I’ve learned that your followers say a lot, but it’s what they don’t tag you in that often matters most.
Social media isn’t just about posting polished content or chasing trends anymore. It’s where unfiltered conversations about your brand unfold, sometimes right under your nose. And if you're not actively paying attention, you're missing the real story your audience is telling. That’s exactly why social media monitoring has become such a critical part of modern marketing.
When I think about building an effective social strategy, it’s not just about content; it’s about context. What are people saying? How do they feel about your brand? What’s resonating, and what’s falling flat? Social media monitoring gives you those answers, helping you move from guessing what works to truly understanding what drives engagement.
Social media monitoring is a process where brands or individuals looking to gain further insights actively track how users are responding to their social media accounts across different platforms.
For instance, businesses typically use social media listening and monitoring software to track metrics across multiple social media accounts on different platforms at any time. This data is incredibly valuable and can be used for ongoing reporting and historical comparisons over the account's lifetime. Additionally, competitor information and industry trends can be tracked through these tools, giving marketers crucial insights to build strategies around.
Most social media monitoring can be categorized into proactive and reactive tracking, but within those, there are several specialized approaches marketers use to gather insights.
The table below breaks down the key types of social media monitoring, what each one tracks, and how they help inform smarter brand strategies:
| Type | Description | What does it help you do? |
| Reactive monitoring | Tracks user interactions with your published content, such as likes, comments, shares, and follows. | Understand how your audience is engaging with your content after it’s posted. |
| Proactive monitoring | Scans social platforms for brand mentions, hashtags, or keywords — even when you're not tagged directly. | Surface broader conversations about your brand, competitors, or industry trends. |
| Hashtag & keyword tracking | Monitors specific hashtags, product names, or industry terms used by your audience or competitors. | Identify trending topics and optimize content or campaigns to align with audience interests. |
| Competitor monitoring | Observes competitor content performance, mentions, and engagement levels. | Benchmark your social presence and find strategic opportunities to stand out. |
| Sentiment analysis | Analyzes the tone and emotional context of brand mentions (positive, neutral, negative). | Gauge public perception of your brand or campaign in real time. |
| Share of Voice (SOV) tracking | Measures how much of the overall conversation in your industry is about your brand vs competitors. | Assess brand visibility and authority within your niche. |
Sharing on social media, for many users, is simply a way to keep their friends and family up-to-date with their lives. However, for brands, social posts are a continual way to promote your products or services and build a community online through content that accurately represents your brand in public. Monitoring what’s happening on your social channels is essential for many reasons, including:
Awareness of what’s being said about your brand online at any given moment means you can react as quickly as possible in positive and negative situations.
Whether it’s a customer service request, a complaint about something that’s gone wrong, or praise for a product or service, companies that continually monitor conversations about themselves can move faster when something needs addressing.
Over time, this helps maintain and improve brand reputation, making the business appear responsive and helpful.
Not all businesses will be tagged by people talking about them online. In such cases, ongoing social media monitoring means that you can participate in conversations about your company and your industry, creating engagement opportunities with potential customers that may not have occurred without monitoring in place.
Knowing what audiences think about your content is key to deciding what content you want to create in the future. It allows marketers to deliver more personalized brand experiences based on enriched customer profiles.
Suppose your audience demographic doesn’t respond well to videos but loves photography. In that case, there’s little point in spending time and possibly budget on high-quality videos that may not even be watched. Instead, knowing what content is performing well provides marketers with insights to inspire later content, increasing the odds of higher engagement rates and possibly leads.
In today’s digital landscape, your brand is being talked about — whether you’re listening or not. Social media monitoring gives you a front-row seat to those conversations, helping you protect your reputation, engage your audience, and make smarter decisions based on real-time insights.
Here’s why social media monitoring matters more than ever:
Negative feedback can spread fast. With monitoring in place, you can catch issues early, respond to concerns quickly, and show your audience that you’re attentive and accountable, which builds long-term trust.
It’s not just about what people say but how they say it. Sentiment analysis helps you track shifts in tone, whether your latest campaign sparked excitement or frustration, so you can adjust your messaging accordingly.
When you know which topics, formats, and messages resonate with your audience, you can create content that performs better. Monitoring shows you what’s working and what’s falling flat across every platform.
Not every user will tag your brand, but they might still be talking about you. Monitoring helps you join relevant conversations, answer questions, and build relationships with potential customers you’d otherwise miss.
It’s not just about watching your own channels. Monitoring competitors and trending topics gives you context, benchmarking, and inspiration, helping you stay ahead of the curve.
In a PR crisis, time is everything. Real-time alerts and sentiment tracking help you act quickly, contain potential damage, and issue timely responses before problems escalate.
Modern monitoring tools tie social activity to real business outcomes. Whether you're measuring campaign reach, lead generation, or influencer impact, monitoring connects the dots between social media performance and revenue.
Tracking the right metrics transforms social media monitoring from passive observation into strategic action. While surface-level stats like likes and follows are easy to measure, they rarely tell the full story. To truly understand brand performance, audience sentiment, and campaign impact, marketers need to track a broader set of data points across both owned and earned media.
These metrics reveal not only what people are saying but also how they feel, how often they engage, and what actions they take as a result. The goal isn’t to monitor everything; it’s to focus on the metrics that align with your goals, whether that’s improving brand reputation, increasing engagement, or proving ROI.
Below is a breakdown of the most valuable metrics for social media monitoring, what they tell you, and how they support smarter decision-making:
| Metric | What it measures | Why it matters | Tools that track it |
| Mentions | Number of times your brand is mentioned (tagged or untagged) | Tracks brand awareness and potential issues | Sprout Social, Hootsuite, Meltwater |
| Sentiment score | Emotional tone of mentions (positive, neutral, negative) | Reveals public perception and reputation trends | Brandwatch, Talkwalker, Reputation |
| Share of Voice (SOV) | % of total industry conversation your brand owns | Helps benchmark against competitors | Sprinklr, Rival IQ, Meltwater |
| Engagement rate | Likes, comments, shares, and saves per post or follower count | Identifies what content resonates | Hootsuite, Sprout Social, Later |
| Reach & impressions | How many users saw your content (reach) and how often it was shown (impressions) | Measures content visibility and platform strength | Meta Insights, LinkedIn Analytics |
| Response time | How quickly your brand responds to comments or DMs | Affects customer satisfaction and brand trust | Sprout Social, Reputation |
| Influencer impact | Reach and engagement driven by influencer posts | Tracks ROI of influencer collaborations | Traackr, Aspire, Upfluence |
| Hashtag/keyword trends | Popularity and performance of brand or industry hashtags | Identifies emerging trends and campaign traction | Keyhole, Brand24, Social Searcher |
| Traffic from social | Website visits, signups, or conversions driven by social channels | Ties social activity to business outcomes | Google Analytics (w/ UTM), HubSpot |
| Volume over time | Frequency of mentions or conversations in specific timeframes | Detects spikes, campaign impact, or crises | Talkwalker, Sprout Social, Meltwater |
Use this checklist to ensure your monitoring strategy is set up for success:
The best social media monitoring software allows marketers to track across multiple social media sites, with various content types being monitored at any time. Both social listening and performance analysis can provide helpful insights into what content is doing well and how the wider world views your brand on social media.
To be included in the Social Media Listening Tools category, platforms must:
* Below are the top five leading social media listening software solutions from G2’s Spring 2024 Grid Report. Some reviews may be edited for clarity.
Sprout Social is an intuitive social media monitoring platform that allows businesses of all sizes to schedule, track, and analyze their social media posts. Collaborate across teams in real time, build automated workflows for content creation and posting, and make more strategic business decisions with social analysis tools.
“Along with using Brand keywords in Smart inbox and preparing Social Listening queues, it has helped me and my clients to know a lot about not just what people are talking about us but also about our competitors which has helped in our growth.”
- Sprout Social Review, Greha L.
“It is not possible to upload custom thumbnails for TikTok or Instagram reels, we didn't get access to Twitter Media until we were in the second month of use, and not until after we complained. We had a difficult time getting in touch with anyone to answer our questions. It logs us off of Google Drive every few minutes, and if we had done any work before that issue was noticed, we have to redo everything.”
- Sprout Social Review, Katy E.
With Hootsuite, scheduling across multiple social media platforms is easy. Manage both organic and paid social channels while tracking conversation about your brand in real time with valuable data insights in a single dashboard. Hootsuite also offers training and certifications to uplevel your social media skills.
“Sometimes I am short of time to make organic posts so I can always rely on the stock posts for our company to schedule and plan for the week ahead. It is easy to implement our seasonal message, the customer support is fabulous. I use Hootsuite weekly and sometimes daily. The number of features I can use to personalize my message are endless and I have not had a problem even after one year integrating our company message during different campaigns.”
- Hootsuite Review, Janis B.
“One drawback I've encountered with Hootsuite is the occasional limitation with the tag feature, especially on Twitter. There are instances where I can't use the tag feature, and I'm forced to either run the tweet as is or post it in real time. I've experienced a similar issue with LinkedIn, although they are actively addressing this concern.”
- Hootsuite Review, Sylvia S.
Meltwater is a media intelligence software that blends PR and social media monitoring to give businesses a competitive advantage in their industry. Monitor and be part of social conversations on multiple channels, along with review sites, message boards, and forums to connect with your customers wherever they are.
“The Engage tab, in particular, has become my favorite feature, allowing me to effortlessly publish content across multiple platforms. This not only saves me precious time but also alleviates the stress associated with managing various channels. And let's not forget about the AI assistant, which has become my secret weapon. It takes the pressure off crafting the perfect text by adapting it to any situation or style.”
- Meltwater Review, Karolina P.
“Social media monitoring is limited and I wouldn't rely on Meltwater alone to do in-depth social monitoring. There are some issues with how publications are categorized (blogs instead of news outlets, and UK for US publications) but this can be flagged to Meltwater for correction. There are occasional issues tracking niche sectors, some trade publications are not tracked and news behind paywalls can also be difficult to track if keywords are not in the title or opening paragraph.”
- Meltwater Review, Federico M.
Reputation measures and manages social media profiles for businesses looking to scale. With enhanced AI features, the software analyzes vast amounts of public and private feedback data to uncover predictive insights for companies to act on and improve their online reputations.
“Our company manages over 3,000 profiles for online business listings across Google, Facebook, Healthgrades, and more. Reputation allows us to keep our information accurate and up to date for these profiles through their extensive database. Their platform allows us to manage and respond to multiple reviews per week from our business listings which is an integral part of improving our patient experience.”
- Reputation Review, Ava M.
“I wish that campaigns work. As of now, I have to schedule all of the campaign posts from my media and it's annoying it doesn't work. I also wish that you could see the times that the posts are scheduled for on the calendar.”
- Reputation Review, Alissa H.
SOCi is a scalable, centralized platform that gives multi-location businesses tools to manage their localized marketing efforts effectively. With an intuitive dashboard and local page detectors, SOCi makes it easy to monitor reviews, run social ads, and update local business listings online.
“I love Soci because it is user-friendly and offers multi-site posting with the touch of a button. It is easy to track postings, change material and see which sites get the most return. Whether you are a pro at marketing or just getting started, this program takes care of all the hassles for you and gives you more time for networking as opposed to spending hours creating posts for each site individually.”
- SOCi Review, Ginger S.
“Something about the design is clunky to me. I would like if using SoCi was a little more intuitive. I feel there is room for improvement in the design and layout, and understanding how to navigate SoCi. The appeal of automated marketing falters a little when you have to study a site to learn to use it.”
- SOCi Review, Brittany R.
Got more questions? Get your answers here!
While often used interchangeably, social media monitoring focuses on collecting data (mentions, tags, metrics), whereas social listening analyzes that data to extract insights, trends, and sentiment. Monitoring is reactive; listening is strategic and proactive.
Monitoring helps brands catch issues early, understand audience sentiment, measure campaign performance, track competitors, and identify opportunities to engage or improve. It’s essential for protecting brand reputation and proving the ROI of social efforts.
Ideally, daily. Real-time monitoring is especially important during campaigns, product launches, or crises. Weekly or monthly reporting can complement daily checks for trend analysis and strategic planning.
Yes. Competitor monitoring is a core part of most social media tools. It allows you to benchmark share of voice, compare engagement rates, track sentiment differences, and discover what’s working (or not) for similar brands in your space.
Absolutely. Many tools offer affordable plans for small teams and can provide valuable insights — like what content drives engagement or how customers perceive your brand. Even basic monitoring can reveal high-impact opportunities for growth.
Top-rated platforms include:
These tools vary by use case, budget, and features — from real-time alerts to in-depth sentiment analysis.
Monitoring your social media channels is one of the best ways to stay ahead of the game and build a loyal, connected audience who could become your next customers. Is it spying, or is it strategic? That’s up to you to decide!
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