Key differences between social listening vs. social monitoring

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Once you have a baseline, then you can get more advanced. Expand your listening with solutions that give the total volume and help you recognize patterns, find trends and figure out share of voice in groups of keywords or queries.

However you approach it, the goal is to reach clearly defined outcomes usa student data within your brand’s larger social strategy. For example, using monitoring tactics result in enhanced engagement and listening efforts to inform more strategic decision-making.

If monitoring is the entry point, listening is the graduate degree. Most social media platforms offer basic, native monitoring capabilities. But a comprehensive social monitoring and listening strategy needs a tool like Sprout Social to track mentions and analyze data across multiple social media channels.

A diagram comparing social monitoring and social listening. Social monitoring is shown as a series of steps from gathering data to analyzing and extracting insights. Social listening is shown as a series of steps from gathering insights to driving proactive decisions.
Here are a few more fundamental differences between social monitoring and social listening.

Micro vs. macro
Social media monitoring is micro. It’s focused on the details, like individual brand mentions or comments. In comparison, social media listening is macro. It’s about looking at the bigger picture and noticing how people talk about your brand, products, industry and competitors.

For example, monitoring would tell you thirty people directly tagged your brand in posts today. Listening would reveal that most of those mentions were either rave reviews about a new product or complaints about customer service.