Looking for the best social listening tools in 2025? Compare top platforms like Hootsuite, Brandwatch, Sprout Social, and more. Learn how leading brands use these tools to grow your business!
Most marketers think they’re already listening—but are they really hearing what their audience is saying? Social listening and simple listening are very different. Now, imagine you had a powerful tool that can help you boost your company's sales and overall brand appearance with little cost. Brands are taking advantage of tools like Hootsuite, Meltwater, Brandwatch, Sprout social, TalkWalker, and OneCliq’s popular CIE to help make it happen. This happens by harnessing the tool of Social Listening, but first, let's dissect what social listening entails!
This Blog will help you understand:
Social Listening is the act of listening to and observing online conversations being had about your particular brand. This information can then be interpreted to better understand how your company is received, customer needs and to identify trends. It can also be used to learn from your competitors - or more likely- get ahead of them. It’s truly the difference between hearing someone mention your name in a crowd vs. sitting down with someone and hearing how they personally feel about your brand.
Why Social Media listening? Well, Over 60% of the world population uses social media - That's Over 5 BILLION people worldwide that have the potential of being converted to customers.
You also aren't alone - Over 90% of businesses have a social media presence with around 50% posting daily and relying on social media for sales!
https://www.synup.com/en/social-media-marketing-statistics
https://www.coursera.org/articles/social-listening
Social listening is also NOT social monitoring. Although they may seem synonymous, they are actually different in the way you can take actions involving both!
It's no secret that the path to success for any brand is having a great brand image. The brand images in today's day and age are created through prestige and word of mouth; the most common word-of-mouth tool being social media. Social listening is beyond just monitoring, it's using the information learned to adapt your marketing plan to fit the needs of your consumer base and expand your base.
If you can successfully identify trends you might even be able to achieve virality! By harnessing social listening you may be able to increase the scope of your business exponentially.
You also aren't alone! Currently over 61% of businesses use Social listening to their advantage in their marketing plans.
You might still be skeptical- which is understandable. There are multiple different ways to get feedback. You can do the old receipt method which involves asking for a user to go out of their way to give you feedback, or conduct focus groups to gauge how your brand is doing; however, there are many pros to social listening that traditional feedback unfortunately cannot compete with!
When it comes to either way of feedback you might encounter negative experiences that others may have had. This ISN’T a bad thing! It might be the one thing that can push your business to growth!
Social listening can help you rectify a negative complaint very simply. Through social listening, if you encounter an unhappy customer, many companies simply leave a comment and reach out in a humane way, willing to turn the negative into a positive and deal with it in a timely manner.
This same luxury isn’t left with traditional feedback channels. For example, in a survey format, you might take a few months to go through the feedback and even if you encounter a negative complaint, you could reach out to them but the principle of time has already impacted the customer.
Social listening can also help you identify if multiple people are having the same issue with the product. It starts a conversation from a diverse sample group across a vast area and you can react quickly to help your consumers. The simple scale that social listening provides to your business simply cannot be topped by traditional feedback.
So now you are sold on social listening! Awesome! What's next? Well, you don’t have to go out of your way to hire interns or assemble a social listening team to monitor your social media. There are various tools and programs that you can use to conduct social listening. Most programs use AI to keep tabs for you! AI can be a bit of an uncertain subject however, AI can greatly be used to improve your business!
For example, let's say there have been multiple Tiktoks posted from different accounts complaining about the product quality. A listening tool can help bring this to your attention! It brings the conclusion that most of the videos are from the same region. You then consult with your logistics team and find out that one shipping facility was creating faulty pieces that were going undetected. You can then work to solve the issue and also provide complementary replacement products to those impacted!
This is just one example of how these simple yet effective tools can help!
Each individual program has its own interpretation however, Here are the main steps in a simple version:
In today's day and age we have various companies that exist to help you with social listening. Namely the 6 most popular companies currently are Hootsuite, Meltwater, Brandwatch, Sprout social, TalkWalker, and OneCliq’s CIE! They each have their own unique approach and can all help uplift your brands!
Keep reading for the analysis of each and hopefully this can aid your decision!
Each business has different needs that any one of these brands can help you tackle!
Brands who listen better will lead. In today’s fast-moving digital landscape, social listening isn't just a tool—it’s a game changer. It helps us stop guessing and start truly understanding our customers, in real time, at scale, and with unmatched clarity. Social listening empowers brands to act with confidence, seize new opportunities, and stay ahead of the curve.
Incorporate social listening into your marketing strategy today. Who knows, it might just be the missing spark and personal touch needed for your business!
Written by: Tulika Bhardwaj
Sources:
https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/definition/social-media-listening
https://www.synup.com/en/social-media-marketing-statistics
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