Social Monitoring vs. Social Listening: What's the Difference?
Two terms are often used to describe the process of tracking social conversations about brands and businesses: social monitoring and social listening. Numerous variations can also be found (e.g., digital listening, social measurement, social media tracking, etc.), but these terms are less common, according to Google search analytics. Community management is also a related term, though one that should be considered as a separate concept (as we discuss below).
The fact that social listening and social monitoring are often used interchangeably suggests they're both referring to the same practice. Even service providers tend to use both terms on landing pages. (Confession: We've been guilty of this as well.) However, in the marketing world, there are several key differences between monitoring and listening.
Defining social monitoring
Social monitoring, in the broadest sense, simply means checking social media platforms to discover what users are saying about you, your brand, or your product and services. For smaller brands with manageable levels of mentions, this is easy enough to do, especially when users are responding to your posts, tagging your account (on Twitter or Instagram), or posting comments on your official page (on Facebook).
The word monitoring also implies a level of recording, not just observation. And, in fact, social monitoring as a service usually includes reports that track the number of mentions and other metrics on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. Monitoring can also be part of a larger social strategy for social engagement. It may be necessary, for instance, to respond to customers asking questions or raising concerns.
The practice of replying to user comments (and engaging influencers) is commonly referred to as community management and should be thought of as an extension of social monitoring. Social monitoring can be considered part of a broader social media management strategy.
Defining social listening
Social listening also involves extensive monitoring, but the search focus extends beyond brand mentions to keywords and key personnel associated with a particular industry or relevant demographic. The purpose of social listening is often to identify and analyze trends or to spot conversations that could be significant (even if your brand isn't specifically mentioned) and to then explain relevant context and implications.
Social listening and social monitoring both involve a mix of qualitative and quantitative analysis, but listening is ultimately far more strategic, especially regarding long-term decision making. For instance, social listening is often a key component of market research or reputation management efforts, and findings from listening reports can be used to craft new social campaigns or other marketing strategies.
Another key difference: social monitoring is generally limited to core social platforms, while listening extends to niche platforms like Yelp, Reddit, and Glassdoor and media coverage across the web more generally. (To be clear, social monitoring can also include niche platforms, but most monitoring tools are geared towards Facebook, Instagram, and especially Twitter.)
Social monitoring and social listening:
Which is right for you?
If your brand has a substantial online presence, you almost certainly need to be monitoring for any new comments on your Facebook and Instagram pages or for any other social mentions of your brand (such as people tagging you in a post and asking for help on Twitter).
The question with social monitoring, then, isn't "should you be doing it?" but "are you doing it correctly?"
To be effective, social monitoring needs to be:
Responsive: If your social strategy is to respond to relevant comments and mentions (and if this isn't your social strategy, then it really should be), you need to be doing so promptly so that customers or potential customers don't feel like you're ignoring them. This is barebones community management.
Comprehensive: Again, you should be monitoring for mentions across all of the main social platforms. Even if you only have a minimal presence on, say, Twitter, it's still worth following conversations there to see what people are saying about you.
For brands with a high volume of mentions, social monitoring can be supported with automated social media analytics and monitoring tools. Some of these programs (like HootSuite and Sprout Social) can also handle your social media publishing needs so that you can set up editorial calendars with posts to be published (across platforms) for the week or month ahead.
But these tools can be expensive and brands with a lower volume of mentions may not require them. Still, you should at minimum have a dedicated social manager who monitors notifications and provides answers to questions (or refer users to a person who can help) and flags any negative or problematic posts.
So, if you have robust social monitoring set up, do you still need social listening? Possibly. We touched on this above, but it's useful to think of social monitoring as a micro-level strategy for engaging customers directly while building your brand, while social listening is a macro-level strategy for keeping tabs on industry trends, consumer discussions, and related reputation management issues.
If it's critical for your organization to track these kinds of conversations and posts, then you're probably already performing some level of social listening, even if you don't refer to it as such. Systemizing these efforts into a social listening framework will be beneficial to ensure that you're being comprehensive.
To be effective, social listening should:
Complement SEO: Social listening should reflect your digital footprint. It's important to know, for instance, what customers, investors, or journalists are seeing when they search for your brand or business. That's why social listening efforts can include Wikipedia, Glassdoor, and other prominent search results.
Contextualize mentions: Ideally, social listening shouldn't just tell you what people are saying, it should at least provide some details about why those conversations are happening and how they impact your brand.
Certain practices associated with social listening—like tracking conversations related to industry-relevant keywords—can, in theory, be tacked on to your social monitoring without much effort. In practice, though, listening requires a certain degree of high-level analysis that may be outside the scope of usual community management duties. That's why social listening is ultimately best handled by an employee or advisor with a strategic understanding of your brand.
Conclusion
Nearly every brand or business with an online presence will engage in some form of social monitoring, which in its broadest sense simply means observing and tracking all social mentions. Depending on your overall social strategy, you may choose to respond to some or nearly all of these posts, especially if they involve customer questions about your product or service.
Digital listening is ultimately broader and more strategic than social monitoring, as the focus is less on individual social mentions and more on industry trends and your brand's overall digital footprint.
If you have questions about these differences—or disagreements about our definitions—then please send us an email or tag us on social. We’re monitoring for all mentions!
