Question 1

What is the difference between social listening and social monitoring?

Accepted Answer

Social listening helps you understand why something is trending, while social monitoring helps you understand what is trending.

Question 2

Why is social listening important?

Accepted Answer

With its continuous stream of real-time insights, social listening helps organizations better understand their audience, improve their strategies, uncover market gaps to guide product development, spot potential crises so they can quickly take control, even drive sales — and prove it.

All of this gives social pros data that can be directly connected to ROI — something that used to exclusively belong in the performance marketing arena.

Question 3

How does social listening work?

Accepted Answer

Social listening tools collect data from social media and other sources in real-time and analyze it to provide insights. For social media, tools use APIs to send requests for mentions of keywords, and the social media network sends back relevant mentions. For other sources, like news articles and blogs, tools use crawlers

Question 4

How should I decide which social networks to start with?

Accepted Answer

Start with the social networks that your audience typically uses use to learn how they interact with you and talk about you online.

Question 5

What should I track?

Accepted Answer

Some relevant keywords and topics to track include your brand's name, social media handles, and slogan, as well as your products, competitors, and industry-related words.

Question 6

What are some goals I can set for social listening?

Accepted Answer

Some goals you can set for social listening include understanding customer sentiment, analyzing your share of voice in comparison to competitors, and increasing business engagement.

Question 7

What are some limitations of social listening?

Accepted Answer

1. No Sarcasm
While sentiment tools are definitely useful in gleaming an insight about how your brand is received, keep in mind that machines are collecting this data. For example, if someone says “I just hate Joe Shmoe’s cupcakes,” with a picture of them devouring the cupcakes, the tools will likely register this as negative sentiment, when in fact, it’s positive.

2. Publicly Available Information
Social Listening tools are only available to collect data from public profiles. While that data is extremely useful, it’s important to evaluate that as only a sample of your customer base.

FAQ