Do you remember when Coca-Cola faced backlash in 2021 over its workplace training program that encouraged employees to “be less white”?
The controversy went viral quickly, with screenshots spreading all over social media and a stream of criticism following. The story was trending and attracting attention across the world within a few hours.
With social monitoring, Coca-Cola was in a position to monitor online discussions in real time and identify the point where the backlash started, its distribution path, and audience discussion.
Knowing how people would react and responding intelligently, the brand cleared the false information, justified its side, and managed the situation before it deteriorated.
However, what then happens when the conversations fade away and the viral moments cease? How can brands understand more about the audience and predict future trends? Social listening comes in at that point.
Social monitoring and social listening are two different concepts, though they both monitor online conversations.
Social media monitoring is the tool you need in case you want to handle real-time reactions. To develop long-term market and new product launch strategies grounded in the sentiment among the audience and trends, social listening will be required. Let’s break down the major differences between them.
Difference Between Social Listening And Social Monitoring
The key difference between social listening and social monitoring includes:
Purpose: Reacting Vs. Understanding
What is Social Monitoring?
Social Monitoring definition refers to the reaction to what’s happening now. It is all about monitoring certain mentions, keywords, and hashtags. It is reactive and is supposed to notify businesses on the occurrence of a relevant event so that brands can act instantaneously.
It could be a customer complaint, a product review, or breaking news; in either case, social monitoring will keep you updated and react fast.
Do you remember the United Airlines public relations crisis that occurred in 2017 when the airline forcefully removed a passenger from a flight? And as the tweet of one of the travelers was viral on Facebook and Twitter, it was also picked up by various media outlets.
To which United quickly responded to customer complaints, providing updates and offering apologies. Therefore, this is the case of social monitoring.
What is Social Listening?
Social listening is understanding the bigger picture. However, it is concerned with exploring deeper insights and having a long-term trend. It is proactive, since it not only mentions but also analyzes the context, sentiment, and emerging themes. Social listening assists brands to know how their audience feels, what trends in the industry are, and to make wise decisions.
Social listening is a long-term strategic approach. Nike is one of the examples, as the brand utilizes social listening tools to track customer conversations about sports, fitness, and social issues.
They monitored how cultural shifts and discussions around inclusion and diversity in sports. The insights help them understand the representation of diverse backgrounds, enabling them to offer more tailored products.
They also identified a growing demand for more inclusive and empowering products for women.
This insight led to the launch of their Nike Pro Hijab in 2017, a product designed for Muslim athletes, which was met with widespread praise and became a best-seller.
Scope: Immediate Insights vs. Long-Term Strategy
Another difference between social monitoring is that one offers immediate insights, and the other provides a deeper understanding of audience sentiments for long-term strategies.
Social Monitoring Provides Immediate Feedback for Quick Action
The scope of the social media monitoring tool is focused on the immediate. It provides real-time feedback, helping brands and individuals stay up-to-date with the ongoing conversations.
Whether you’re tracking your brand’s mentions or monitoring competitors, the goal is to respond quickly and address any immediate issues.
During the 2018 McDonald’s “Travis Scott Meal” launch, McDonald’s applied social monitoring to track references to the promotion, to which fans on Twitter complained about the difficulty of getting the meal at certain locations.
Since McDonald’s was actively using monitoring, it swiftly addressed the complaints and improved the experience for customers.
Social Listening Gathers Insights for Long-Term Impact
Social listening, on the other hand, aims at providing long-term strategy gathering insights. It assists brands in monitoring the shift in opinion over time, identifying common themes, and quantifying shifts in customer sentiment.
This is ideal for making larger business choices, product development, and content strategy.
Social listening does not just entail listening to what people are saying about your business. Rather, it is concerned with the analysis of what they are speaking about, which can influence the industry in the long term.
One of the examples in this case is of Spotify, which uses social listening as a way to monitor the trends in the genres, listening habits, and user feedback. Through social discussions, Spotify discovered that users want more personalized recommendations, which led them to introduce their feature of Spotify Wrapped.
This annual year-in-review campaign became a viral sensation, driving both user engagement and brand loyalty.
Data Type: Raw Metrics vs. Deep Insights
Another core difference between the two is:
Social Monitoring is Real-Time and Raw Data
The data provided by social monitoring is raw and surface-level. It tracks how many times your brand is mentioned, what hashtags are trending, and the volume of social interactions.
While this data is useful for immediate responses, it doesn’t provide deeper insights into audience sentiment or motivations.
This is how brands use social monitoring to track how often their name is mentioned alongside competitor brands. This real-time tracking helps them quickly see which teams were generating the most buzz and adjust their marketing strategies accordingly.
Social Listening is Contextual and In-Depth Analysis
Social listening dives deeper into the context and emotion, providing a more in-depth and detailed perspective on internet discussions. It does not simply follow mentions, but rather examines whether the mentions are negative, positive, or neutral.
Such data can assist brands to perceive audience emotions, find possible challenges, and innovate.
As an example, Airbnb used active monitoring and involvement in real-time discussions on the internet when a video by influencer Alix Earle about her group’s booking issue was posted. The company used this chance to promote its products.
Realizing that the PR issue may occur, the Airbnb staff was soon able to set up a stay with them and made it a brand win.
An active strategy like this reflected the importance of Airbnb to customer service, which stood out over others, such as Booking.com, in being slower and less effective in responding to their customers.
By listening to social media in real-time, Airbnb capitalized on the moment, generating millions of impressions at a fraction of the cost of a traditional influencer campaign.
Why Both Social Monitoring and Social Listening Are Crucial?
While social monitoring can assist the brands to respond promptly to real-time data, social listening is more long-term strategic. By using both tools simultaneously, businesses and individuals can be aware of the challenges that appear in the short term and collect useful feedback, in order to make decisions in the future..
Media Watcher: Your-One-Stop Solution for Both Social Listening and Social Monitoring
At Media Watcher, we recognize the importance of both social monitoring and social listening in gaining a comprehensive view of your brand’s online presence.
You can follow real-time discussions, sentiment, and get a deep insight into consumer behavior, making it very simple to control the reputation of your brand and keep pace with trends.
In addition to that, the custom source dashboard of Media Watcher enables you to choose particular sources, sites, and platforms to receive updates based on your requirements.
Whether you need to quickly respond to customer feedback or uncover hidden insights for future campaigns, Media Watcher offers the tools you need to manage both social monitoring and social listening in one powerful platform.
Are you ready to unlock actionable insights from social media? Contact Media Watcher’s team today to gain the best of both worlds, social monitoring and social listening.
