Overview
Social media platforms have become essential touchpoints for brands to engage, promote, and interact with their audiences. This means there are substantial amount of information from social data (text, images, audio) that can be sourced, analyzed, and tracked, which makes social media monitoring rather important for companies and business. Beyond just posting content and responding to comments, businesses need a deeper understanding of their consumers’ sentiments, behaviors, and conversations.
This is where social listening comes into play.
According to PR communications experts, social listening is more than just monitoring online conversations, netizen reactions, comments or news coverage—it involves analyzing and deriving meaningful insights from social data (including netizen’s reactions and comments) to drive strategic decisions. You could say, it is more than just subscribing to a tool, but unlocking the real value of the social media listening tool requires analyzing, interpreting and reading the meaning behind those charts and written insights.
This article will delve into what social listening is, how it differs from social media monitoring, and why it is crucial for businesses across various industries, from the public sector, automotive, airlines to consumer goods.
What is Social Listening?
Social listening is the process of tracking, analyzing, and responding to conversations about a brand, industry, or specific topics on social media and other digital channels using social listening tools.
More often than not, social listening is viewed as a tactical approach by end users to get a touch on the pulse of what customers and the general public are talking about their brand.
Additionally, most of social listening tools are equipped with key functionalities to help businesses understand customer sentiment, identify trends, and make data-driven decisions to improve their products, services, and marketing strategies.
Social listening involves two key components and activities:
- Monitoring – Tracking mentions using relevant keywords and hashtags, and conducting internal discussions that are relevant to a brand, competitor, or industry. Real-time monitoring adds to the component and usually requires manpower to support the operations through crisis alerts.
- Analysis – Processing and interpreting the collected social data to understand sentiment, trends, identify issues, risks and other actionable insights. Data analysis often involve custom reporting, or using multiple data visualization dashboards to get the best insights.
- Actions – prioritizing issues and recommending actions – mainly focusing on targeted campaigns, forming new narratives or performing operational improvements arising from customer feedback or complaints. At this point, AI-driven actions are available in some social listening tools.
The social media monitoring and analysis are doing usually by in-house analysts but more businesses in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia are outsourcing the social media monitoring and analysis to service-based companies in order to focus on actions (output) related to campaigns, customer improvements and other strategic actions.
What is Social Media Monitoring?
Social Media Monitoring is focused on tracking conversations about or with specific mentions about the brand. Whilst its applications is limited, it is often viewed as the most basic activity that can be carried out if you are a junior analyst, mostly using a self-service social media monitoring tool to perform tasks to assist a senior PR, communications or a marketing manager.
The social media monitoring is generally preferred by small-to-medium scale businesses that requires minimal back-end operations with easy-to-use self-service tools, minimizing learning curve associated with complex social listening activities.
However, social media monitoring system does suffer from limitations such as noisy data and inaccurate sentiment that restrict what you could do with it.
Social Media Monitoring vs. Social Media Listening
While often used interchangeably, social media monitoring and social media listening are distinct practices in marketing, communications and reputation management.
In essence, social media monitoring is seen as a reactive response in corporate communications (or in marketing), while social media listening is proactive, and mainly reserved for highly experienced businesses who leverages on data analytics and data-driven insights for strategic interventions.
Understanding the differences can help businesses leverage the right strategy for their needs. However, in recent years, social media listening is a term that is associated with high-value actionable insights, often in partnership with companies with strong data-analytics capabilities.
| Aspect | Social Media Monitoring | Social Media Listening |
| Definition | Tracking brand mentions, hashtags, comments, and direct messages in real-time. | Analyzing conversations, trends, and customer sentiment to gain insights. |
| Purpose | Provides immediate responses to customer inquiries or complaints. | Helps develop long-term business strategies. |
| Focus | Specific mentions, direct interactions, and keywords. | Broader industry trends, competitor insights, and sentiment analysis. |
| Example | Responding to a customer complaint on Twitter about a product defect. | Identifying a trend where customers prefer eco-friendly packaging and adjusting product design accordingly. |
| Actionability | Reacting to immediate concerns and feedback. | Influencing business decisions, marketing strategies, and product innovation. |
For brand sentiment analysis, social listening with data analytics capability is more suited. Companies such as Berkshire Media can now offer tailored data analysis from social listening activities that offer more in-depth industry trends, consumer behaviour and competitor insights with sentiment analysis that is more accurate due to its multilingual machine learning sentiment detection engine.
Why is Social Listening Important for Business?
1. Understanding Customer Sentiment
Social listening enables businesses to gauge how customers feel about their brand, products, and services. Sentiment analysis categorizes feedback as positive, negative, or neutral, helping brands understand areas that require improvement.
For example, if a consumer food brand notices a surge in negative sentiment around a product’s taste, they can investigate and reformulate the product to better meet consumer expectations.
2. Crisis Management and Brand Reputation
A social media crisis can escalate quickly. Social listening helps detect early warning signs of potential PR disasters. By acting promptly, businesses can mitigate negative impacts and maintain their reputation.
For instance, an automotive company that detects safety concerns about a new car model can address the issue before it becomes a full-scale crisis.
3. Competitor Analysis
Monitoring competitor mentions and industry discussions allows businesses to identify market gaps and opportunities. By understanding what customers like and dislike about competitors, companies can refine their offerings to gain a competitive edge.
A fashion retailer, for example, can analyze why customers are praising a competitor’s sustainable materials and introduce similar eco-friendly products. In automotive sector, social listening can help drive better consumer insights, where vehicle manufacturers and marketers can now identify the key attributes that drives consumer purchasing decision such as price, design, colour, interior and performance features.
4. Product Development and Innovation
By analyzing customer feedback and emerging trends, businesses can innovate products that align with consumer preferences. Social listening reveals unmet needs, allowing brands to develop solutions proactively.
For example, a beverage company might find that consumers are interested in sugar-free alternatives, prompting them to launch a new product line catering to health-conscious individuals. Large companies like Nestle use advance social listening capabilities to monitor the consumer preferences about their wide range of products.
5. Enhancing Customer Experience
Personalized experiences drive customer loyalty. Social listening enables businesses to tailor marketing efforts and customer interactions based on preferences and behaviors.
For instance, an airline company can identify frequent complaints about flight delays and introduce real-time updates or compensation programs to improve customer satisfaction. Top social media listening companies such as Berkshire Media utilize advance sentiment analysis to identify customer pain points and preferences along the passenger travel journey (i.e pre-flight, in-flight, post-flight), making it one of the best social media monitoring and consumer brand sentiment companies for the aviation (airlines) industry.
6. Identifying Influencers and Brand Advocates
Social listening helps brands discover influencers and loyal customers who can advocate for their products. Engaging with these individuals amplifies brand visibility and credibility.
A tech company, for example, can collaborate with a popular YouTuber who frequently discusses cutting-edge gadgets. Some social listening analytics companies such as Berkshire Media have influencer metrices such as influencer virality score, net sentiment score beyond traditional metrices (eg: reach, impression).
Industry Applications of Social Listening
Social listening benefits various industries by providing actionable insights that drive growth and customer engagement. Below are examples of its applications in different sectors:
1. Automotive Industry
Use Case: A car manufacturer tracks online discussions about electric vehicles (EVs). The analysis reveals concerns about battery life and charging infrastructure. The company then invests in longer-lasting batteries and partners with charging station providers to address these concerns. In other applications, consumer sentiment analysis and social insights can help automotive brands identify key purchasing decisions, helping marketers to identifying attributes that wins the heart and minds of consumers.
2. Consumer Food & Beverage Industry
Use Case: A fast-food chain analyzes social media trends using social listening tool and notices a rising demand for plant-based options. By launching a new plant-based burger, they cater to this growing market and attract health-conscious consumers. This example shows the social insights captured using social listening tools help F&B industry to fine tune their product offering, taste and even the overall experience.
3. Retail & E-commerce
Use Case: A clothing brand uses social listening to identify seasonal fashion trends, largely from what consumers are largely talking, discussing or sharing on social platforms. By aligning their inventory with trending colors and styles, they ensure that their product offerings match consumer preferences, leading to higher sales. The dynamic nature of fast fashion means social listening tools can be helpful for fashion brands to capture new opportunities by aligning the right narratives, product and marketing attributes that resonate well to what consumer are saying on social media.
4. Healthcare & Pharmaceuticals
Use Case: A pharmaceutical company monitors conversations about flu season and identifies customer concerns about vaccine availability. This insight helps them improve distribution strategies and marketing campaigns.
5. Financial Services
Use Case: A bank analyzes sentiment around mobile banking apps. Negative feedback about slow transactions prompts them to optimize app performance, improving user experience and customer satisfaction.
6. Technology & Software
Use Case: A software company tracks feedback on its latest update. If users report frequent bugs, the company prioritizes a patch release, ensuring customer retention.
How to Implement an Effective Social Listening Strategy
To maximize the benefits of social listening, businesses should follow a structured approach:
- Define Goals – Identify whether the focus is on customer sentiment, competitor analysis, trend identification, or crisis management.
- Choose the Right Tools – Platforms like Brandwatch, Sprout Social, and Hootsuite may offer comprehensive social listening capabilities, but the best social listening tools are predominantly by companies with strong data analytics capabilities such as Berkshire Media.
- Monitor Multiple Channels – Cover all relevant digital spaces, including social media, forums, blogs, and news sites. This is important when identifying new trends, marketing opportunities or when performing root-cause analysis in issue management.
- Analyze and Interpret Data – Look for patterns, emerging topics, and consumer sentiment shifts. This requires data analysts or companies with strong data analytics experience such as Berkshire Media, known to interpret complex social data into actionable insights.
- Take Action – Use insights to refine marketing strategies, enhance customer service, and innovate products.
- Measure Success – Evaluate key performance indicators (KPIs) like engagement, sentiment change, net sentiment score, PR value or social PR value, and potentially revenue or cost impact.
Conclusion
Social listening is a powerful tool that provides businesses with invaluable insights into customer sentiment, industry trends, and competitive landscapes.
Unlike social media monitoring, which focuses on immediate reactions, social listening enables brands to anticipate shifts in consumer behavior and proactively adjust their strategies.
From automotive companies refining EV technology to food brands launching healthier alternatives, the applications of social listening span across industries. By investing in the right tools and methodologies, businesses can leverage social listening to drive growth, enhance customer experiences, and maintain a competitive edge in today’s fast-evolving market.
Embracing social listening is no longer optional—it’s a strategic necessity for businesses that want to thrive in the digital era.
About the Author
Shahid Shayaa is the founder and managing director of Berkshire Media. He specializes in data-driven communication strategies and insights using social data analytics, social media monitoring tools and machine learning text algorithms for more than 13 years. As an expert in the field of media monitoring, issue management and managing reputation risks for companies, he is involved in various research studies in this field and published various scientific papers on social data analytics, sentiment analysis and back-end algorithms on consumer sentiment, emotions and behaviour for marketers and campaign managers.
His research work and studies have been cited more than 467 times, inspiring new research in the field of social analytics in Malaysia. You may view his work here.
