve a crisis.

The restaurants noticed increased negative sentiments after introducing a Smokehouse BBQ sauce to replace its original BBQ sauce. Customers expressed dissatisfaction with the new sauce using the hashtag #BRINGBACKTHEBBQ, while some boycotted the restaurants.

Chick-fil-A used a social listening tool to track conversations and create a client dashboard to engage customers directly. The team responded to customers who complained about their new product.

Chick-fil-A launched a campaign to bring back the original sauce and promoted it with the hashtag #BROUGHTBACKTHEBBQ. They also engaged influential fans and gifted them.

The restaurants saw increased positive sentiments and engagement three months after re-introducing the original sauce.

Netflix: To identify gaps and new opportunities in the market

Netflix used social listening to identify a gap and introduce a product in the market.

The entertainment noticed a spike in customer complaints about missing episodes because they dozed off when watching their series. 

Netflix created an ad about smart Netflix socks that signaled the TV to pause after detecting that the viewer had dozed off. It went viral, positive mentions increased, and Netflix won a Shorty award.

Uber: For product development and innovations

Uber, a transport network, used social listening to inform product development decisions.

Using a social listening tool, Uber studied conversations mentioning the brand and the Uber app. They noticed the features users would want in the app and added them to the new rider app they were creating.

After launching the rider app, Uber tracked customers’ conversations and noticed increased positive sentiments and engagements. 

What tools can you use for social media listening?

You can use the following tools for social media listening:

• Sprinklr
• Agorapulse
• eClincher
• SproutSocial
• Hootsuite
• Mention
• Brand24
• Mentionlytics
• Prowly
• Brandwatch
• Talkwalker

Note: There’s a lot of unstructured data on the web, and making sense of it takes time and effort. 

Social listening tools make it easier to structure and analyze this data and provide insights that influence decisions. 

More about social media monitoring

Social media monitoring is an aspect of social listening because it involves tracking brand mentions.

Some steps of the two processes are similar to social listening, like identifying your goals and choosing the right tool and keywords.

But in social monitoring, you collect data related to KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) such as likes, comments, shares, click-through rates, and conversion rates.

It is also part of customer support since you respond to clients’ queries to identify and resolve problems.

For example:

If you track online conversations and notice that customers are unhappy about your product, responding quickly will prevent a reputation crisis.

Why is social media monitoring important?

Here are the reasons why social monitoring matters:

Social monitoring helps brands improve engagement and customer support

A social monitoring tool helps brands notice customer issues from conversations by sending real-time alerts. So a brand can respond promptly and provide customer support.

Example;

MailerLite, a marketing and email automation platform, uses social monitoring to build customer relationships by identifying concerns and responding accordingly.

Brands can improve their reputation with social media monitoring.

Sprout Social found that 76% of consumers appreciate brands prioritizing customer support and responding to their needs.

Coca-Cola Africa is an excellent example of a brand that uses social monitoring to improve its reputation. It uses a social monitoring tool to track conversations and mentions related to the brand. The insights received from daily alerts help Coca-Cola understand what people say about their campaigns and what to improve.

Monitoring online conversations can help brands identify problems in the market

For example, ClickMeeting, a webinar and video conferencing platform, uses a social media monitoring tool to monitor industry trends.

The company spotted an emerging problem (digital fatigue), which was a direct threat. ClickMeeting acted promptly by creating an article that addressed this issue and sent it to all its clients.

What tools can you use for social media monitoring

You can use the following tools for social media monitoring:

• Google Alerts
• SproutSocial
• Meltwater
• Digimind Social
• Sendible
• Sprinklr
• Hootsuite
• Agorapulse
• Brand24
• Mention
• Mentionlytics

The Bottom line: Social monitoring vs. social listening 

Social monitoring tells you the “what,” while social listening shows the “why” in online conversations. Use social monitoring to improve customer support and social listening to understand customers’ needs and adapt to industry trends. Let me know your thoughts below about these marketing strategies.