Social media platforms bubble like a perpetual spring of market research data. That’s why over 60% of businesses use social media listening software to gain market insights and guide improvement.
Take Ben & Jerry’s. The ice cream titans used to spend most of their social media budget during peak summer sales. But when their social listening tools revealed that people also pined for pint-sized joy when cooped up inside during rainstorms and blizzards, they took action — cue the wildly popular Netflix & Chill’d flavor.
That’s the power of social media listening tools. It’s like having a team of spies constantly tuned into conversations around your brand, industry, and competitors. Unlock these valuable insights, and you’ll elevate your marketing strategy, product development, customer support, and more.
So, let’s explore the perks of listening in, the must-have features to achieve your goals, and how to choose the best social listening tool for your business needs.
What Is Social Media Listening?
Social media listening is the process of actively monitoring and analyzing online conversations to understand what people say about your brand, industry, and competitors.
Social media listening software uses advanced analytics and AI-powered technology to transform the sometimes ambiguous language of social listening data into actionable strategies.
Research shows that companies primarily use social listening to understand attitudes and opinions (57%), track brand health (55%), and gather competitive intelligence (40%). The most common use cases include:
- Trend detection (36%)
- Brand monitoring (24%)
- Campaign analysis (18%)
- Competitive benchmarking (18%)
And you can add review management, audience engagement, crisis management, and customer support to that list.
Social Media Listening vs. Monitoring
Social media monitoring and social media listening are often used interchangeably, but there’s a major difference between the two. Think of it this way:
Social media monitoring — like watching a movie on mute without captions
You see things happening but don’t understand the plot, the characters’ motivations, or the overall message.
Social media monitoring tools tell you the “what,” as in, What are people saying about us?
It tracks your brand mentions and basic metrics like reach and engagement. But your team can’t do much with only this general overview.
Social media listening — like watching a movie with surround sound
Here, you get the complete picture: the dialogue, the soundtrack, and the emotional undercurrents.
Social media listening goes beyond the surface level “what” to analyze the “why.”
Learning the sentiment and motivations behind brand mentions gives you a deeper understanding of your business’s audience, brand perception, competition, and more.
You and your team can leverage that data to craft stronger strategies and make better decisions.
8 Key Features of Social Media Listening Software
Let’s take a closer look at the various superpowers of social listening tools and how they’ll benefit your business.
1. Keyword and topic tracking
Social listening enables your brand to become the fly on the wall in any online conversation. Keyword and topic tracking is your personalized listening filter to cut through all the noise.
Keep your finger on the pulse by tracking:
- Mentions of your brand name
- Specific keywords and hashtags
- Industry trends and topics
- Conversations relevant to your brand or audience
This panoramic view gives your brand a clear understanding of the digital landscape. Use it to spark social media conversations, achieve news feed optimization, and get ahead of your competitors.
2. Sentiment analysis
Not all mentions are created equal. Listening tools decipher customer sentiments across different social channels to uncover the emotional tone behind online mentions (positive, negative, or neutral).
You’ll learn what people really feel about your brand, even if they haven’t tagged it.
Brand monitoring is a cornerstone of effective social media management. With a social listening tool in your tech stack, you’re better equipped to improve and maintain your brand reputation without breaking a sweat.
3. Influencer identification
Over 80% of brands believe influencer marketing is “essential” to their social strategy. Partner with influencers your audience trusts and your business can amplify brand awareness and drive conversions.
After all, stats show that businesses earn $5 for every $1 invested in influencer marketing, and the top 13% exceed $20 for every $1 spent!
Although it’s easy to find mega-influencers, they usually have larger but less engaged audiences and command a higher price for social partnerships. On the other hand, collaborations with micro-influencers generate 60% higher engagement rates at a lower cost, giving your team a more strategic, cost-effective option.
Social media listening tools quickly help your brand discover key influencers, thought leaders, and creators across social networks who align with your brand. These hidden gems can talk about your brand and shape the discourse in your niche, so it’s a great idea to approach them for collaboration opportunities.
4. Audience insights
Social listening capabilities serve as one of the best consumer intelligence tools. These next-level analytics clue your business in to customer attitudes, opinions, behaviors, and preferences.
When you have a deep understanding of your target audience, your team can:
- Craft content that resonates: Content tailored to your audience’s interests, pain points, and needs leads to more engaging social media posts, podcast episodes, blogs, YouTube videos, and other targeted content.
- Improve your product or service: Over 70% of companies say social media monitoring tools provide valuable customer insights that can be shared across departments to maximize their ROI and overall impact.
- Strengthen email and social media marketing campaigns: With more precise insights into a target audience’s interests and preferences, over 80% of businesses view social listening as a fundamental planning element in their marketing strategy.
💬 Psst! Have you tried these 10 Ways to Spark Social Media Conversations (with Examples)?
5. Trend identification
Stay ahead of the curve with trend identification. Social listening platforms can help you identify emerging trends, topics, and evolving customer demands within your industry. Your brand will have the power to:
- Lead the discussion with fresh, relevant content
- Predict market shifts based on historical data
- Capitalize on new opportunities before your competitors
- Quickly adapt your strategic decision-making
6. Competitive intelligence
With competitive analysis tools, you’ll always know what your competitors are up to and how people perceive their brands. Gain a market advantage by turning your competition’s perceived weaknesses into your strengths.
You can also use social listening tools to benchmark your share of voice (the percentage of conversations dedicated to your brand within your market) against your competitors’ share. After that, the next step is to develop a data-driven strategy to amplify your share of voice and establish brand dominance.
7. Crisis management
Want to stay one step ahead and avoid a social media crisis? Level up your social media crisis management by using social listening tools to proactively address concerns before they snowball into viral PR disasters.
First, closely monitor negative brand mentions. Then, engage your target audience at scale using a tool like Nextiva Unibox. This tool enables one-to-one conversations across any messaging app to engage with your customers via their preferred channels.
Resolve issues instantly, build loyalty, and improve customer satisfaction all in one efficient workflow. You’re welcome.
8. Reporting and analytics
Turn mountains of data into actionable insights. Social listening tools provide robust reporting and analytics features. Generate reports and dashboards to visualize and explore your social media data without hiring a team of data analysts.
You’ll gain a complete panorama of the social media landscape surrounding your brand. Pinpoint patterns, refine audience segments, understand what’s driving trends, track KPIs to improve, and measure your success.
Potential Challenges of Using Social Media Listening Software
Although social listening software is game-changing, it’s not without its hurdles. Here are some potential challenges to consider:
Data overload
According to The Social Intelligence Lab, over 70% of brands use one to three social media listening tools. Combined with platform-specific social media analytics, that firehose of data quickly becomes overwhelming — especially for smaller teams.
It’s crucial to have a clear strategy for sorting these vast quantities of data so you can analyze it effectively and identify the details that matter most. After all, data may be king, but understandable, actionable insights rule.
An intuitive platform with easy-to-read dashboards and reporting ensures you and your team don’t get bogged down in the numbers and overlook practical takeaways that can be applied to your social media strategy.
Data accuracy
Social media data is far from perfect. Bots, misspellings, spam, fake accounts, irrelevant mentions, and subjective opinions can all skew results. Even the best AI-powered listening tools miss the subtleties and nuances of human speech and emotions.
So rather than getting hung up on every single data point, be mindful of these limitations and inaccuracies. Gain a critical eye on your social listening data by using customizable Boolean search strings to separate relevant keywords from the clutter.
Choosing the right tool
Choosing the wrong social listening tool is like trying to force a key that’s almost right into a custom-built keyhole. It might look like it’ll work, but you’ll end up frustrated and wasting valuable time and resources (money) before realizing it doesn’t integrate seamlessly with your existing tech stack.
And we’re not talking chump change here. One-third of brands spend between $100K and $200K on agencies for social listening support, and 39% of businesses spend over $100K annually on social listening technology, with the majority spending between $50K and $200K.
Top 5 Social Media Listening Software Platforms
Now that you understand the power of social listening platforms, let’s explore some of the top contenders in this space:
1. Nextiva
Social Media Management by Nextiva isn’t just the best social media listening tool; it’s a comprehensive social media management powerhouse designed to streamline your entire workflow.
Stop switching between tools as you market, engage, and support customers on social media. Do it all from one integrated customer experience platform that has all the features you need under one roof, including:
- Unified management: Manage all your social media accounts (Facebook, Instagram, X, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.) from a single, intuitive dashboard. Schedule, publish, and monitor your content all from the same location.
- Powerful social listening: Gain rich audience insights, track mentions and brand sentiment, and identify influencers across social channels, forums, blogs, and other sources. Create custom tags and use keyword filtering so that data is easy to find and analyze.
- Real-time customer engagement: Increase customer loyalty and show the world that you care. Answer questions and respond to comments, messages, and feedback across all channels in real time, turning social media visitors into fans.
- Customer support and crisis management: Set alerts and auto-prioritize posts and reviews that require immediate responses. Solve important issues efficiently to provide integrated, world-class customer service across all your social media channels.
- Automated workflows and intelligent routing: Auto-respond to social media posts and reviews using our AI-powered Customer Engagement Assist™ based on sentiment and other criteria you determine.
- Competitor brand monitoring: Track your competitors’ performance and see how you rank against them. Receive notifications when your competitors make changes to their brands.
- Advanced analytics: Monitor your social media performance and engagement, measure your impact, and gain insights to optimize your social media strategy and achieve valuable business outcomes.
- Built-in scalability: Choose Nextiva and watch it adapt to your needs, whether you’re a growing business or a large enterprise.
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2. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a social media management platform that lets you schedule posts, track conversations, and analyze results from all your accounts in one place. Its recent acquisition of Talkwalker adds social listening tools to its service offering.
Strengths
- Streamlines social listening with social media management tools, making it well-suited to agencies or teams managing multiple social accounts.
- Monitors references to your brand logo using AI visual image recognition.
Weaknesses
- Social listening features migrated from Talkwalker may not be fully functional yet or as in-depth as other dedicated social listening tools.
- The platform may require additional integrations for highly specialized needs.
- Advanced Analytics is an add-on to Hootsuite Enterprise plans.
3. BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is a tool for marketers to find trending topics, influencers, and high-performing content.
Strengths
- Specializes in identifying trending content, influencers, and potential brand advocates.
- Helps content marketing teams optimize their content research strategy and better reach target audiences.
Weaknesses
- Lacks broader social listening features offered by other tools like competitor analysis or in-depth sentiment analysis.
4. Mention
Mention helps you track what people are saying about your brand or any topic you care about online.
Strengths
- Focuses on real-time social media monitoring and notifications.
- Provides comprehensive coverage across multiple online sources, including blogs, forums, and news sites.
- Allows businesses to stay on top of brand mentions and respond to customer feedback quickly.
Weaknesses
- Has limited analytics tools compared to some competitors.
- May require additional integrations/APIs for social listening tasks like trend identification or influencer marketing.
5. Sprout Social
Sprout Social provides social media listening and engagement software for businesses to manage their social media presence and marketing efforts.
Strengths
- Has a user-friendly interface with strong social listening features across various platforms (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, X, YouTube, etc.).
- Visualizes the most frequently used keywords and phrases mentioned with the Word Cloud feature.
- Offers detailed sentiment analysis and reports on brand performance, share of voice, and competitor benchmarking.
Weaknesses
- May not be as robust for highly specialized social listening needs as some competitors.
- Requires an add-on for more detailed social listening.
- May be ideal for B2B teams, but its pricing can be on the high side for smaller businesses that don’t need an enterprise-level solution.
Scale Social Support and Take Action With Nextiva
If you only use social media to broadcast your messages, you’re doing it wrong. Social listening allows you and your team to tap into and understand the online conversation surrounding your brand.
Adopt social listening for your business, and you’ll be able to anticipate the needs of your target audience, forge stronger relationships with customers, improve your brand reputation, and make data-driven decisions that lead to supercharged business outcomes.
Listen and take action with Nextiva’s Social Media Management platform. Whether you’re a small business owner managing your social media solo or a social media director overseeing a large team, our unbeatable listening features, unified management tools, and AI-powered analytics deliver game-changing results.
💫 Take a quantum leap forward with Nextiva, and achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. Click here for a free, personalized, live demo to discover how!
