Social listening for brands: what to track, and how to choose a tool
A practical guide for in-house brand, social and influencer teams: what social listening should tell you, the mistakes that make the numbers wrong, and how five tools compare.
By Commently · · 5 min read
What social listening is
Social listening is reading what people say about your brand, your competitors and your category, across social platforms and the web, and using it to decide something. Social media monitoring is the narrower job: finding mentions so someone can reply. Monitoring asks "who mentioned us?". Listening asks "what does this conversation mean for the brand, and what should we do?".
The difference matters when you choose a tool. A monitoring tool is judged by how many mentions it finds. A listening tool is judged by whether its numbers are true enough to act on.
What a brand team should listen to
Mentions of your brand on news sites, X, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, in every language your customers use. Include product names, common misspellings and your campaign hashtags.
The comments under your posts and your creators' posts. This is where people react to what you actually published. Many listening tools never read comments; they read posts that contain your name.
Your competitors, tracked with the same sources and the same rules as your brand, so the comparison is fair. Share of voice comes from here.
What is said in videos. A creator can review your product for two minutes without your name in the title or description. If your tool reads only video titles, that review does not exist for you.
Critical keywords: a short list of words that must never go unnoticed, such as a recall, a lawsuit or your CEO's name next to "scandal". These need alerts, not a monthly report.
Five mistakes that make listening data wrong
Counting mentions that are not about you. A brand that shares its name with a fruit, an airline or a common word, or a hashtag used for something else, inflates its own volume. Relevance has to be checked before a mention is counted.
Measuring tone instead of impact. "Great, my order is late again" is full of positive words and is a complaint. "Way better than [rival]" is good for you and bad for the rival. Sentiment should answer one question: is this good or bad for the brand?
Ignoring comments. A post is one opinion. The four hundred comments under it are your audience's.
Reading only titles. See the video point above.
Volume without a baseline. Three hundred negative mentions is a crisis for one brand and a quiet Tuesday for another. Compare with your own history, and with competitors over the same period.
How to choose a social listening tool
Ask every vendor the same questions, and ask to see the answers on your own brand:
Which sources are covered, and which are not? Instagram and TikTok coverage varies most between tools.
Does it read comments, or only posts?
How does it decide that a mention is about you?
What does "positive" mean in its sentiment: the tone of the text, or the impact on the brand?
Can your team correct a label, and does the correction survive the next AI run?
Which languages does it read without translating first?
Does it find spoken mentions inside videos?
How is it priced, and can you try it on your own data before you sign?
Five social listening tools brand teams compare
Commently is our product, so read this as a comparison written by one of the vendors. Facts about the other tools come from their own public pages, checked on 2 November 2026; each has a detailed comparison page with sources.
Brandwatch: for research and insights teams that need depth: an archive back to 2008, broadcast and Asia-Pacific networks, custom classifiers. Pricing is custom, after a demo. Commently vs Brandwatch
Meltwater: built for PR and communications: print, broadcast, paywalled news and media relations. Most contracts are annual, with a 12-month minimum. Commently vs Meltwater
Sprout Social: a publishing and engagement suite with listening as a premium add-on. According to Sprout's own help pages, Instagram listening uses hashtag posts and YouTube listening reads video descriptions, without comments. Plans run $79–$399 per seat per month, add-ons extra. Commently vs Sprout Social
Hootsuite: a publishing suite; its advanced listening, Lumen by Talkwalker, sits in the Enterprise plan with very broad coverage (150 million sources, 187 languages). Plans run $99–$399 per user per month. Commently vs Hootsuite
Commently: built for in-house brand, social and influencer teams. Mentions from news, X, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube; every comment under your and your creators' posts; spoken YouTube mentions found from captions; competitors on the same data; sentiment scored for the brand. It does not publish posts and does not cover Facebook, LinkedIn or Reddit today. Set up for your category in a day, then a free pilot. Social listening in Commently
Your first month of social listening
Week 1: write the keyword list: brand, products, misspellings, campaign hashtags, up to five competitors and five to ten critical keywords.
Week 2: read the raw mentions, not the dashboard. Correct the labels that are wrong; that is how you learn whether the tool understands your category.
Week 3: set your baseline: normal daily volume, normal sentiment split, normal share of voice.
Week 4: decide who acts on what. A critical keyword goes to one named person, a product complaint to the product team, a creator's comment section to the influencer manager.
Questions
What is the difference between social listening and social media monitoring?
Monitoring finds mentions so someone can respond to them. Listening reads the whole conversation, including comments, competitors and context, to decide what the brand should do.
Which social listening tool is best for brands?
It depends on the job. For historical research, Brandwatch; for PR and press, Meltwater; for publishing with some listening, Sprout Social or Hootsuite; for a brand team that needs mentions, comments, creators and competitors on one dataset, Commently.
How much does a social listening tool cost?
Published prices range from per-seat plans (Sprout Social, Hootsuite) to custom enterprise contracts (Brandwatch, Meltwater), and listening is often an add-on or a higher tier. Commently does not publish prices and starts every brand with a free pilot.
Access is granted in small batches. We set Commently up for your brands, competitors and category, and a free pilot lets your team judge it on its own data.
Social listening for brands: what to track, and how to choose a tool
A practical guide for in-house brand, social and influencer teams: what social listening should tell you, the mistakes that make the numbers wrong, and how five tools compare.
By Commently · · 5 min read
What social listening is
Social listening is reading what people say about your brand, your competitors and your category, across social platforms and the web, and using it to decide something. Social media monitoring is the narrower job: finding mentions so someone can reply. Monitoring asks "who mentioned us?". Listening asks "what does this conversation mean for the brand, and what should we do?".
The difference matters when you choose a tool. A monitoring tool is judged by how many mentions it finds. A listening tool is judged by whether its numbers are true enough to act on.
What a brand team should listen to
Five mistakes that make listening data wrong
How to choose a social listening tool
Ask every vendor the same questions, and ask to see the answers on your own brand:
Five social listening tools brand teams compare
Commently is our product, so read this as a comparison written by one of the vendors. Facts about the other tools come from their own public pages, checked on 2 November 2026; each has a detailed comparison page with sources.
Your first month of social listening
Questions
See it on your own brand.
Access is granted in small batches. We set Commently up for your brands, competitors and category, and a free pilot lets your team judge it on its own data.
Request access