Although picking the perfect March Madness bracket is nearly impossible, millions of people complete the legendary ritual each year and tune into the live games. The famous NCAA tournament draws in die-hard fans and bandwagon supporters alike.

And what would March Madness be without brands getting in on the hype? Last year, almost all of the ad spots during the men and women’s tournaments were quickly picked up, with total ad spend on the men’s tournament alone breaking away above $1 billion.

The impressive investments mean the stakes are high. So, which March Madness marketing strategies will go all the way? We looked to past tournaments to make our strategy predictions, and turned to Sprout Social’s Influencer Marketing platform to find out where the best partnership opportunities lie.

Let’s dive into the results and a few tips to help your brand stay in the game.

The March Madness marketing opportunity

Last year, the men’s March Madness championship game drew an average of 14.7 million viewers. The women’s championship attracted an even larger crowd, with an average of 18.7 million viewers. With tens of millions of people tuning in, it’s clear that March Madness is a major cultural moment.

And not just for typical fans, or sports and fitness-adjacent brands. Between the play-by-plays, trending commentary and student-athelete influencers on social media, March Madness has more impact on the zeitgeist than ever before.

Zooming out, social has helped transform many sporting events into a lucrative marketing opportunity for brands of all kinds—from food and beverage to fashion houses to insurance companies.

As more brands hustle to make the most of March Madness, stand-out campaigns will feature student-athlete influencer partnerships, incorporate online cultural touchstones and address a growing female audience that has been historically under-engaged.

4 March Madness marketing ideas (with campaign examples)

With a massive event like March Madness, it’s easy to get lost in the noise. To craft scroll-stopping campaigns, you need to tap into online culture. Doing so will enable you to partner with the right influencers, forge brand alliances your audiences will love and find ways to set trends instead of just reacting to them.

Here are a few tangible ways to get in on the action, and examples from 2024 to inspire your strategy.

Collaborate with unexpected brands

As brands across industries experiment with March Madness marketing campaigns, more unexpected partnerships have emerged. Often, newcomers to the tournament (and, sometimes, sports marketing in general) will partner with established athletic brands to increase their relevancy and credibility. These partnerships also benefit sport and fitness brands by helping them reach new audiences.

Take the Home Depot’s corporate sponsorship of the NCAA. While the home improvement retailer does have a storied history with college athletics, their brand isn’t necessarily the first most people associate with March Madness. To promote their sponsorship last year, the brand crafted a content series called “Tips from the Tool Shaq” featuring legendary basketball player Shaquille O’Neal. The series tied together basketball themes with spring DIY home projects—a match made in social media niche heaven.

Why it works: Even if your brand doesn’t have an obvious connection to the tournament, partnerships and sponsorships can help insert your brand into the discourse. Not every brand has the budget to be an NCAA corporate sponsor, of course. But you can look for partnerships with other sports brands instead—from CPG brands to clothing retailers to college and professional teams. The best crossovers happen when you tie different aspects of online culture together.

Create an IRL moment

While social spurs on March Madness hype, the best way to experience the tournament is in real life. IRL brand activations also fuel a pipeline of user-generated content, increasing brand awareness on social and extending the lifespan of your campaign. Even if you aren’t actually on-site at the tournament, you can still find ways to foster community.

Take Marriott Bonvoy, the official hotel partner of the NCAA. Last year, they offered their loyalty program members a chance to win tickets to the Women’s Final Four. The grand prize included flights, hotel accommodations, courtside seats, and a game day ritual session with former Texas A&M player and current Texas women’s basketball coach Sydney Carter. They also created a hub on their site where guests can plan their March Madness travel experiences—from booking a hotel to buying tickets.

Why it works: Enriching fans’ March Madness experience is the name of the game. When brands succeed at making the event more fun and memorable, they win loyal fans of their own. Travel and hospitality brands can shine especially bright during the tournament—just be sure to avoid trademark infringement and ambush marketing in your content.

Put your own spin on a bracket challenge

Filling out a bracket is a signature part of the March Madness experience. But the official NCAA bracket isn’t the only one fans obsess over. Brands and social users create bracket faceoffs of their own, where romance novels, sweet treats and even memes compete for the top spot. These unofficial brackets are the perfect way to engage people who want to be part of the cultural significance of March Madness, but don’t know a lot about basketball.

On the other hand, some brands can find ways to layer their brand into the official bracket. In Buffalo Wild Wings’ Shorty Award-nominated campaign, the casual dining restaurant crafted a gameshow called “Beat the Buffalo.” The show let fans go head-to-head to pit their brackets against Jack—a real, live buffalo.

As Buffalo Wild Wings said, “We trained a real, majestic buffalo to select NCAA basketball winners, and then challenged fans to beat his picks. Many did, some didn’t and everyone had their minds blown. It’s an innovative take on the familiar March Madness bracket competition, where contestants enter their picks against a fellow competitor to see who is right, who is wrong and who is a buffalo.”

Why it works: Buffalo Wild Wings took a well-established March Madness custom, and found a way to make it fresh and brand-forward. The stand-out campaign resulted in hundreds of thousands of views and media pickups. When outlining your tournament marketing, consider how you can rewrite the rules of the traditional bracket.

Tap into a new marketplace of influencers

A historic Supreme Court decision in 2021 allowed collegiate athletes to get paid for their name, image and likeness for the first time. In the past few years, a multimillion dollar-industry has emerged. Student-athletes began partnering with everyone from local college town restaurants to major brands like Nike. During March Madness, brands take these partnerships to the next level.

Last year during the tournament, Raising Cane’s brought back their “Underdog Challenge” campaign. The restaurant chain famous for their chicken tenders partnered with student-athletes from “underdog teams”—aka, the teams picked to lose their matchups. Whenever an underdog won, Raising Cane’s gave away free combos. As NC State’s DJ Burns put it, “When the odds get beaten, the chicken fingers get eaten, baby!”

Why it works: We mentioned the free chicken, right? In addition to a delicious giveaway, the campaign also speaks to a favorite March Madness pastime: cheering for the underdog. By partnering with the student-athletes fans already know and love, Raising Cane’s is getting ahead of the pandemonium that will follow an underdog win—tying their brand to the team early.

When seeking out your own partners, remember they don’t have to be from the top seeded team or an MVP to make an impact. In the next section, we explain how to find the right student-athlete partners.

Top college athlete influencers for March Madness marketing (and beyond)

There are more than 520,000 NCAA student athletes. This record-breaking figure explains why the influencer marketing opportunity for brands is at an all-time high in the wake of the NIL ruling.

To help narrow down this massive pool and find the right partners for your brand, turn to a solution like Influencer Marketing.

To demonstrate how it works, we created a Signals Report in the platform to identify the top college  athlete profiles by earned media value (EMV) that have posted about or are affiliated with the NCAA and March Madness since November 2024. Here’s who we found.

Jada Brown

Jada Brown is a basketball player at Vanderbilt University. With over 3 million followers across platforms, Brown has amassed an impressive and loyal following. Her engagement rate is 43%, and her growth rate is in the top 1% on both Instagram and TikTok.

According to Influencer Marketing data, 80% of Brown’s audience is Gen Z and Millennials, with an even split across genders. In the past, she’s shouted out brands including Coach, Bloom Nutrition and Student Beans in her content.

The EMV of Brown’s posts equals around $2.12 million.

Brandon Dwyer

Brandon Dwyer is a basketball player at Florida Gulf Coast University. The Eagles guard boasts over 4.4 million followers across social platforms, and is in the top 50% of growing accounts on Instagram and YouTube, and in the top 20% on TikTok.

In his content, the player has mentioned brands like Hoopers, Sunny D and Philadelphia Cream Cheese, and has a reported EMV of $167K. Almost 80% of his audience are Gen Z or Millennials, while 62% are male.

Dominique Darius

Dominique Darius is a basketball player at The University of Southern California, and has amassed 178K followers across networks. Darius is in the top 5% of creators on TikTok and in the top 1% on Snapchat. Her impressive engagement rate (23%) confirms how much her growing audience loves her.

In previous posts, Darius has mentioned brands like La Victoria, GLD and WSLAM. The Trojan guard’s posts have an EMV of $79K, and her audience is primarily made up of Gen Z and Millennials and leans slightly male.

Mary Lengemann

Mary Lengemann is an Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University basketball player. The Eagles forward/guard has around 140K total followers, and an engagement rate of 15.4%.

In her social posts, Lengemann has mentioned brands like Nike, Under Armour and Girlfriend Collective, and has an EMV of over $40K. Nearly 80% of her followers are Gen Z and Millennials, and a slight majority are female.

Jackson Young

Jackson Young is a basketball player at Southern Methodist University. The Mustang guard has around 348K followers across platforms, with a follower base that is 80% female (the largest gender divide on our list) and primarily made up of Gen Z and Millennials.

Young has previously mentioned brands like Raising Cane’s, Optimum Nutrition and Burberry in his content. He currently has an EMV of $23K.

How your brand can pull off a social media upset

March Madness isn’t just a basketball tournament—it’s a cultural phenomenon that presents massive opportunities for brands.

Whether through unexpected brand collaborations, immersive IRL experiences, unique bracket challenges or student-athlete influencer partnerships, the key to success lies in tapping into online culture and meeting audiences where they already are.

As brands continue to raise the stakes each year, those that embrace authenticity and innovation will stand out from the crowd. With the right strategies and partnerships, your brand can turn March Madness into  one shining marketing moment. Now’s the time to get in the game.

Looking for more instruction on finding the best student-athlete influencers? Read our guide to finding the right influencers for your campaign.

The post March Madness marketing: How elite brands can score major points appeared first on Sprout Social.

As UK social media marketers, we love navigating this ever-changing landscape, but staying ahead of the curve isn’t easy.
Whether you’re a social media manager for a UK brand or a global powerhouse, the coming year is going to be a wild ride.

Need to focus your resources? The UK Sprout Social Index™ is here to help. We went straight to the source and asked U.K. customers what truly matters in social media interactions with brands they love. From their insight, we’ve uncovered 10 key trends you can use to connect with your audience in 2025.

We didn’t stop there. In our U.K. Social Trends webinar, we spoke to three leading U.K. based social media and influencer marketing experts to understand what these insights mean for brands. We’ve included some of our panel’s thoughts below, but there’s so much more in the webinar, it’s well worth catching up on.

Catch Up on UK Index™ Insights Webinar

Sorted? Great, grab a cuppa, get comfortable and check out some of this year’s most important social media trends in the UK. Together we can make 2025 our best year yet:

1. Authenticity: genuine connection in 2025

UK consumers value authenticity. A massive 93% of consumers believe it’s important for brands to keep up with online culture but most prefer genuine connections over fleeting trends. This means brands need to communicate with sincerity and meaning.

Authenticity isn’t always about playing it safe either. Take Disobey, a UK games marketing agency, has made a name for itself by doing things differently. They’ve redefined authentic marketing with a “no-bullsh*t” approach, emphasising transparency and honesty to build trust with clients and consumers. Their success shows that aligning values with actions is a winning strategy.

Founder, CEO of Triangle and international speaker, Matt Swain agreed, “2025 will be the core year where we shift over to trust and the brands will have to show why they’re different, why they’re better, and showcase that trust at scale”

Offline meetups and events are one way Julia Salume, head of influencer marketing at Moburst, suggested brands could show they are authentic. “offline events to have that face-to-face [time]. Because, at the end of the day, this really builds so much trust”.

If you are looking for other ways to build trust through social media marketing, Look no further than Innocent. They haven’t just followed social media trends; they’ve forged their own path. This has built a loyal community that aligns with their values. Their authentic voice helps them stand out in a crowded market.

Want to learn more? Check out our podcast, Social Creatures with Innocent. We delve deep into their social media strategy and commitment to delivering clever and engaging content unmistakably true to their brand identity.

2. Social Listening is key

For social media professionals in the UK, social listening is no longer a “nice-to-have” skill; it’s essential.

By knowing how to actively monitor conversations and analyse the resulting data, social media marketers can gain valuable insights into their audience, identify emerging trends and make informed decisions:

• • Retail brands can track customer complaints and address them quickly.
  • Financial institutions can monitor sentiment to quickly respond to negative feedback and protect their reputation.
  • Healthcare organisations can detect and address misinformation, ensuring public trust and safety.

Social listening can help your brand build stronger, more meaningful relationships with your audience.

3. AI for Creative Fatigue 

Over a third of UK social media practitioners report increased creative fatigue. AI can help by providing inspiration and freeing up time for strategic thinking. Brands can use AI to generate content ideas and overcome creative blocks. Remember that while AI can assist, human creativity and input remain essential.

Ian Gambier, executive creative director at Fabric Social agrees “even if the ideas themselves are distinctly average, it’s helpful to start with average ideas that can be incrementally built on. It overcomes that mental barrier.”

This blended approach reduces creative burnout and ensures a steady stream of fresh, engaging content.

4. Personalisation: the power of one-to-one

Similarly, the demand for personalised connections is on the rise. Consumers are looking for brands that understand their unique needs and preferences, offering tailored experiences that feel genuinely personal.

Successful brands in this space go beyond meeting expectations; they build relationships. This fosters loyalty and trust. By focusing on personalisation, brands create deeper connections and stand out from the crowd.

For example, consider a customer reaching out to Marks & Spencer on social media. Within minutes, they receive a helpful, personalised response.

By understanding and addressing the unique needs and preferences of their customers, Marks & Spencer is building lasting relationships that foster loyalty and trust.

5. Social media’s full-funnel potential

Social media is no longer just for awareness. It drives conversions throughout the customer journey. UK consumers use social media to discover, research‌ and purchase products.

Social commerce is booming in the UK. Platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok are now key shopping channels. Brands that leverage these platforms effectively can capture and retain customers at every stage of the buyer journey.

6. AI is evolving

We all know AI is transforming social media. Many social media marketers are already using it to analyse data, create social media posts and automate tasks, but what can we expect in the near future?

Marketing leaders predict AI will augment social media teams, creating new roles and reshaping existing responsibilities. AI tools will deeply understand customer preferences, enabling real-time targeted content. Soon, AI will predict customer needs faster and more accurately, improving and further personalising the customer experience.

Chatbots will become more conversational, reducing costs and improving satisfaction by handling complex conversations naturally. This will streamline customer service and free up social media teams for strategic tasks.

New AI tools will process data and offer real-time campaign optimisation suggestions, providing actionable insights in seconds. AI will act as a social media sidekick, supporting teams with data-driven decisions and enhancing audience connections.

7. Responsive customer service

Slow replies can cost you customers. According to the Sprout Social Index 71% of UK consumers would switch to a competitor if a brand doesn’t respond on social media. Prioritise social customer service and resolve queries quickly.

ASOS excels in this area. Their dedicated social media team responds to inquiries within minutes, ensuring swift resolutions and happy customers. This responsiveness builds loyalty and enhances their reputation.

8. Social entertainment

UK audiences crave engaging and fun content from brands. They want to be “listened to, not talked at”. Want to up your brand’s entertainment factor? Focus on creating original, relatable content that encourages audience engagement.

A great example of this is Greggs. They often use humour and timely references in their social media posts, such as their famous “Sausage Roll Rap” and playful interactions with customers. This approach not only entertains but also builds a strong, loyal community around the brand.

9. Combating misinformation

As online misinformation increases and some social networks roll back on fact-checking, 94% of UK consumers expect brands to do more to ensure the information they publish is correct. 

This is particularly important for regulated industries like healthcare and financial services. Brands in these sectors must be vigilant and proactive in verifying the accuracy of their content to maintain consumer trust and credibility.

10. Data Storytelling

Data is crucial, but it’s not enough. UK marketers need to master data storytelling. Go beyond raw numbers to craft compelling narratives that showcase social media return on investment to secure budget buy-in from leadership.

It can also play a role in your social media campaigns. The UK Department for Transport used data storytelling to highlight the benefits of cycling and walking. Their engaging visuals and infographics presented data on reduced emissions, improved air quality and health benefits.

This campaign informed the public and encouraged behaviour change., showcasing the power of data storytelling.

By embracing these trends, you can create impactful campaigns that resonate with audiences locally and globally, driving meaningful results. These strategies will help you stand out in a crowded digital landscape. Each trend offers a unique opportunity to connect with your audience on a deeper level, fostering engagement and loyalty.

Want to know more? Download the UK Sprout Social Index™ now.

Don’t miss this chance to stay ahead of the curve and elevate your social media game in 2025.

The post 10 UK social media trends for 2025 appeared first on Sprout Social.

How and when should you respond to customers when your brand receives thousands of inbound messages a day? With so many content formats and social networks available, how do you know where to focus your efforts? How can brands create scroll-stopping content that will make them stand out from the crowd?

The Sprout Social Index™ found consumers value brands that prioritize originality, audience engagement—and most importantly, a reliable product or service. The report found 63% of consumers say the quality of their product or service makes their favorite brands stand out on social media.

In this article, we’ll explore the challenge of social media noise and strategies to help you navigate it. And we’ll share how you can use tools like Sprout to streamline your workflows so you can minimize social media noise.

Understanding the challenge of social media noise

Imagine you’re at a fall festival on opening weekend. There are crowds everywhere, live music playing, people chatting to their friends and family, vendors shouting food orders, children giggling, among other sounds. Although you’re enjoying your time at the event, there’s so much going on that it’s impossible to focus on one thing. That’s what social media noise feels like. Let’s dive deeper into what that means for your brand.

What is social media noise and why does it matter to your brand?

Social media noise is the overwhelming volume of content, messages and interactions that exist on social media networks. This constant barrage makes it harder for users to focus because they’re used to seeing so many elements at once, making it harder for any single piece of content to stand out. Social media noise can also lead to information overload, reducing audience engagement and making it difficult for your brand to capture attention.

Think about it: you’re scrolling through your social media feed and see a never-ending stream of posts, ads and notifications. In a noisy environment, you must strategically attune your social media marketing strategy and create high-quality, highly relevant content that resonates with your target audience.

Social media saturation creates challenges with too much noise

Social media is an integral part of daily life. In 2023, over five billion people were using social media worldwide, projected to increase to over six billion by 2028.

The 2025 Index also found 90% of consumers use social media to keep up with trends and cultural moments—and they’re flocking to all social media platforms to find it. The Index shows Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and X (formerly known as Twitter) as the top five networks consumers have a profile on.

With so many consumers and brands alike online, social media saturation presents significant challenges. Most notably, the sheer volume of content across networks is staggering. According to The 2024 Content Benchmarks Report, on average, brands published 10 posts per day across networks in 2023. For certain industries, that number doubles and even quadruples.

Brands must work harder to capture and maintain audience attention, often leading to a cycle of constant content creation.

This phenomenon makes the omnipresent quality vs. quantity debate more relevant than ever. While there is pressure to produce a high volume of posts, the importance of creating original, engaging content can’t be overstated—as reflected in Sprout data, with 46% of consumers saying originality makes brands stand out on social. Authenticity and originality are reasons why brands are encouraged to focus on niche, value-added content that resonates deeply with their audience, rather than chasing viral trends.

The “always on,” nature of social media adds another layer of complexity. Trends and memes fade just as rapidly as they rise—while others become mainstays in internet culture. Practitioners in social media comments and social inboxes are bombarded with a constant stream of messages, @-mentions and notifications.

The relentless flow of interactions contributes to the noise and demands a continuous presence from brands—not to mention creativity and agility from practitioners—which can lead to burnout.  Zaria Parvez, Senior Global Social Media Manager for Duolingo, spoke about her experience with managing burnout on Enter the Chat.

5 strategies to overcome social media noise and stand out

Managing noise on social media requires strategic planning and a thoughtful approach to content creation and community engagement. Here are five strategies you can use to mitigate noise.

Focus on high-value content

Quality will always trump quantity. Instead of posting frequently for the sake of publishing a large volume, focus on creating high-value content for your audience, such as edutainment posts, interactive experiences or captivating brand storytelling. This approach ensures you’re listening to your audience’s interests, builds trust and keeps your audience engaged, making your brand more memorable.

Use visual storytelling

Visual storytelling can make your content more engaging and shareable. Use high-quality photos, videos, infographics, GIFs and animations to convey your messaging in a compelling way. Visuals can help your content stand out in a crowded feed and increase the likelihood of user interaction. For example, Apple commissioned artwork from artist Sheehij K. to show how they use iPhone to create collages honoring traditional Indian weddings.

Understand your audience better by being data-driven

Use data to gain insights into your audience’s preferences and behaviors. Analyzing engagement, demographics and content performance will help you tailor your social media marketing strategy. A data-driven approach ensures your content remains relevant and resonates with your target audience. Leaning on data also means you can perform competitive analysis to determine opportunities and gaps your industry peers and contenders might be missing out on, building social media intelligence into your future strategy.

Use strategic timing

Timing is crucial in a noisy social media landscape. Posting without consideration means you risk getting in front of your target audience. But you can use social media management tools like Sprout Social’s Optimal Send Times to identify the best times to post when your audience is most active. Strategic timing can significantly boost your content’s visibility and engagement rates.

Use influencer amplification to engage with your audience

Collaborate with influencers who align with your brand values to amplify your message. Influencers also help you reach a broader audience and add credibility to your content. Their followers are often more engaged, which can help your brand cut through the noise and build stronger connections. Skincare brand Topicals shared an Instagram carousel featuring influencers and creators they partnered with for their #LagosLovesTopicals campaign. Although the post is simple, featuring only profile photos and their pinned location, each featured person aligns with their audience and brand values of inclusive beauty. For example, influencer Golloria is the first person highlighted in the post. She’s known for reviewing inclusive beauty brands so her partnership with Topicals was a natural fit.

Minimizing social media noise with Sprout Social

Along with using strategies to cut through the noise with your social media content, you can use social media management tools like Sprout to help your day-to-day workflows. Here are a few capabilities you can use within Sprout.

Pausing all messages in publishing settings

Sprout Social enables you to pause all messages in your publishing settings, which can be incredibly useful during high-stress periods—like in brand crisis moments—or when you need to take a break. By pausing messages, you can prevent the influx of new content and notifications, giving you time to focus on other tasks. This capability helps you manage your workload and reduce the noise from social, making sure you can work through a more manageable inbox.

Inbox Macros

Inbox Macros in Sprout Social enable you to automate message actions to any Smart Inbox messages for triaging. Instead of manually adding Tags and marking messages complete, you can create a custom Macro to automatically complete your message and review workflows.

Saved Replies and automated chatbots

Saved Replies and automated chatbots are powerful tools for managing the constant stream of messages. With saved replies, you can create templated responses and define rules to automatically categorize and respond to common inquiries. You can quickly answer common questions without having to type out the same answers repeatedly.

Automated chatbots can handle initial interactions, providing immediate responses and directing users to the right resources. These capabilities reduce the noise in your social inboxes and ensure that your audience feels heard and valued. Both save time while ensuring your audience receives timely, consistent responses, reducing the noise in your inbox and improving overall engagement.

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Automated reports

Take the manual effort of data aggregation and reporting with automated reports in My Reports, part of Sprout’s Premium Analytics. Automated reports help you identify trends, track engagement and understand what content resonates with your audience. By having these data insights at your fingertips, you can make informed decisions to refine your social media marketing strategy, reducing social noise, while setting the groundwork to optimize and iterate your content for optimal impact.

Response classification within Sprout Social Customer Care

Response classification in Sprout Social Customer Care helps you categorize and prioritize messages based on their content and urgency. This capability uses a machine-learning model to determine if a message in your Smart Inbox or Reviews requires a response. This classification helps you identify and address the most critical issues, ensuring that important messages don’t get lost in the noise. By efficiently managing your social inbox, you can maintain a high level of customer service and build stronger relationships with your audience.

Advanced Filtering for Sprout Listening

Advanced Filtering in Sprout Social Listening enables you to focus on the most relevant conversations and mentions. By setting up filters based on keywords, hashtags and other phrases, you can cut through the noise on social media and monitor conversations that matter most to your brand. Stay informed and responsive, enhance your social media strategy and ensure that you are always in tune with your audience’s needs and preferences.

Learn more about combating social media noise

Navigating social media noise comes with challenges but there are strategies you can use to gain back control. Learn more about how you can carve out some quiet time for yourself and your brand as you manage noise on social media in The Sprout Social Index™.

The post Cutting through social media noise: Strategies to navigating a cluttered social media landscape appeared first on Sprout Social.

Social Listening serves as a powerful competitive analysis tool, extracting targeted brand insights from widespread online conversations across social networks. With Social listening competitive analysis, you get real-time information about how consumers act, new trends and competitors’ activities, which you can use to quickly pivot strategies and stay ahead of the game.

Let’s dive deeper into how social listening for competitive analysis gives you an edge.

The benefits of using social listening for competitive analysis

Social Listening gives you real-world insights extracted from online chatter for a birds’-eye view of the competitive landscape. These insights help you refine marketing strategies to optimize your return on investment (ROI) and innovate across your business.

It’s no surprise that 13% of social media leaders have prioritized Social Listening in 2025, with 12% of budgets allocated to it. If your competitors are gaining a competitive edge by investing in this area, you risk being left behind by ignoring it.

Competitive research also gives you insight into macro-consumer trends such as the influence of elevated consumer prices on overall spending habits and brand preferences. Or, how to better target Gen Z, a demographic known for its high purchasing power and unique consumer behavior.

Competitive intelligence is especially critical in social media marketing because of the nature of social. As new platforms, features and trends emerge, social teams must keep competitive market research on their radar to make sure their brand remains relevant.

Social listening gives your social teams swift, comprehensive insights from across social networks, review sites and customer forums—at a fraction of the cost and time traditional research methods take. You’re able to more easily overcome flux in platform algorithms and face continuously evolving consumer behavior. You’re also better able to understand how your competitors are navigating these shifts and adapting their strategies to meet them.

Plus, you can analyze sentiment in thousands of brand conversations to address customer needs more productively and ensure the competition doesn’t affect your market share.

6 tips for social listening competitive analysis

Understanding your competitor’s social media strategy means you can use what’s working and avoid their mistakes. Here are six tips for using social listening in competitive analysis:

1. Monitor competitor sentiment

Since your audience often overlaps with that of your competitors, their customer feedback is highly relevant to you. A complaint or request that comes back often shows a common problem or need. This is an opportunity to show yourself as the best choice for that popular need.

Public sentiment about your competitors is readily available on social media, providing valuable insights into their strengths and weaknesses. By analyzing this data, you can refine your strategy to differentiate your brand and showcase its strengths.

For example, consumers often take to social media to discuss their favorite fast-food chains. A competitive analysis of comments in Reddit social listening data can show what consumers love and what they expect from their favorite restaurants.

Sprout’s tools for competitive analysis make it easy to look at customer feedback like this from social media. This helps brands understand how their competitors are seen and how they can stand out.

2. Identify market gaps

Social media is a goldmine of useful and unfiltered brand information you otherwise wouldn’t find. With customers frequently sharing pain points, praises, unmet needs and even ideas for new features, it’s like having private access to your competitors’ focus groups.

By listening closely, you can spot gaps in their or your offerings and use this information to fill the voids. Some feedback may suggest small quality-of-life improvements, while others could spark game-changing ideas for new products.

For example, Apple’s transition to USB-C ports. For years, iPhone users have wanted a universal charging solution like USB-C. Apple eventually responded to customer sentiment by introducing USB-C ports in the iPhone 15 lineup. This decision solved a long-standing customer problem, and showed a key lesson for those using social listening: If there’s something most of your customer base wants, seize the opportunity and give it to them.

3. Refine content strategy

Analyzing content that resonates with your competitors’ audience reveals effective strategies in your industry. If certain topics, formats or channels drive significantly higher engagement among your shared audience, you can use this insight to tailor your content for greater impact.

For example, thermal drinkware Stanley, a brand that’s over 110 years old, spent most of that time marketing to men—specifically flasks for tradesmen and outdoor workers. However, after identifying a growing demand among women, and specifically the eco-conscious looking to reject single-use plastics, they revamped their content strategy to target this untapped audience. They used influencer marketing for their new Quencher tumbler on Tiktok, using female influencers to showcase the product.

The campaign went viral and lead to Stanley redefining its market presence.

4. Track industry trends

Staying on top of industry trends is vital to staying relevant and ahead of the competition. Social listening lets you track emerging topics, shifting consumer preferences and evolving market dynamics. By identifying and responding to trends proactively, you position your brand as a leader, and meet customer expectations in a rapidly changing landscape.

Nike recognized the growing consumer demand for environmentally responsible products as early as 2019. In response, it launched its “Move to Zero” campaign, aiming for zero carbon emissions and zero waste across its operations. This initiative includes commitments to use 100% renewable energy by 2025 and to reduce carbon emissions across its global supply chain by 30% by 2030.

The campaign was so popular that many brands like The Good Plastic Company started following Nike’s #movetozero campaign.

5. Measure customer satisfaction

Evaluating customer satisfaction levels for your competitors is a useful benchmark to improve your products and services. When you understand where competitors fall short, it helps you fill gaps and guide your improvements.

If customers repeatedly express frustration with a competitor’s customer service, chances are they care about your customer service, too.

For example, McDonald’s introduced the Grimace Shake as a limited-edition drink in the UK after its success in the US. The shake was a hit, and many took to social media to express their disappointment when it left the menu. In response, McDonald’s decided to relaunch the Grimace Shake in the UK in December 2024 for a two-week period. Fans rejoiced, making it viral by sharing photos on social media.

By using social listening to measure customer satisfaction, you can proactively address pain points, refine your offerings and show customers that their opinions matter.

Sprout sentiment analysis tools enable you to evaluate customer satisfaction to identify which areas need improvement and which resonate most with your audience.

6. Benchmark performance

Using direct competitors as benchmarks helps identify growth opportunities and areas for improvement. Since you share a similar target audience, comparing performance reveals what’s working and what’s not.

Monitoring your competitor’s performance enhances this process by showing how you stack up on key metrics. For example, if a competitor is getting consistently high engagement on a particular network, it signals that your audience is active on that platform and you should try investing more in the space.

Ensure your strategies remain relevant in an ever-evolving competitive landscape by consistently assessing your performance. Sprout’s competitive analysis tools enable you to do just that. Track your performance against competitors through metrics like audience growth, engagement and sentiment across multiple platforms.

How to conduct social listening competitive analysis in 5 steps

Social listening goes beyond simply monitoring conversations—it’s about extracting actionable insights to get an edge over tough competition. A well-executed social listening competitive analysis provides the valuable data you need to refine your strategies, spot opportunities and strengthen your position in the market. Follow these five steps to make the most of your efforts:

Step 1: Define your goals

Before diving into social listening, take time to clearly outline what you want to achieve. Are you aiming to improve your social media engagement? Identify market gaps? Benchmark performance against competitors?

Setting specific, measurable goals will guide your social listening analysis, ensuring you focus on the conversations and metrics that align with your objectives.

Step 2: Identify your top competitors

Determine your main competitors. These may include brands who directly compete in your industry, those serving a similar audience or even brands you aspire to one day reach—though it’s important to keep your aspirations somewhat realistic for the sake of actionable analysis.

By selecting the most relevant competitors, the data and insights will be more relevant and actionable, and better positioned to help drive informed strategies.

Step 3: Use social listening to conduct in-depth research

Focus on tracking the metrics and conversations that align with your clearly defined goals. This could involve monitoring mentions of your competitors, analyzing product reviews or identifying common customer pain points to uncover valuable insights.

Sprout Social’s competitive analysis topic template streamlines this process by helping you track key metrics like share of voice, engagement and sentiment trends. With customizable templates and actionable visualizations, Sprout helps you identify emerging trends, top keywords and significant industry shifts, providing a deeper understanding of where competitors are excelling—and where they’re falling short.

Step 4: Compare your product and marketing strategies

Use the insights gained from social listening to evaluate how your products and marketing efforts stack up against your competitors. Analyze key areas such as pricing, promotions and content strategies to identify what’s driving their success. Are there parts of their strategy that would resonate with your shared audience? Use this information to adapt your strategies.

To learn more about competitive product analysis.

Step 5: Evaluate your competitive position

With your social listening analysis complete, use the results to reflect on where your brand stands in the market. Set aside your bias towards your brand—acknowledging your weaknesses can be just as beneficial as recognizing your strengths.

Use these findings to refine your strategies, bolster your unique selling points and address areas for improvement. Regularly repeat this process to stay ahead of market trends and changing audience needs. Things can move fast.

How to use Sprout for social listening competitive analysis

Social listening data gives you a deep understanding of your business environment, extending beyond marketing to other key areas like product enhancement, spotting growth opportunities and improving customer care.

According to The State of Social Media Report, 95% of business executives agree companies must rely more heavily on social media data to inform business decisions across all areas of the business—not just marketing.

There’s a clear reason for this reliance on social media data. 81% of consumers say social has become their #1 channel for product discovery, according to a Q1 2024 Sprout Pulse Survey. They ask questions, share experiences and discuss product and service alternatives. This creates a wealth of customer-driven information waiting to be harnessed.

Social competitor analysis tools enable you to combine internal knowledge and social media intelligence, bridging the gap between how you think your audience perceives your brand and their actual sentiment. When these insights are paired with data from your CRM, product research and sales data, they give you an even clearer picture of how to grow market share.

Building materials pioneer James Hardie® uses social listening for competitive research. They engage in audience and trend analysis, research product sentiment, identify industry influencers and conduct competitor comparisons to build holistic brand strategies beyond marketing.

“Not only is it good from a brand health and marketing angle, it’s also important information we can pass on to our sales teams and product teams. We can find trends and common themes that come up in conversations. We can identify not only our own brand advocates but brand advocates for our competition,” says Bridget Kulla, Senior Digital Marketing Manager at James Hardie.

Here’s a quick look at how you can use Sprout for social listening competitive analysis.

Identify patterns and correlations

Look for patterns and overlaps between your internal knowledge and what social listening data reveals. Use Sprout to create presentation-ready reports that can help your team do competitor mapping to contextualize your research and competitive data. This process will help you identify competitors that weren’t even on your radar before, providing a more in-depth understanding of your market.

Integrate social listening in your workflows

Educate your team on the power of social listening and demonstrate how social insights can seamlessly plug into their workflows. For example, Sprout’s Brand Keywords capability zeroes in on X conversations that are relevant to your brand and industry, including your competition. You can add keywords mentioning your company and products to surface even those conversations where you’re not tagged directly.

This gives you a direct view of chatter on X where consumers mention you in relation to a competitor. This also gives you an opportunity to join the conversation and recommend our brand.

Track listening data by topics

Marketing, sales and product teams each prioritize different aspects of the brand experience. To maximize the value of your social media listening, narrow your focus to topics and data that’s truly relevant to your goals. This targeted approach lets you extract insights from thousands of social conversations without getting overwhelmed.

Sprout’s Listening solution enables this kind of detailed competitive research analysis with ease. Powered by Sprout’s Analyze by AI Assist capability, you can track critical metrics, hashtags, keywords, mentions trending in your Topics and even emojis. Get all these insights in the Conversation tab of your Listening Topics.

Further filter results to get more insights about the term.

Our integrated, AI-driven Query Builder provides customization options for your listening, enabling you to include or exclude keywords. You can also create Topic Themes to further streamline your social listening data to find actionable insights.

Turning your social listening competitive analysis data into actionable insights

A key part of social media competitive analysis is converting your research into insights you can use. Sprout helps you achieve this by consolidating your competitive research data into a single, unified source, making it easier for you to analyze and decide what actions to take.

Get a comprehensive side-by-side comparison of key metrics, including total engagement, potential impressions, brand sentiment and share of voice. This enables a straightforward analysis of your brand’s performance relative to competitors. These metrics also offer a deeper understanding of which brand is leading the conversation and how your target audience perceives your brand versus the competition.

Use the templates to:

Find insights by network

Gain valuable insights into your content performance across networks such as Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly known as Twitter) with network-specific performance and engagement reports. These competitive reports give you a comparative view of which networks your competitors are prioritizing. This, in turn, can help refine your social media strategy or highlight a content gap you can fill for your audience.

Also use Sprout’s Custom Reports to share relevant insights across departments. These reports help your teams combine cross-network competitor engagement and listening data for a holistic view.

Spot top industry and competitor trends

Discover prominent trends and topics within your industry and extract insights on a number of factors such as competitors, content types, message styles and audience sentiment. Utilize keyword filters to refine your search and choose a date range to examine both long-term and short-term competitive trends.

For example, listening data can reveal an upward trend in consumer demand for products that are ethically sourced and environmentally friendly, which can influence your overall brand strategy and differentiate you from the crowd.

Build engaging content

Sprout’s competitor performance report shows you how your competitors’ social content is performing. It highlights key metrics like engagement, post frequency and audience growth, so that you can benchmark against competitors and identify what resonates with your shared audience. Use these insights to refine your content strategy going forward.

Also assess detailed content performance and engagement data across Facebook, X and Instagram based on the uniqueness of each social network. For instance, content that excels on Instagram may not perform as well on Facebook due to differences in format and user behavior.

Identify areas of growth

Analyze feedback about your product and service to proactively address customer concerns and identify areas for improvement and growth. You should also analyze competitor feedback, as you can gain insights that can be used to refine your ad messaging and develop more targeted selling propositions. This approach enables you to differentiate your brand while staying vigilant on competitor performance.

Integrate findings across your tech stack

Sprout’s Tableau Business Intelligence (BI) Connector will boost the value and actionability of your competitive analysis. It lets you aggregate insights from multiple systems into dynamic, data-rich visualizations of key metrics throughout your customer journey. Use this tool to track social engagements, average response rates for social customer care initiatives and your competitive share of voice.

You can also customize visuals and gain an immersive view by mapping social engagements and conversion rates to sales data.

Use social listening competitive analysis for a successful 2025

Use social listening to conduct a thorough SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis for yourself and your key competitors. This approach to competitive market research will provide you with actionable insights to navigate successfully through 2025 and beyond.

From analyzing your competitors’ pricing strategies and value propositions to refining your content strategy, use Sprout to identify opportunities and set your brand apart.

Ready to unlock meaningful insights? Request a demo today and gain the competitive edge your brand needs.

The post How to use social listening competitive analysis to win 2025 appeared first on Sprout Social.

When I was a Product Director at Google, we were shifting our suite of Drive and Editor tools from serving predominantly small- and medium-sized businesses to meeting the needs of enterprise customers. On a tight timeline, we were under intense pressure to design a comprehensive roadmap and outline product priorities.

Our task was made more complex by a particularly strategic (and demanding) enterprise customer we were at risk of losing. They pushed us to come up with highly advanced capabilities and more intuitive experiences to meet their business requirements. If we had stuck with our status quo roadmap and product development processes, they would have churned. Instead, we sent a team of 30+ product managers and engineers to their global headquarters so we could immerse ourselves in their needs and pain points in order to build scalable solutions.

Customers that hold you to a remarkably high standard are a product team’s greatest gift. Innovation comes from rising to the occasion and employing true empathy. Often, when you meet the most advanced organization’s needs (elegantly and with simplicity), all your customers benefit.

Meeting with customers and understanding their goals is my favorite part of the work I do, and what I’m most passionate about in my new role as Sprout Social’s Chief Product Officer. As we map out Sprout’s continuous evolution, we are focused on providing an even more effortless and cohesive user experience. Here’s an overview of a few of our key areas of focus and the customer insights that inspire them.

Everything goes back to our customers

As the social landscape evolves, it’s more important than ever to continue walking alongside our customers. We’ve always been a company that prides itself on offering a highly intuitive platform. But we must continue to strive for greater simplicity to guide brands into social’s next era, which will drive company-wide value.

I’m incredibly proud to say Sprout Social was recognized as a Leader in the 2024-25 IDC MarketScape for Worldwide Social Marketing Software for Large Enterprises. We were also named #1 Best Product by G2 in 2024. These awards are a reflection of not only the exceptional work Team Sprout puts in every day, but of the way our customers are transforming their businesses with the power of social. Accolades like these only happen when you aim to deliver the very best technology that is built, supported and used by teams at the top of their game.

There’s a myth that sophisticated platforms have to be clunky, but it’s our mission to dispel this by building solutions with both usability and advanced capabilities in mind.

Building with customer zero

While the collaboration we foster with our customers is critical, at Sprout we’re lucky to have an in-house customer who is able to supply continuous feedback: our own social team. By working closely with “customer zero,” we get to put our tools to the test in real-time and take an active role in an internal case study.

Our social team enables us to push the very limits of our own social strategy and bring those learnings back into the product. Along the way, we discover usability gaps we need to address, new use cases we want to build, new insights that help us raise the bar in how we optimize return on investment for our customers.

This keeps the people who use our products at the forefront of our roadmap and helps us build a product that works better—not just for us, but for our customers. It’s been instrumental in identifying areas for product investment and improvement.

Product priorities defined by customer goals

We believe in delivering roadmaps defined by what our customers find most valuable—that meet their most sophisticated use cases and aspirational business outcomes.

That’s why we launched Breaking Ground this year. During these virtual events, we bring our customers up to speed on our most impactful, highly-requested product updates and breakthroughs so they can stay a beat ahead on the latest in social innovation. Plus, we share exclusive sneak peeks of our product roadmap—a precedent we’ll continue next year.

Looking toward 2025, we are prioritizing long-term value and our customers’ biggest objectives. We want to give our customers even more visibility into what we’re building, why we’re building it, and help them best prepare and plan. Here are some of the biggest customer-informed priorities we delivered this year and what we hope to achieve next year.

Delivering the company-wide value of social insights

Social is strategic to all parts of a business. It touches every division inside companies—whether leaders are aware or not. It’s integral to everything from providing customer care and engagement to sourcing executive-level insights, to driving strategy and refining product development.

We build reporting capabilities that extract the data that matters most to leaders and stakeholders. Our recently announced updates to My Reports ensure you can deliver the insights and data your business needs to make informed decisions.

Our partnership with Salesforce and our Tableau Business Intelligence (BI) Connector take it a step further by combining social data in an omnichannel view, customized with the exact visuals and metrics needed to demonstrate social’s value. It delivers rich data options that give users a complete view of their customers and their journeys—without time-consuming work.

Demonstrating the company-wide value of social continues to be an area where marketers need support, so we are focused on helping them tell a compelling ROI story.

Harnessing the potential of AI

As generative AI exploded this year, the potential for AI came into focus. But we know that understanding how to use AI day-to-day and build an AI-driven culture can be less clear.

That’s where Sprout comes in. Our human-centered AI solutions accelerate business processes and drive strategy, helping you deliver world-class customer experiences. As you’re challenged to do more with less, you’re still expected to meet customers’ high expectations. With AI seamlessly embedded across our entire platform, we transform social marketers’ ability to work smarter, unlock creativity and increase social media’s business impact exponentially. Our platform makes it easier to derive insights, create content, and automate and elevate workflows.

For example, one of our most celebrated announcements of 2024 was Generate Alt Text by AI Assist, a new time-saving workflow that generates alt text suggestions to increase the accessibility of image-focused posts—making posting more efficient and freeing up time for creativity. This is just one example of the intuitive AI Publishing tools that make it easy for your team to craft the right content that resonates with your audience, at the right time.

Similarly, Analyze Charts by AI Assist summarizes data from My Reports data to help teams tell a more digestible story about their performance and social’s broader business impact.

Analyze Conversations by AI Assist also removes the guesswork from social listening to surface insights that reveal key industry trends, competitor intel and relevant audience conversations. We understand how daunting listening can be. With this capability, marketers can spend more time crafting strategies around important signals and less time mining data.

As AI’s role in social media evolves, we know brands will need to make quick decisions on how best to embrace it—especially regarding customer data use, human involvement and monitoring biases. The pace and complexity of these changes mean you need to trust your software partners to consistently do right by you. With our strong track record of customer trust and the right principles in place, we’re well-equipped for the future and are actively building capabilities that will help you maintain customer trust at scale.

It’s our mission to continue helping our customers capitalize on these opportunities (without the headache of extra training or implementation).

Delivering faster, personalized customer care

Every stage of the customer journey exists on social. For brands, responding to questions is the bare minimum. Your customers want the care you provide on social to feel like white-glove service, distinctly customized to their needs. Consumers say companies should make personalized customer service their #1 social media priority in 2025, per a Q4 2024 Sprout Pulse Survey.

Social Customer Care by Sprout helps you go beyond expectations and deliver customer service that builds lasting relationships. Agents are enabled to automatically determine which messages need replies and send personalized responses that adhere to brand standards.

With Customer Care, your team can respond to messages faster by aligning across your organization and breaking down silos. Automatically classify which team a message is meant for to prevent internal collision and get real-time updates to ensure no customer is overlooked.

Transforming influencer marketing management

As brands go all-in on influencer marketing, they need a partner in streamlining end-to-end campaign management. The influencer marketing industry was valued at $17 billion in 2023 and is expected to to reach $20 billion this year. According to a Q4 2024 Sprout survey of 322 marketing leaders, 60% of brands will spend even more on influencer marketing next year.

Sprout Social Influencer Marketing drives impactful influencer marketing strategies that grow brand presence authentically, engage with new targeted audiences and ensure spend efficiency. Our Influencer Marketing platform tunes out the noise and uses AI to zero in on influencers who are the best match for your brand.

The platform also maximizes the experiences for influencers themselves—which will be a continued priority in 2025. This will benefit all parties, and be especially helpful for companies who want to forge long-term partnerships and leave the best first impressions. We will also continue to invest in securing the best brand-influencer matches possible, making quick work of finding vetted creators and influencers whose content, values and audiences are right for your brand.

Sprout Social is your partner in ushering in a new era of business

Human beings have been using technology to collaborate and achieve things as groups that they could never achieve alone since we first put paint to cave walls. Now that we’ve arrived at the nexus between social media, artificial intelligence and this chapter of humanity, what’s next? What can we empower? What can we unlock?

At Sprout, we’re building a platform to meet the needs of the world’s largest brands, while giving that same power to teams of any size. In lockstep with the needs of our customers, our roadmap delivers scalable solutions that ensure you can handle all of the complexities of social media management.

Want to learn more about the tools and capabilities that make your team more effective and future-proof your brand as you scale? Browse our latest product innovations from our Q4 2024 Breaking Ground launch event.

The post Sprout’s product strategy for 2025 and beyond appeared first on Sprout Social.

Who hasn’t stepped away for lunch, only to come back and discover a major platform overhaul that upends your carefully planned content calendar or reporting metrics?

To help you stay ahead of the game, I tapped into the ICYMI community to uncover their predictions for the future of social media platforms, strategies and content formats that will take center stage in 2025.

Social media never hits pause, but this snapshot offers valuable insights into what marketers and creators are prioritizing in the year ahead.

About the data
The data referenced in this article was collected via a recent survey of 240 creators and marketers who are part of the ICYMI newsletter audience. I also asked 24 leading voices in the social media industry to shape the data narrative and weigh in with their predictions for the future. The data I collected has been supplemented by Sprout Social data reports, surveys and community conversations.

1. Instagram will be as important as ever

According to survey respondents, Instagram was ranked the priority platform (44%) that people planned to focus on in 2025. LinkedIn is the sleeper hit at number two (20%), followed by TikTok (18%) and YouTube (11%).

The Meta platform coming in first is not a complete surprise, given that Instagram consistently ranks as one of Gen Z and Millennial’s favorite platforms, it’s the most popular platform for influencer marketing and it’s the most used platform across generations.

“In 2025 we’re focused on meeting consumers where they are instead of trying to get them to come to us. Think keyword searches, subreddits and out-of-the-box influencers creating unique content,” said Mikayla Barker, Senior Manager of Social Media and Influencer Marketing at Bachan’s.

However, some of the respondents wished there were more niche or emerging platforms included on the questionnaire—such as Bluesky, Roblox, Reddit and Substack—which serves as a reminder of how fractured and uncertain social media spaces have become.

That sentiment was echoed by Nicole Taic, Director, Creator Strategy at the Trade School agency: “It’s interesting to see because some clients and even creators are ignoring the TikTok ban but many are shifting their focus to Meta, YouTube and Snapchat. They’re also exploring and testing emerging platforms like Substack to see if there is a positive return. With that in mind, I’m very zeroed in on what other key platforms are rolling out over the next few months to inform how we pivot some of our plans.”

2. Creators will play a legitimate role in media and politics

When I asked some of the best creators, social strategists and industry leaders what’s going to happen around social and the creator economy next year, they agreed influencers and creators will be seen differently.

No longer discredited for not having “real” jobs, influencers are beginning to be formally recognized as integral professionals within media, politics and other sectors.

“2025 brings the creator world a step closer to being more professionalized. Especially given the impact creators have had on politics, citizen journalism and videography—we are no longer looked down on as interlopers in historically gatekept spaces. We’re now on a path toward being treated as equals and experts alongside more traditional paths to success,” said V Spehar, Creator and Founder of Under the Desk News.

This shift is preceded by consumer trust in influencers already taking hold. Nearly half as many consumers trust influencers just as much as they did last year, while 30% trust them more. Millennials and Gen Z are most trusting—in part because they grew up with influencer and creator marketing.

3. Video and images will continue to be crowd favorites

When survey respondents were asked which content format these marketers and creators planned to focus on in 2025, short-form video (60 seconds or less) won by a landslide with 47%. Rounding out the top three were videos less than 10 minutes long (17%), followed by photos and Carousels (14%).

Carousels made something of a comeback this year. Even before Instagram increased the amount of images and videos you could post to 20, brands were taking advantage of the swipe-through storytelling format.

Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, pointed to two main reasons for the format’s success: Multiple slides mean more interactions and the algorithm gives your Carousel a second chance after it’s posted, resurfacing it to followers who previously swiped by.

Even TikTok, which had previously only championed short-form videos, promoted photo Carousels this year, promising to “help you reach even more people.”

4. A renewed appetite for longer storytelling

Even as short-form video continues to dominate, the conversation is expanding to include more thoughtful storytelling. There is data to suggest audiences are beginning to crave depth alongside the quick hits of content that dominate their feeds.

A resurgence in serialized content (see TikTok’s Reese Teesa, Alexis Bittar and Julian Sewell’s ‘80s series) points to a demand for stories and dramatic sagas people can follow obsessively.

We are headed toward a “long-form renaissance,” said one survey respondent from Austin. This includes more “Substacks, YouTube, television and magazines. People will hit brain rot fatigue.”

This doesn’t spell the end of short-form, but marketers and creators are seeing a shift. Across nearly all platforms, the top way users want brands to show up is with entertaining content. People are looking for an escape from stress, boredom, you name it, and brands that can deliver on that will earn attention and loyalty.

“I’m excited to see social video format boomerang back to longer-form 16×9 content in 2025, particularly on YouTube as it ramps up to position itself as a TV/cable alternative. The TikTok-ification of short form will still thrive, but my team is so skilled and amped-up to approach the challenge of capturing audiences and maximizing viewer retention when we, and the digital world, have been used to distilled messaging lasting just a handful of seconds. As someone who loves to dive into narrative storytelling, this has me excited to shift more resources to higher-produced, longer-form content that can be cut down and optimized as short-form for other platforms,” said Adri Cowan, Director of Digital Marketing Marvel Brand at Walt Disney Studios.

5. Social might enter its “serious” era

Memes? In this economy?

The outlook on memes as a marketing tool is complicated. While most respondents selected memes as a top content priority for next year, opinions on their effectiveness were all over the map.

Chris Lam, marketing advisor for Los Angeles County’s Economic Mobility Initiative (EMI), predicted an uptick in memes, entertainment and escapist content dominating social media for at least the next four years.

Others, however, expect brands to pivot toward serious, emotion-driven content that fosters deeper connections.

“I think we’re entering our serious era,” said one respondent anonymously. “Memes in marketing will take a backseat as audiences grow tired of brands hopping on trends just to seem relatable.”

And for some social media managers, memes aren’t just a question of tone—they’re a legal minefield. Memes that riff on copyrighted images or cultural references, like scenes from popular TV shows or movies, can be risky business. Industries with strict legal or reputational standards can’t afford to gamble on what might seem like harmless fun.

So, as we look to next year, the question remains: Are memes still the moment, or are we bracing for a vibe shift?

6. AI will streamline operations and make humans more valuable

Though many brands and marketers already have AI tools at their disposal, almost 63% of social teams agree manual tasks still prevent them from doing high impact work. That’s expected to change in 2025 as marketing orgs and creators bring more AI tools into the fold and make an effort to maximize the ones they already have.

Amber Venz Box, co-founder and President of LTK, sums it up like this: “We’re at a point where AI can have a significant impact—enabling creators and brands to streamline operations, optimize content and scale faster than ever. From automating workflows to providing predictive insights, AI will play a bigger role in helping creators and brands bring their ideas to market with speed and greater effectiveness. This evolution ensures creators can focus more on what they do best—creating—while AI takes on many of their operational demands.”

As Venz Box suggests, even though AI tools will play a pivotal role in streamlining manual work, consumers still want human-led creativity.

According to 2024 Sprout Pulse Surveys, consumers say customer service should be companies’ top social media priority next year, with 74% agreeing they’re comfortable with brands using AI to deliver faster, personalized social customer care.

But almost half would be less likely to buy from a brand that posts AI-generated content. Another 83% believe AI content will make social feeds even more saturated.

One member of Sprout’s Arboretum advised, “Authentic, human-centric content will perform better and stand out. Human touch will help foster genuine connection—in both short-form and long-form storytelling. To deepen trust and loyalty and drive ROI, the key is crafting content that resonates emotionally and keeps human connection at the heart of it all.”

7. Embracing a social-first mindset will be non-negotiable

If I had to offer one personal prediction for the future of social media, it would be that brands will need to take a social-first approach to their entire company strategy to maintain long-term relevance. That goes beyond simply posting a video or replying in the comments.

Social is at the epicenter of culture. Showing up there is the bare minimum. People expect brands to be active participants in their online community—listening to and learning about their audience.

And, most importantly, customer feedback shouldn’t be siloed on social. It should be incorporated into social strategy, marketing activations on other channels, business priorities and product development.

Social media has solidified its power as a cultural force, and brands need to wield its influence to build lasting resonance.

Looking for more predictions into what 2025 will hold? Watch Sprout’s on-demand webinar dissecting 2024’s best social moments and what that they reveal about how social will change next year.

The post The future of social media: 7 expert predictions for 2025 appeared first on Sprout Social.

To break it down:

• Social media monitoring involves tracking social media messages, comments and conversations directly related to your brand and responding to those engagements.
• Social media listening is the process of analyzing the full spectrum of conversations around your industry, brand, and any topics relevant to your brand to understand your audience better and improve your campaign strategy.

Ultimately, businesses need both because social media monitoring tells you what people say about your brand or industry, and social media listening tells you why.

For example, let’s say you lead marketing for an e-commerce brand, and you just launched a new product. Monitoring might show that many customers are discussing a particular product. These insights may indicate that the product is popular—in theory.

While social media listening could reveal that many of those mentions were negative. Dig even deeper, and you might find that the issue isn’t even with the product but with shipping delays. While monitoring addresses the symptoms, listening reveals the root cause.

In this article, we’ll define social media monitoring and social listening in depth and highlight the critical differences between the two.

Social media monitoring definition

Social media is a go-to channel for brands to connect with their audience. Social media monitoring is the first step towards powering these connections, helping brands find the conversations they should be aware of or participate in. It’s the process of gathering useful social discussions and messages to keep track of customers’ likes, dislikes, wants and changing needs.

It allows you to track mentions of your:

• Brand name and common misspellings
• Product names and common misspellings
• Main competitors
• Product or brand in particular areas

Example of social media monitoring

Social media monitoring tracks the key phrases and terms important to your company and surfaces relevant conversations for you to respond to.

For example, earlier this year, 100 Thieves, a lifestyle and gaming company, mentioned the footwear brand Crocs on X (formerly known as Twitter). Even though they didn’t tag the account, Crocs likely used social media monitoring to find the mention and respond promptly. 

The benefits of social media monitoring

Social media mentions provide vital business intelligence that can inform more strategic decision-making.

Monitoring is also essential to your brand’s communications pipeline. Your social media managers and customer care agents should own most of this interaction, acting as traffic controllers for what’s coming in across your social networks.

How to make the most of social media monitoring

First, centralize your social profiles into a single platform enabling message monitoring at scale. Then, create alerts to help your agents easily track and respond to direct or indirect brand mentions. Include your brand’s handle and broader mentions. Also, account for common misspellings, nicknames, flagship products and industry-adjacent terms.

By receiving these alerts, your social team will be better able to block and tackle on your brand’s behalf, answering FAQs while routing other critical messages to different departments within your organization—from HR to sales.

To get even more sophisticated, your community managers can identify potential entry points to guide purchasing decisions. But be careful: This tactic is as much an art as a science.

Social media listening definition

Social media listening is about examining the conversations and trends around your brand and industry, and using those insights to make smarter marketing choices.

It helps you determine why, where and how these conversations are happening and what people think—not just when they tag or directly mention your brand.

Example of social media listening

Social media listening can help you plan better campaigns and improve your content strategy and messaging by removing the guesswork of what content will resonate. Analyzing metrics like volume, share of voice and sentiment will help reveal what offers are most popular with your audience and how they truly feel about your brand and products.

One social media listening example is when a franchise restaurant used Sprout’s Listening capabilities to see which food items their customers loved and which were getting overlooked.

Our Listening Topic Themes data revealed some interesting patterns. While nachos weren’t mentioned as often as other food items, they had the highest percentage of positive mentions and the lowest percentage of negative mentions. So, the franchise decided to create more content about nachos because the data showed that customers really loved them.

The benefits of social media listening

Without social media listening, you might miss important industry trends and customer preferences, leading to missed improvement opportunities. Plus, while social media monitoring focuses on what’s being said and by who, listening helps businesses understand the overall sentiment and context of those conversations. Without it, companies might misinterpret customer feelings and feedback.

How to use social media listening for your business

Start with turn-key social listening solutions, then progress to more intricate techniques. Powerful, automated listening tools requiring minimal setup can deliver meaningful, actionable data as well as customizable ones.

For instance, you can look at how often your brand is mentioned on X during a certain time period, and which hashtags, keywords and related terms are often used. This can help you see how people feel about your brand, products and campaigns. All this is possible without creating complex search queries or relying upon algorithmic sentiment triggers. Simply listening to what people say alongside your brand mentions is enough.

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 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.

Key differences between social listening vs. social monitoring

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.

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.

Reactive vs. proactive

Social media monitoring is reactive. It involves observing and responding to direct mentions or tags as they happen. On the other hand, social media listening is proactive. It provides deeper insights that help you strategize and plan.

For example, while monitoring might alert you to a single customer complaint, listening can uncover a trend of complaints about a specific product feature, which can be fixed or optimized to prevent future issues.

Tactical vs. analytical

Social media monitoring is a more tactical, task-focused process. Many social media monitoring tools like Sprout Social collect all your mentions in one centralized place and notify you when there’s a new conversation. From there, you can focus on replying with appropriate responses.

In comparison, social listening is more analytical and strategic. Social listening tools offer in-depth insight into the context and sentiment behind what people are saying. Rather than simply responding to messages, listening shows you engagement patterns and trends for your brand and industry. This information enables you to set data-informed benchmarks and goals to make more strategic decisions. Social listening requires analyzing many different things to do this well, making it difficult to do it without an automated social listening tool.

How to use Sprout Social for social monitoring and listening

Sprout Social is a comprehensive social media management tool with monitoring and listening capabilities. These solutions enable users to zoom in on meaningful conversations and zoom out to analyze the trends and patterns that inform their social media strategy.

How exactly? Let’s explore this more in-depth.

Smart Inbox

The Smart Inbox is where you keep track of every conversation with and about your brand. It’s the essence of monitoring, helping you to centralize and foster authentic conversations with action in mind. Messages from your social channels are centralized into one feed to ensure you stay focused and never miss a message. Use Case Assignments to delegate messages to other team members and tags to keep all your messages organized. Plus, lean on our Message Spike Alerts to know when there’s a surge of @-mentions that need to be addressed, so you can avoid or address potential brand crises.

Brand Keywords

Brand Keywords help you capture more relevant conversations about your brand, industry or competition. This is a step towards listening as it enables you to track various topics beyond your brand. Brand Keywords are custom searches that run constantly and display results in your Smart Inbox, which you can interact with just like any other message. You’re still focused purely on messages to respond to or offer support on a personal level.

If you aren’t actively searching for these types of messages, you may miss the chance to participate in important conversations.

Sprout’s premium listening solutions

Sprout’s Listening solutions offer a window into an audience’s candid thoughts and feelings to uncover trends, reveal patterns and measure emotional response around any topic.

Listen in on millions of conversations happening across Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Tumblr, X, YouTube and the web about your brand or topics important to you. No need for boolean expertise, as we offer templates to help you build queries quickly. And with Recommend by AI Assist, generate keyword suggestions to help refine your Listening queries for richer insights. These capabilities enable you to easily keep a pulse on your brand’s health, track sentiment around events or analyze insights from your industry, competitors and campaigns.

Once you’ve refined your query, you’ll likely have a lot of information to sort through. Our Analyze by AI Assist helps you efficiently identify your Topic’s most significant Smart Categories, keywords, hashtags, emojis and mentions. It turns data into clear insights, helping you instantly cut through the noise so you’re spending less time on analysis and more on strategy. All while giving you the flexibility to go broad on trends or zoom into individual posts for qualitative insights.

The insights Sprout’s Listening provides can power your social and business strategy, so you’re ready for the future.

Get started with social monitoring and listening

Social monitoring and listening are excellent for tuning into conversations around a brand and industry. But it also comes with a learning curve. From determining what hashtags and keywords to track, to understanding how to interpret and act on the data in listening reports, it can initially be overwhelming.

Our social listening guide is a great place to start. In just 90 minutes, you’ll get answers to questions about brand sentiment, trending discussions and content performance to optimize your content strategy.

The post The difference between social media monitoring vs. social media listening appeared first on Sprout Social.

In this post, we take a deep dive into the art of social media listening for Instagram. We explain why it’s important, how it works and how to build an Instagram social listening strategy. Let’s get started.

What is Instagram social listening?

Instagram social listening is the process of tracking relevant conversations on the platform. It involves listening in on conversations about specific keywords, topics, hashtags and competitors. This helps you extract valuable insights to inform other aspects of your Instagram marketing strategy.

Not sure what to post? See what your followers are buzzing about to get inspiration for new content ideas. What memes are they sharing? What topics are they discussing?

Similarly, these conversations help you:

• Identify potential customers and influencers
• Assess your overall brand health and sentiment
• See what your competitors are doing
• Guide customers on their path to purchase
• Stay on top of the latest industry trends

Instagram social listening gives you firsthand, actual answers based on facts. So you’re no longer wasting your efforts and resources on guesswork.

Why Instagram social listening matters

Brands shouldn’t live in a bubble when it comes to their Instagram activity. Listening puts your mentions, interactions and comments into context. This helps you engage people and grow your account.

Below are some specific ways that Instagram empowers you to connect with customers.

Learning what your audience wants on a personal level

Social listening on Instagram lets you hone in on the needs and pain points of your target audience. It shows you what conversations people are having, even outside of your brand’s account. This gives you a better idea of what they want based on the posts they’re creating and the comments they’re leaving on a friend’s or influencer’s post.

These insights will then inform your social media content strategy and promotion strategy. Knowing what your audience wants can even guide your product development efforts.

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Providing more impactful Instagram customer service

“Good” service goes hand-in-hand with having a pulse on customer questions, comments and concerns.

This becomes challenging when people use Instagram to vent their frustrations instead of talking to you. Instagram social listening ensures that you never miss a @mention. It also helps you track posts containing branded keywords. So you can stay on top of customer service conversations beyond your direct call-outs.

That way, you can respond swiftly and step up your social media customer service efforts.

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This could be a game-changer, with nearly three-quarters of consumers expecting a response from brands on social within 24 hours or sooner. The 2025 Sprout Social Index™ also found that consumers say companies should make personalized customer service their #1 social media priority.

Discovering meaningful customer content to promote your brand

Your customers are your best marketers. Listening can clue you in on valuable content and social proof you can promote yourself. This might include:

• Positive reviews, testimonials and customer success stories
• User-generated content (think: customer photos and videos)
• Shout-outs from potential co-marketing partners (think: brands, influencers and creators)

Rather than dig for these opportunities, listening ensures that they all come to you.

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Instagram social listening vs. social media monitoring

Quick side note! Let’s take a moment to break down what Instagram listening isn’t.

Listening is about more than @mentions, comments and #hashtags

Terms like “monitoring” and “listening” often get used interchangeably among marketers. They aren’t the same, though.

• Social media monitoring is the act of tracking @mentions, comments and hashtags. Monitoring is a crucial aspect of listening, but it’s only part of the process.
• Instagram social listening involves translating conversations and customer talking points into action.

Interactions matter, but so does context. Think about it. Someone tagging a fashion brand in their OOTD post versus calling out that brand’s products are apples and oranges.

A tag simply means, “This is what I’m wearing/using.” A call-out goes deeper into what they love about the product or why they chose it specifically. Also, not every mention of your business on Instagram involves a direct call-out or tag. This is likely to happen when people are complaining about your brand or expressing their frustration.

Social listening for Instagram is about deciphering the context behind those relevant conversations. This then empowers you to take appropriate action and make informed decisions.

The takeaway? If you’re only looking for mentions of your brand name or campaign key terms, you’re missing out on key conversations.

You’re also missing opportunities to intervene and take action to engage customers. That’s why it pays to be proactive via listening.

How does Instagram social listening work, though?

Good question! Instagram is a strange beast as far as listening to customer interactions goes.

For starters, you’re juggling a lot of different queries. Tags, mentions and branded keywords are just the beginning.

And although IG search has improved, you need to do some digging to find and pull together relevant conversations.

Instagram social listening involves the following three-step process:

• Creating queries based on your business, hashtags and terms relevant to your industry
• Monitoring mentions, tags, comments and interactions
• Assessing all of the above to take action

This action could be something as simple as responding to a post. Or it may involve a bit more complex process of solving a customer’s problem.

Starface uses brand tags and hashtags to find relevant customer content. The following Reel shows how a customer created a DIY bag charm using the brand’s star balm. Starface responds with a comment about how smart this is. Even a simple acknowledgment like this is enough to build a strong brand community.

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Features such as Instagram’s keyword search and tags can help you dig out content relevant to your brand. Coupled with your comments and brand tags, you have a decent idea of what people are saying about your business.

This is obviously a lot to sift through by hand. Again, Instagram doesn’t make listening particularly easy by default.

The good news is that there are tools out there to help. Sprout’s social media listening tool helps you hone in on relevant Instagram conversations. Brands can create their own listening queries for Instagram via Boolean syntax and rules logic.

Choose from existing templates to simplify your Instagram social listening efforts. Monitor brand health, discover industry insights and analyze your competition. Or check out how your campaign is performing and how people are responding to an event.

Sprout’s Query Builder is where you enter the words, phrases or hashtags you want to track. For Instagram, it’s crucial to include hashtags as a part of your Query since Sprout uses hashtags to collect data from the platform.

Not sure what words or phrases to track? Queries by AI Assist is a useful feature that automatically suggests additional words or phrases. Enter one keyword relevant to your industry and the capability comes up with other related keywords to add to your Query.

Optionally, exclude specific words and phrases and select industry themes to reduce noise in your social listening data. You can also configure your alerts and apply additional filters to streamline your search.

How to build an effective Instagram social listening strategy

Of course, understanding Instagram listening and how it works is only half the battle.

How do you turn all of these metrics and observations into action?

Your social listening strategy ultimately boils down to your goals. Below is how brands can use Instagram social listening to level up their marketing efforts.

Conduct competitive analysis to find ways to stand out

One of the best uses of social listening is competitive analysis.

Consider ultra-competitive markets such as the beauty industry, for example. New products are constantly popping up every day, with new brands adding to the competition. Tracking tags and trending discussions will show you which brands are dominating the space and why. So you can better position yourself in the face of stiff competition.

Meanwhile, direct mentions and branded hashtags highlight conversations specific to your brand. This helps you uncover what makes your brand different.

Uncover opportunities to improve your products

If you want to know how to improve your own products and services, who better to ask than your own customers? Prompted or not, followers can clue you in on new ideas.

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Of course, not all feedback from your followers is going to be direct. People might create posts or Stories complaining about your products without tagging you. Using an Instagram social listening tool will help you zero in on those relevant discussions.

Likes, comments and shares also help you measure how customers are responding to certain products. Look at an influx of interactions to see which products are a customer favorite. Alternatively, posts with a lower engagement can show you which items are falling flat.

Make valuable customer touchpoints on the path to purchase

The latest Instagram stats show that 70% of shoppers look to the platform for their next purchase. And over 60% research brands and products on the app. So if you take the opportunity to engage these potential customers, you could effectively grow your sales.

Instagram comments are a goldmine for finding folks interested in your products. This rings true for people who don’t know about you yet or might be looking for a new spot in your space.

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Listening makes it easier to maintain relationships with satisfied customers, too. This includes check-ins and opportunities to earn more UGC.

Discover industry and content trends relevant to your followers

Social listening is invaluable for tracking industry trends. For starters, you should know the tags your audience follows. But are how they responding to such trends? What’s the context behind those trends? How can you apply them to your own campaigns?

On a related note, Instagram listening can keep you from accidentally copying your competition.

For example, brands need to differentiate their tone, content calendar and captions if they want to stand out on Instagram. Effective listening can help you uncover tags and trends that your competitors might be missing out on and how you can fill the void.

Monitor your customer sentiment and keep people happy

Let’s say you’ve launched a new product or campaign.

You obviously want to know how your audience feels about it, right? Are you building the kind of buzz you expect? Or is the campaign falling flat with your audience?

Again, you may not always get those answers from direct mentions. Chances are there are users out there who can provide a concrete answer, though. You need to keep track of the posts people are creating about the product or campaign to get an idea of its impact.

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This is where sentiment analysis comes in, helping you gauge how folks are reacting to your brand on Instagram. Track the sentiment around specific campaign tags and products. Whether it’s “yay,” “nay” or “meh,” sentiment analysis can inform you to better serve customers and score more love from your Instagram followers.

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What Instagram social listening tools are available to brands?

Native Instagram search tools allow basic brand listening. But the process is manual and taxing, especially if you’re going all in with Instagram social listening.

After all, brands need to track multiple tags and competitors. That’s not even considering your own mentions and branded keywords. Given the sheer amount of content posted to Instagram daily, sifting through it all is no small feat.

Investing in a proper Instagram social listening tool saves you the trouble of digging through thousands of posts each day.

Sprout’s robust suite of social listening features is a game-changer for brands looking to step up their Instagram presence. Businesses can track dozens of queries beyond simple hashtags with the help of our Query Builder. This gives you a holistic understanding of your brand and industry to inform your larger marketing efforts.

Reporting and analytics provide a quantitative look at your listening so you can make data-driven decisions. Second-guessing a campaign or your next move on Instagram? Look no further than your numbers for peace of mind.

Listen, learn and grow with Instagram social listening

Social listening on Instagram helps you tap into the pulse of industry trends and conversations. These insights inform various aspects of your business—from your content to your product development.

Stay on top of those critical conversations with Sprout’s robust social media listening solution. Try it for free for 30 days to see how it can power your Instagram social listening efforts.

The post Instagram social listening: Transform your brand’s strategy appeared first on Sprout Social.

Social media listening tools let you monitor and track social media conversations related to a specific brand or topic. This gives you insights that will inform your marketing decisions.

Let’s break down 15 of the top social listening platforms to consider for your brand.

Best all-in-one social listening tool

Some tools provide deep listening for one specific platform. Meanwhile, some may specialize in certain functions. While one tool gives you an in-depth sentiment analysis, another may be much better at predicting trends.

To get the most out of your social listening efforts, however, you need a tool that does it all.

1. Sprout Social

Sprout Social’s social listening tools give you a comprehensive look into conversations that are relevant to your brand. Track conversations related to your brand across all major social networks and other online sources. Sprout’s tools automatically sift through millions of data points to uncover insights relevant to your brand.

You can learn about audience preferences and how they feel about specific products, campaigns or topics. This helps you stay on top of the latest industry trends and identify untapped business opportunities. Discover key influencers and thought leaders who are leading the conversation so you know whom to engage.

Brand-specific conversations give you more visibility into customer experiences and brand sentiment. Set up custom alerts to anticipate an upcoming brand crisis, giving you ample time to fix it before it gets out of hand. Plus, with powerful social media management tools built in, you can easily manage these issues all in one place.

Sprout’s AI features further streamline your social listening efforts. Summarizing with AI Assist saves you the trouble of having to read through lengthy messages. It creates a summary of Listening messages with over 800 characters, allowing you to quickly zero in on essential insights.

Meanwhile, Analyze by AI Assist takes the guesswork out of social listening. It automatically analyzes your Listening messages to find the insights that matter. This includes metrics related to words, phrases, emojis and hashtags. So you can easily forecast trends if certain topics see increased engagement.

It even helps you gauge the sentiment behind specific conversations. This simplifies how you anticipate possible brand crises or monitor how people feel about your latest campaigns.

Sprout offers a 30-day free trial so you can test out its publishing and analytics capabilities. The social listening tools are part of a custom-built plan for enterprise users.

General social listening tools

If your brand maintains a presence across a variety of social networks, you need a tool that’s appropriate for all major platforms. Let’s look at the top social listening tools that are suitable for general use.

2. Brandwatch

Brandwatch extracts valuable conversational insights from millions of sources. It analyzes both historical and real-time conversations to identify current trends and how they change over time. This gives you a better understanding of your market and audience, so you know what’s trending and popular. You’ll be able to see the top topics they’re talking about and identify relevant brand mentions.

If you’ve tried Brandwatch before and want to explore other options not on this list, we also have a list of Brandwatch alternatives to consider.

3. Brand24

Brand24 is a powerful tool for measuring brand awareness and reach. It lets you track conversations from 25 million online sources to gather valuable consumer insights. This gives you a better understanding of what people like or dislike, especially when it comes to your brand. You can even measure brand sentiment and quickly identify reputational risks.

4. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is a comprehensive listening tool that specializes in content discovery and research. The platform lets you track trending topics and popular content to inspire you. You can use the monitoring features to track mentions and trends across leading social networks. It lets you set up alerts for brands, topics and keywords to help you stay on top of the latest conversations.

5. Keyhole

Keyhole offers enterprise-grade social listening to gain a deeper understanding of your audience. It provides insights to identify who they are and get a better sense of what they like. You can use the platform to track specific hashtags and keywords as well as identify relevant influencers. The volume predictions feature lets you anticipate when your posts are going viral, allowing you to come up with a game plan.

6. Meltwater

Meltwater helps you cut through the noise and uncover the conversational insights that matter to your brand. It provides you with a full picture by capturing historical data to help you research changes in trends over time. The platform gives you a better understanding of your audience and allows you to analyze their sentiment. This helps you monitor brand mentions in real time and stay on top of upcoming crises to quell them on time.

7. YouScan

YouScan is one of the top social listening tools that comes with image recognition capabilities. It gives you access to AI-powered visual insights to gain a better understanding of your buyer persona. The platform identifies upcoming trends so you can align your marketing strategy accordingly. It tracks brand sentiment and consumer perceptions to show you how people feel about your brand. It even detects possible threats to your brand reputation in real time.

8. HubSpot Social Media Management Software

HubSpot’s social media management software lets you create custom keyword monitoring streams. This makes it easy to surface interactions that could turn critical and manage them on time. You can also set up email alerts, allowing your sales team to follow up when prospects mention specific keywords. It even provides AI-generated recommended actions to speed up your analysis.

Social listening tools for Twitter (X)

X is a place where all the trending conversations take place. It’s where people go when they want to complain about a brand or discuss a trending topic. As such, Twitter listening can uncover valuable insights into your target market.

So let’s take a look at the social media listening tools that specifically focus on X.

9. X advanced search

X’s built-in advanced search tool is highly robust for listening in on relevant conversations. You can track conversations containing specific words, phrases and hashtags. It even lets you narrow your search by excluding certain words.

To get even more specific, look for posts from one specific account to another. The tool gives you plenty of additional filters to help you narrow your search by engagement, date range and so on.

10. X Pro (formerly TweetDeck)

X Pro is a paid tool that offers the same features as the formerly free TweetDeck. Pull up hundreds of conversations across the platform and display them in several columns. This makes it easier to look out for posts around specific topics and news stories as they come in. X Pro even lets you pull up X posts from the dedicated lists you’ve created. This makes it easier to narrow down conversations from accounts that are most interesting to you.

11. Awario

Awario provides real-time insights on specific brand and keyword mentions in any language. This makes it a great social media listening software for brands that want to grow an international customer base. It even helps you identify top influencers and brand advocates leading the conversation.

Awario supports your social selling efforts with a feature that identifies hot leads. It tracks X posts and zeroes in on ones that are looking for a product similar to yours.

Social listening tools for TikTok

TikTok’s reach and influence are rapidly expanding. Now it’s the hub for all the latest social media trends and conversations. So being able to tap into the conversations happening on the platform gives you leverage to stand apart.

Let’s take a look at a couple of TikTok tools to conduct social listening on the platform.

12. Exolyt

Exolyt gives you comprehensive insights into TikTok conversations and trends. You can use the tool to monitor what people are saying about your brand and how they feel about it. It lets you track specific TikTok accounts, hashtags and videos to gather granular insights. Also, discover trending sounds, hashtags, effects and accounts to inform your content strategy.

13. All Ears

All Ears is an AI-powered social listening platform that focuses on voice and video conversations. It analyzes millions of TikTok videos to identify relevant brand or topic mentions. The platform automatically transcribes these mentions, saving you hours of time having to comb through the noise. All Ears also provides relevant metrics like reach, PR value and net sentiment to streamline your listening analytics.

Free social listening tools

If you’re not ready to invest in a paid tool just yet, there are a few free social listening tools that come with basic listening capabilities.

14. Answer the Public

Answer the Public pulls up search volumes and trends for a given topic, brand or product. It gives you a breakdown of the associated search terms. So it shows you what questions people are asking about it and what comparisons they’re making. This gives you a better understanding of their needs and pain points as well as their interests.

15. Google Alerts

Google Alerts is another free option that lets you set up alerts for conversations taking place across the web. Use it to monitor specific keywords and topics or even brand names. The tool lets you filter your results based on sources, language and region. Customize the frequency of alerts and choose to show only the best results.

The benefits of social listening tools

Social media listening software helps you track and analyze millions of social media posts. This makes it easy to narrow down the conversations that matter without hours of manual research. As a result, social media listening tools offer a number of benefits for your brand:

Spot emerging trends

Social listening platforms detect patterns in conversations around specific keywords and hashtags. This helps you see when certain topics are starting to gain traction. So you can get in on trends way ahead of your competitors.

Understand customer interests and pain points

Listening in on social media conversations helps you understand what topics people like to engage with. It also reveals their concerns and complaints to help you zero in on their pain points.

Monitor and manage brand reputation

Social listening tools keep track of every relevant brand mention, even if you’re not tagged. This helps you identify conversations that could harm your brand reputation. Then come up with an appropriate and timely response to mitigate the issue.

Identify sales opportunities

Social listening platforms help you identify conversations that seek a solution you can provide. So you can jump in with a relevant suggestion and turn them into valuable leads.

Listen, learn and grow on social

Social listening tools empower you to learn what makes your audience tick. They give you actionable insights to inform what content you create and how you engage with your audience.

But the challenge lies in finding a social listening platform that meets your unique needs. If you’re looking for a well-rounded tool that does everything, Sprout’s the answer you need. Try it free for 30 days to see if it’s the right match for your brand.

The post 15 social listening tools for your brand in 2025 appeared first on Sprout Social.

According to The 2023 State of Social Media Report, 91% of business leaders agree that their company’s success will depend on how effectively it can use social data and insights to inform business strategy.

Putting your social interactions into context can uncover new opportunities to grow and expand. Social media monitoring tools can help you do just that.

Below, we’ve broken down some of the best social media monitoring tools out there. We’ve also included tips to help you craft a successful social media monitoring strategy.

Table of contents:

• What is social media monitoring?
• Benefits of social media monitoring
• Social media monitoring tools to use
• Tips for social media monitoring

What is social media monitoring?

Social media monitoring is the process of tracking and reacting to social engagements. These engagements include @mentions, comments, #hashtags and keywords related to your brand.

Despite the name, “monitoring” is not a passive activity. Brands should track everything from shout-outs and reviews to questions and complaints. More importantly, brands must react to all of the above. This is the distinction between social monitoring and listening.

Social media monitoring involves much more than just direct mentions and branded keywords, too. For example, a competitor call-out presents an opportunity for your brand to intervene. The same rings true for people asking for product recommendations.

The problem? These types of conversations don’t typically pop up in your notifications. This is especially true if you’re active on multiple networks. That’s why brands use social media monitoring tools to supplement their native data.

4 benefits of social media monitoring

Using data to fuel your campaigns is always a smart move. But what kind of data does social monitoring help you get? How can you use it to grow your business?

Here are some specific benefits of social media monitoring for your brand:

Maximize the ROI of your social media campaigns

Social media monitoring helps you gather valuable data to inform your future campaigns.

For example, by understanding what resonates with your audience, you can craft more engaging posts that boost brand visibility and sales—directly impacting your social media ROI.

Also, you can use this data to run more targeted ads and choose the right influencers to work with. This ensures your content reaches people who are genuinely interested in your products or services— giving you more bang for your buck.

Get insight into your industry and competitors

Social media monitoring is more than just tracking brand mentions—it’s about keeping an eye on emerging trends, industry news and what the other players are doing.

This helps you make proactive decisions like creating viral content, adopting new strategies or tools and even developing product features that give you a competitive edge.

Competitive intelligence also helps you set realistic benchmarks for your brand’s performance. What’s the engagement like for the top players in your industry? How efficient is their customer service? How frequently do they post and which channels do they use the most?

Reputation management

Social media is a great place to manage your reputation.

In fact, according to State of Social Media Report, 9 out of 10 business leaders agree that social media insights help them proactively manage crises and create effective PR strategies.

For example, you can catch negative comments or reviews about your business early on and prevent issues from escalating.

Plus, with regular customer sentiment analysis, you’re always up-to-date on how customers feel about your brand. If there are any unexpected drops, you can go back to the drawing board and take swift action to get your brand’s social media reputation back on track.

Social media monitoring also helps you deliver exceptional customer service. The Sprout Social Index™ shows consumers expect brands to prioritize personalized social media customer service. By promptly addressing queries, comments and messages, you can improve public perception of your brand.

Monitor your brand mentions on social media

Want to gauge your brand’s actual popularity? Start listening. What are customers saying about your products? Which influencers are using your hashtags? Do you have any haters spreading negative vibes about your brand?

Monitoring your brand mentions can answer all of these questions. Better yet, it can reveal valuable insights about customer sentiment, product strengths and weaknesses, competitive opportunities and even user-generated content.

18 social media monitoring tools to use

Social media monitoring tools let you track your brand’s meaningful engagements wherever and whenever they happen.

There’s no shortage of monitoring tools out there. The following list can help you hone in on a tool that makes sense for your brand based on your needs.

1. Sprout Social

Sprout Social gives you everything not only to track important interactions but also to act on them.

For starters, our platform keeps track of mentions, comments and keywords across multiple networks including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and TikTok.

The ability to condense all of your interactions into one platform is a massive time-saver. Doing so ensures that you don’t miss any noteworthy mentions or let customer service concerns go unanswered.

For example, Sprout’s Smart Inbox provides a real-time, up-to-date list of all of your social interactions. This includes communications between leads, followers and customers.

With a collaborative inbox, you and your team can reply to mentions and call-outs without leaving the platform. These features speed up response times and allow your team to offer a consistent experience to your customers.

Beyond monitoring, Sprout’s s suite of social listening tools is equally powerful. You can track specific queries using boolean operators to zero in on conversations that matter most. We make it easier to detect call-outs and shout-outs as they happen.

And with Sprout’s social analytics, you can report on all of the above to track the progress of your social presence.

Keep track of metrics including average response times and engagement volume to ensure that you’re consistently growing and improving. Consider that the best social media monitoring tools work across multiple platforms and encourage growth wherever your team is active. That’s exactly what Sprout does.

2. Agorapulse

Agorapulse’s platform lives up to its namesake with features to help brands keep a better pulse on their social mentions.

The platform’s monitoring and listening features are designed to help brands focus on “what counts.” With countless notifications and mentions for busy brands to sift through, it’s easy to get overwhelmed.

To combat comment overload, Agorapulse allows users to set parameters to filter specific phrases and platforms out of their monitoring feeds. The platform also makes it a cinch to label and organize notable customer conversations and competitor activity. This activity includes negative competitor mentions and opportunities for your brand to intervene.

These features highlight the fast-paced, high-stakes nature of social media monitoring and why tools matter so much.

3. RivalIQ

Perhaps not surprisingly, RivalIQ’s platform focuses on competitive analysis to help brands keep an eye on their business rivals.

Monitoring and benchmarking features allow brands to understand their share of voice and how they’re growing versus their competitors.

The most notable features of RivalIQ are the platform’s variety of real-time alerts. For example, the platform can identify when a competitor has changed their social media bio as soon as it happens. Recent features include the ability to also see when a competitor boosts an organic post as an ad.

These alerts can give you a head start on understanding your competitors’ positioning, promotions and campaigns.

4. Mention

Mention is yet another monitoring tool that lives up to its namesake as a powerful @mention tracker.

For brands and agencies alike, the platform claims to monitor over one billion sources for relevant mentions and comments. With so many conversations to sift through, the platform offers plenty of filtering options to help brands “eliminate noise.”

Likewise, the platform’s alerts can keep brands in the loop. Additional features of the platform include identifying spikes in mention volume. These instances can help brands identify a potential social media crisis or PR opportunity sooner rather than later.

5. Keyhole

Keyhole’s monitoring abilities are primarily focused on helping brands find influencers to work with.

Automated keyword and hashtag searches uncover influencers posting about topics relevant to brands. The platform also uses hashtag analytics to highlight influential accounts, posts and conversations around any given topic.

6. HubSpot

If you’re already using HubSpot as your CRM, consider how the platform can double as your social media monitoring tool of choice.

HubSpot’s features aren’t radically different from most tools on our list. The platform tracks interactions, engagements and content performance.

Coupled with HubSpot’s sales CRM, the tool highlights the correlation between top-performing content and social interactions with sales. For example, you can see if customers interacted with a certain piece of content or a team member via social. This goes hand in hand with understanding your social media ROI and the impact of your social team.

7. Brand24

Brand24’s media monitoring features include sentiment analysis and instant notifications for all of your social mentions. The platform can also detect trending hashtags that relate to your brand.

A notable feature of the platform is its mention feed that detects spikes in activity. The platform’s “summary” feed also makes it easy to track your brand’s PR efforts from week to week.

8. Atribus

Atribus is a consumer intelligence tool with an emphasis on social media monitoring. Helping brands uncover “unmet needs,” the platform digs deep into customer conversations and data.

Specifically, the platform highlights common complaints within any given industry through sentiment analysis. This provides opportunities for competing brands to identify pain points and intervene. Atribus is capable of automatically classifying mentions into complaints versus inquiries, too.

9. Zoho Social

If you’re using Zoho as a CRM, the platform’s complimentary social media monitoring features are incredibly useful.

Beyond the standard monitoring features we’ve talked about, the platform lets you build a custom listening dashboard. From hashtags to specific platforms or media outlets, this gives you a comprehensive understanding of your PR and social presence at a glance.

10. Awario

Awario’s monitoring features are also similar to many of the platforms mentioned above.

That said, Awario Leads is a noteworthy addition to the platform’s regular monitoring and listening capabilities.

In short, Awario can identify specific instances of people asking for recommendations for a particular industry. This again shows how monitoring is an active process that can help you win more business.

11. Cyfe

Cyfe is an analytics platform that lets you create custom dashboards to monitor key social media metrics from one centralized location.

Track followers, engagement, reach, top posts and more on Facebook, X (Twitter), Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn. Cyfe is particularly helpful for observing trends and patterns across your social media KPIs over time.

Using Cyfe’s dashboard also makes reporting a breeze. You can easily present all your social media metrics to team members, clients or managers.

Plus, most metrics are presented in the form of data visualizations like colorful charts. This helps you make sense of the data and understand the overall performance of your brand.

12. Sendible

Sendible is a powerful social media management tool that lets users track analytics, generate reports, and design, schedule and publish content across multiple social media networks without leaving the platform.

You can keep tabs on brand mentions and industry keywords, and even respond to comments on multiple platforms from within Sendible.

The tool is built with agencies in mind, so if you’re monitoring the social presence of multiple client accounts, you can create a separate dashboard for each one. They also offer white-label solutions for those looking for customized software aligned with their brand.

13. Brandwatch

Brandwatch is a social media analytics platform known for its advanced social monitoring capabilities, including sentiment analysis and trend tracking.

The tool integrates with all popular apps and networks, and can gather data from millions of sources. It can also perform deep, granular analyses of social conversations and create custom dashboards to help you measure performance.

You can also use Brandwatch’s AI smart alerts to take swift action in response to unusual trends, such as spikes or drops in brand mentions.

14. Meltwater

Meltwater provides a holistic approach to brand monitoring—it combines social media, news and blog tracking. In fact, it even uses AI to find brand mentions in podcasts.

The platform lets you search for unlimited keywords and queries, dig into industry trends, scour historical analytics and even generate reports to uncover the meaning behind all that data. You can also leverage sentiment analysis to understand how customers feel about your brand.

Another cool feature Meltwater offers is visual analytics searching to analyze image/video content shared on platforms like Reddit, blogs, forums and news sites.

15. YouScan

YouScan specializes in visual content analysis—it uses AI to scan social media for images and videos that include brand mentions, logos and relevant scenes. This lets you uncover brand-related content that might be missed by traditional text-only social monitoring tools.

The platform also analyzes sentiment in visual content and puts it into context to help brands better understand how they’re perceived on social media. It’s a valuable tool for brands focused on visual branding and those interested in tapping into user-generated content.

16. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo allows your brand to set up real-time alerts for any keyword, brand mention or competitor. This means you can instantly track conversations relevant to your brand, industry or specific campaigns. You can monitor mentions across various social media platforms, news sites, blogs and forums, ensuring comprehensive coverage of online discussions. This broad reach helps you stay informed about what people are saying about your brand, identify potential crises and discover new opportunities for engagement.

Beyond tracking mentions, BuzzSumo also provides analysis of social media data. You can analyze the sentiment around your brand, identify key influencers driving conversations and track the performance of your social media campaigns. This data empowers you to understand audience perception, refine your social media strategy and measure the effectiveness of your efforts.

17. Emplifi

Emplifi’s social listening tools allow you to track mentions of your brand, competitors and industry keywords across various social media platforms. You can monitor conversations in real-time, identify trending topics and analyze audience sentiment to understand how people perceive your brand. This enables you to proactively address customer concerns, identify potential crises and discover opportunities for engagement.

Furthermore, Emplifi’s listening capabilities extend beyond just text. Its image recognition technology can analyze images and videos to identify brand logos and visuals, providing a more comprehensive view of online conversations. This is particularly useful for tracking brand mentions in visual content, such as user-generated photos and videos shared on platforms like Instagram and TikTok.

Still considering Emplifi? Check out our full list of Emplifi alternatives for more information.

18. Statusbrew

Statusbrew’s social listening features enable you to monitor keywords, brand mentions and competitor activity across multiple social networks. You can set up real-time alerts to stay informed about important conversations and quickly respond to comments, questions and reviews.

This proactive approach helps you build stronger relationships with your audience, manage your online reputation and identify potential crises before they escalate. Statusbrew also allows you to track hashtags, identify influencers and analyze audience sentiment, providing valuable insights to inform your social media strategy.

4 tips for social media monitoring

Tracking social metrics and mentions on social will only get you so far. The tools above offer plenty of other powerful features to help position your brand for success.

Follow the tips below to make the most of your social media monitoring efforts:

1. Monitor relevant keywords for your brand

Instead of just tracking brand mentions, keep tabs on specific keywords related to your brand and industry. This could include product names, features, popular hashtags, common industry phrases and even competitor names.

For example, a fitness app might monitor keywords like “workout”, “fitness tips” or “healthy living.” This could help them identify trends in the fitness sphere, such as a rising interest in at-home workouts. They could use that info to create more relevant content and features.

2. Monitor across different channels

Your audience is spread across various social media platforms, like Facebook, Instagram, X, LinkedIn, Reddit and others. And every channel has its unique dynamics.

You need to monitor your online reputation, customer sentiment and key metrics on every platform your audience is active on to create targeted strategies for each one.

For example, you might find engagement is low on Instagram but great on LinkedIn. Digging deeper might reveal you’re just posting at the wrong time on Instagram.

Luckily, most social media monitoring tools let you track insights across multiple channels from one dashboard. Sprout Social, for example, lets you create consolidated reports and get a birds-eye view of your overall social media performance.

3. Monitor customer sentiment

Understanding how people feel about your brand is just as important as knowing what they’re saying. Sentiment analysis involves studying the tone and emotions behind all the comments, reviews and mentions—so you know exactly what customers are thinking.

Customer sentiment can be positive, negative or neutral. Some tools like Sprout Social give you a sentiment score to help you quantify that metric. Use it to adjust your strategy to improve customer satisfaction and overall perception of your brand.

4. Monitor your competitors

Don’t just monitor your own brand. Use these tools to keep an eye on your competitors and their strategies. What kind of content are they posting? Is their brand getting more mentions than yours? What’s the customer sentiment like?

Sprout gives you visual reports to help you monitor your competition and benchmark performance across various channels:

Tracking your competitors’ campaigns, publishing behavior, engagement rates, interactions, response timings and other strategies helps you learn from them, anticipate their moves and capitalize on any gaps in their strategy.

Competitive analysis also helps you differentiate yourself from the crowd. What unique value do you bring to the table? Is there anything that your product offers that theirs is missing? Focus your energy on highlighting those areas in your promotions and campaigns.

Use social media monitoring to build better campaigns

Stepping up your social monitoring should be a top priority regardless of your industry.

The closer you track what people are saying about your brand, the better you can serve your target audience.

Likewise, you can form more meaningful relationships with your followers and customers. That’s because you’re already clued into their wants, needs and pain points.

Doing so means having the right social media monitoring tools at your fingertips. Try a tool like Sprout Social to align your publishing and customer service strategy with your monitoring insights in one place.

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