What Is Social Media Monitoring?

Insight Curator:
DeepDive Team
Read time:
5
min
What Is Social Media Monitoring?
Date Published

September 17, 2025

Author

Syed Mohammad Sharfuzzaman Nayeem

Knowing what people are talking about you.

Imagine being invited to a crowded party, and you are obsessed with making an impression. There will be a few things on your mind the entire time. 

What do these people think of me? Do they find me cool? Am I overdressed?

The most important question of all will be, “Do they even care?”

Just like this person at the party, you, as a brand, would want the answers to these questions when competing in the biggest dynamic marketplace of all, social media. 

You asked what is social media monitoring and this is your answer. Social media monitoring tells you whether people care about your brand online, and if they do, what they talk about. 

Let’s Get Technical

Social media brand monitoring refers to the practice of tracking and analyzing conversations, mentions, and trends spanning across various social platforms. It could be LinkedIn, Facebook, or anything else. 

So, let’s say you have a social media monitoring software. What does it do for you? It can, for instance, find out what the audience is saying about your campaign in real time, assign meaning to those conversations (are they happy, angry, or just being sarcastic?), and give you a sentiment score. 

You, as a decision maker, can use the result of this analysis and score by a social media monitoring tool to get the data before choosing whether to continue, improvise, or simply abort the campaign. 

So, social media brand monitoring in a way stops your decisions from being swayed just by likes or comments in the first hour of launch, and digs really deep to find actual concerns. 

How Social Media Monitoring Works

Get real time insights by aggregating data from a variety of platforms.

So, how does it actually happen? Let’s break it down:

  1. Tool Utilization – Brands use specialized social media monitoring software that crawls platforms continuously, picking up keywords, hashtags, URLs, and brand mentions.

  2. Data Collection – These free social media monitoring tools capture mentions not only on mainstream platforms but also on blogs, forums, and even news sites. Because, as you know, SEO or ranking isn’t just limited to search engines anymore. Whenever I have a query, I go to an AI tool like Gemini or GPT. Some people rely on Reddit more than on Google. 

Things have changed, and if you want to build brand presence, it cannot be just on search engines.

  1. Data Aggregation – All that information is gathered into one dashboard where you can filter and analyze it.

  2. Real-Time Insights – Tools refresh in real time, showing you exactly what’s happening at that moment.

So, you are getting insights and covering all the ground on the internet, which means no FOMO for your brand.  

Why Social Media Monitoring Matters

Helps to deal with surprises.

By now, you know what is social media monitoring. So, let’s talk about why it’s worth it. For me, it boils down to 5 key reasons - 

  • Brand Reputation Management – You want to be on top of any negative publicity regarding your business. A quick and good response can stop the situation from spiraling.

  • Customer Engagement – Reply to questions, thank customers for shoutouts, and resolve issues quickly. Customers will stop knocking if they realize there’s no one on the other side. You don’t want them to get bot-generated generic responses all the time.

  • Crisis Prevention – In short, don’t be like Boeing. Even billion-dollar brands make mistakes. Even after multiple safety-related public outbursts, Boeing’s responses lacked empathy and technical depth. Instead of protecting the brand, they made matters worse.

  • Competitor Analysis – Always watch and learn from what the competition is doing. It might work for you as well or might give you something to work on.

  • Market Research – Audience will either like, dislike, or be completely indifferent to what you do. Your job is to use that data for future planning.

Key Benefits of Social Media Brand Monitoring

Implementing social media brand monitoring delivers both short-term and long-term advantages - 

  • Real-Time Feedback – Instantly hear what customers think about your products.
  • Better Customer Service – Show customers that you’re listening and care about their experience.
  • Improved Brand Awareness – Even when not tagged, you can find conversations about your brand.
  • Smarter Marketing Strategies – Use insights to design campaigns that resonate with your audience.
  • Influencer Discovery – Identify advocates and micro-influencers who are already talking about you.
  • Measurable ROI – Monitoring tools provide analytics to prove your campaigns’ effectiveness.

Social Media Monitoring vs. Social Media Listening

It’s an honest mistake when people use these terms interchangeably, but they are not the same - 

  • Social Media Monitoring - It’s built for a reactive approach. The purpose is to track and respond to mentions, comments, and hashtags. So, it focuses on answering the “what.”

  • Social Media Listening - This is more proactive. It goes deeper by analyzing tone, patterns, and trends to answer the “why” behind conversations.

Think of monitoring as hearing and listening as understanding. Both are essential, but monitoring is the foundation.

Best Practices for Effective Monitoring

If you want to get the most out of a social media monitoring software, follow these steps -

  1. Define Clear Objectives – Know what you want to achieve (reputation, engagement, competitor insights).

  2. Pick the Right Tool – Choose a social media monitoring tool that fits your budget and goals. If you don’t want to spend money at first or have minimal experience with such software, go for free social media monitoring tools.

  3. Track Relevant Keywords – Keep an updated list of hashtags, phrases, and competitor names. These are the terms you want to be on top of 24/7.

  4. Set Alerts – Get notified instantly about spikes in mentions or sentiment shifts. Maybe on specific days of the week or hours of the day.

  5. Engage Consistently – Be active with your responses, whether it’s a positive comment or criticism. There’s no guarantee that people won’t make a meme out of it, but that goes for everything.

  6. Leverage Sentiment Analysis – Understand if people are speaking positively or negatively.

Social Media Monitoring Tool to Get You Started

Here are some software (both paid and free social media monitoring tools) to get you started - 

  • Paid Options: Brandwatch, Sprout Social, Hootsuite, Meltwater, DeepDive.
  • Free Options: Google Alerts, Social Searcher, TweetDeck.

So what is social media monitoring? Do you remember the recent PR crisis with Bollywood celebrity Shah Rukh Khan, where funny images of him with a weird hairstyle were just everywhere on the internet? 

The efforts to deal with that situation escalated it because people found it entertaining that a big celebrity was bothered by something this small. 

Social media brand monitoring is something that saves you from being in a situation like that.  

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FAQs

1. What is social media monitoring in simple terms?
It’s the process of tracking online conversations about your brand, competitors, or industry to stay informed and engage effectively.

2. Is social media monitoring the same as listening?
Not exactly. Monitoring tells you what’s being said, while listening helps you understand why it’s being said.

3. Why should small businesses care about social media monitoring?
Because it’s free or low-cost, it helps with customer service and keeps you competitive even against bigger brands.

4. What are some free social media monitoring tools?
Google Alerts, Social Searcher, and TweetDeck are easy-to-use free tools to start with.

5. How do I choose the best social media monitoring software?
Consider your business goals, budget, number of platforms you want to monitor, and whether you need advanced analytics like sentiment tracking.

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