In a consumer-centric world where trust and recommendations play a vital role in purchasing decisions, harnessing social media mentions can bolster your brand presence and support sales efforts. Social listening is the practice of monitoring public online conversations to access key insights about your company and anything that may be of interest to your business.

88% of consumers say they read at least three reviews for everything they buy—no matter the product or cost, before they make a purchase. This means they trust recommendations from people they know compared to other forms of marketing messaging. You need to find your brand mentions and make sure your social media presence supports your sales.

The Difference Between Social Listening and Social Monitoring

Social listening goes beyond mere observation. It involves analyzing conversations, mentions, and trends online to extract meaningful insights about your target audience, competitors, industry, and brand. Leveraging these insights helps businesses make informed decisions, tailor marketing strategies, stay connected with their audience, monitor industry trends, address customer concerns, and keep tabs on competitors.

Social monitoring focuses on tracking and observing social media for various purposes, including brand reputation and crisis management. This way, companies can identify any negative trends, rumors, or potential issues and promptly address them to mitigate their impact. Brands that monitor their social media conversations can gauge public opinion and sentiment towards their products, services, or industry. This information is valuable for making strategic decisions, improving products, or identifying emerging trends.

When and How to Leverage Social Listening

With a staggering 4.48 billion active users sharing content daily on social media platforms and around 60% of the global population actively engaging on social networks, businesses cannot afford to overlook social listening . Brands should use social listening to gain real-time insights into customer opinions, sentiments, and preferences.

Effective social listening enables businesses to make data-driven decisions and improve their products or services based on customer feedback in real-time. Social listening can also be beneficial during product launches, marketing campaigns, or crises to monitor online conversations and address customer concerns quickly.

Brands can use social listening tools and technologies to monitor social media platforms and track mentions, hashtags, and specific keywords that are relevant to their brand. Actively listening to social media conversations enhances a business’s online presence. It amplifies its social media results and ensures they never miss out on valuable dialogues about their brand.

Benefits of Social Listening Data

When you understand your audiences’ pain points and preferences, you can improve customer satisfaction, develop effective marketing campaigns, and refine your product offerings. Social listening aids in reputation management, crisis mitigation, and identifying new business opportunities. Implementing a social listening strategy will help you generate a wealth of data to help you, such as brand mentions, customer feedback, sentiment analysis, competitor insights, and industry trends. With this information, brands can track the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and gain a competitive edge.

Recommended Social Media Listening Tools

Several tools can assist businesses in implementing social listening effectively by offering features like real-time monitoring, sentiment analysis, competitor tracking, and comprehensive reporting. Some popular options include Brand24, Brandwatch, Hootsuite, and Awario.

  • Brand24 stands out as a cost-effective tool for social listening and online media monitoring within the market. It enables brands to monitor online discussions across blogs, news sites, review sites, podcasts, newsletters, or forums.
  • Brandwatch provides powerful social listening capabilities with advanced analytics, customizable dashboards, and AI-powered insights to help businesses understand consumer sentiment and track brand performance effectively.
  • Hootsuites‘ social media management features allow businesses to monitor conversations, engage with audiences, and track competitors across multiple platforms from a single dashboard.
  • Awario offers real-time social listening capabilities, sentiment analysis, and competitor tracking that enables brands to monitor business mentions, identify customer needs, and gain competitive intelligence to drive effective marketing campaigns.

These are but a few examples. Many other social listening tools are available in the market with varying features and pricing options. Evaluate every tool based on your requirements, or consult a specialist at Brillity Digital for professional guidance!

Why Partner with Brillity Digital?

Brillity Digital, a leading digital marketing agency, helps businesses unlock the full potential of social media strategy. Our expertise in social media strategy, data analysis, and advanced tools enables companies to harness the power of social listening.

We offer tailored solutions and industry insights that empower brands to enhance brand visibility and foster meaningful connections with their target audience. If you’re ready to improve marketing strategies and strengthen your online presence, we have the expertise to help you stay ahead of the competition.  

About the Author

Vivianna Davis

Vivianna Davis

Vivianna Davis is our Director of Operations. She specializes in search engine optimization, project management, and operations. In 2019 she was a BizWest Women of Distinction nominee.