Difference Between Social Listening & Social Monitoring

Social Media Marketing Tool

Date:27-08-2021

Author:Admin

Social Listening vs Social Monitoring: Know the Difference

Many people find it difficult to differentiate social listening and social monitoring from each other. Therefore, often some people use these terms interchangeably. However, both are different and that is the reason you can find both social media listening and social media monitoring tools in the market.
Ideally, marketers must choose one of those social media management tools that support both, social media monitoring and listening. Also, the marketers must focus on both social monitoring and listening to improve KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).

Let us explain the difference between both and help you learn how you can effectively use social media management tools for social monitoring and listening.

What is a Social Media Monitoring?

It is an approach of monitoring topics of interest, competitors, discussions, engagement, etc.
The social media monitoring tool allows marketers to monitor different aspects and KPIs to keep that information into account.

What is Social Media Listening?

The social media listening tool gets used to listening to different conversations and discussions.
The major benefit of social media listening is identifying patterns, behavior differences, trends, active topics, etc.
The social media listening tool also helps in listening to untagged mentions.

Social Media Monitoring vs. Social Media Listening

Let’s understand the difference between both with detailed information.

Performance vs. Action

he use of a social media monitoring tool to monitor comments, posts, etc. implies only taking notes of what happening. It is similar to monitoring the performance of social media marketing campaigns.
On the other hand, social media listening tool is used not only to monitor, but also to interpret sentiments of the users to take some solid actions in that direction.

Reporting vs. strategizing

The social media management tools that support social media monitoring are often used to create reports.
Social media monitoring implies monitoring performance statistics. That is often used in creating social media marketing campaign reports.
On the other hand, the social media listening tool that lets marketers decode the posts, conversations, comments, etc. on social networking platforms is used to create or fine-tune the social media advertising strategy.

Specific vs. general

The social media monitoring tool is often used to monitor predefined company pages, accounts, or campaigns.
However, social listening is more about detailed monitoring and listening. It tracks and listens to a topic in general. It means if anyone on social media is talking about the topic of your interest, then your social media listening tool will show that data.
Social media monitoring is more specific to monitoring a single or some predefined assets.
Unlike that, social media listening lets marketers monitor and understand the whole market and ongoing trends.

Social media monitoring vs. social media listening: Which is better?

Both have their own role to improve your social media marketing campaigns and overall results.
That is why you must get any of the reliable social media management tools that support both social listening and monitoring.