The difference between social media monitoring vs. social media listening
Posted: Wed Feb 19, 2025 9:27 am
What’s the difference between social media monitoring and social media listening? People often use these terms interchangeably, but they’re not quite the same.
To break it down:
Social media monitoring involves tracking social media messages, comments and conversations directly related to your brand and responding to those engagements.
Social media listening is the process of analyzing the full spectrum of conversations around your industry, brand, and any topics relevant to your brand to understand your audience better and improve your campaign strategy.
Ultimately, businesses need both because social media monitoring tells you usa mobile database what people say about your brand or industry, and social media listening tells you why.
For example, let’s say you lead marketing for an e-commerce brand, and you just launched a new product. Monitoring might show that many customers are discussing a particular product. These insights may indicate that the product is popular—in theory.
While social media listening could reveal that many of those mentions were negative. Dig even deeper, and you might find that the issue isn’t even with the product but with shipping delays. While monitoring addresses the symptoms, listening reveals the root cause.
In this article, we’ll define social media monitoring and social listening in depth and highlight the critical differences between the two.
To break it down:
Social media monitoring involves tracking social media messages, comments and conversations directly related to your brand and responding to those engagements.
Social media listening is the process of analyzing the full spectrum of conversations around your industry, brand, and any topics relevant to your brand to understand your audience better and improve your campaign strategy.
Ultimately, businesses need both because social media monitoring tells you usa mobile database what people say about your brand or industry, and social media listening tells you why.
For example, let’s say you lead marketing for an e-commerce brand, and you just launched a new product. Monitoring might show that many customers are discussing a particular product. These insights may indicate that the product is popular—in theory.
While social media listening could reveal that many of those mentions were negative. Dig even deeper, and you might find that the issue isn’t even with the product but with shipping delays. While monitoring addresses the symptoms, listening reveals the root cause.
In this article, we’ll define social media monitoring and social listening in depth and highlight the critical differences between the two.