The Social Media Files: We’re Listening

If you’re more than a little paranoid when it comes to social media, perhaps you have the right to be. Seriously, have you ever noticed that mysteriously apt ad strategically placed on your feed promoting just the product you’ve been intending to buy? Or did you ever feel unsettled by the invisible and yet imminent presence of Big Brother? Well, you’re not seeing things. Welcome to the world of social media listening — the place where the data speaks... and brands are all ears.

Social Listening Defined

You may have heard the term social monitoring, and in case you’re wondering whether it’s the same thing, we are bound to say no. You shouldn’t, however, feel down in the mouth expecting to learn another word you will have to employ in your small talk with the biggest players of the industry because social monitoring and social listening go hand in hand — we’ll only show you where to draw the line.

Social monitoring is a real-time activity. Whenever necessary, brands track comments, mentions, and direct interactions, responding to questions, feedback, or complaints. Imagine this: you’ve just been to an eminent restaurant. For some reason, you’ve had a bad experience: you mention it on Twitter, describing the problem in detail, mentioning cold food, a not-sufficiently-courteous waiter, and a number of other things you hated (starting with steel teapots, which burn your fingers like it's a demo version of a medieval torture — and that's coming from experience.) Technically, the brand representative may come across your tweet and reach out to atone and resolve the issue.

Social listening, on the other hand, gathers insights for a long-term strategy, parsing broader online conversations. It's growing a little stale by the lightspeed standards of the modern world, but it's impossible to ignore one of the greatest campaigns of all time — we’re referring to the “Barbie” movie, of course — it’s practically your Exhibit A. When K-pop fans noted that Ryan Gosling’s outfit in the film resembled BTS’s Jimin’s costume, the marketing team capitalized on the discussion and released a video where Gosling addressed Jimin directly. Did it work? Well, considering the fact that we’re still speaking about the marketing endeavors of the movie created in 2023, they obviously did a great job.

The Power of Social Listening

Now that you know where we draw the line between two notions, it’s time to clarify why it is important to listen to your customers — even though they may jokingly refer to you as Big Brother or a 1984 proselyte.

Khoros reports that brands tend to focus on things that are not important to customers, who want to be connected to brands. Besides, the company discovered that 79% want to receive a swift response when contacting a brand. If we delve a little deeper into the statistics, we encounter this gem: 83% of customers claim that they feel more loyal to the brands that address their complaints. As a result, social media — and social monitoring alike — become an integral part of your marketing campaign as you’re literally learning to hear the audience, respond in time, and build connections.

As we previously stated, social media monitoring is a narrower strategy that deals with the unexpected, creating a personalized experience with an authentic human voice, which 75% of consumers prefer to a perfectly crafted brand message. This marketing technique deals with crisis prevention and management when it’s necessary to address customer issues on time. It also helps maintain and/or establish a reputation and cultivate a public image by tackling both criticism and praise; provides immediate customer service — remember, when a customer posts a question or a problem, on average, they expect a reply within a two-hour frame (at least, over half of Twitter users). In certain cases, social media monitoring can help you identify influential customers, track competitor movements, or spot product opportunities, as happened to the durable and impregnable Stanley Cup (which remained unscathed even though the owner’s car burned completely—we'll get to it shortly.) But we might touch upon these topics in a more detailed fashion in further articles.

When it comes to social media listening, we mostly imply the future we want to shape for our brand: we want to better understand our customers, create more relevant content and improve available offers. Of course, you can resort to various tools and categorize gathered data to uncover trends but bare statistics wouldn’t be enough: you’ll have to eventually include sentiment analysis, identify trending discussions, employ competitor analysis, analyze relevant keywords and hashtags, filter the collected data, crawl through Twitter, TikTok, Instagram or blogs, and compile reports for a better understanding of the situation, potential crises, product development, and brand reputation.

Supernatural Abilities of Social Listening

Not to be that bizarre reporter flailing arms in all directions and predicting universal doom... But social media listening can indeed resolve conflicts, adjust your course, and prevent crises before you face backlash for a decision that seemed revolutionary when you made it.

Preventing Crises

PR disasters can be prevented — maybe not all of them, but many (if you have the data and the tools). In this case, social media listening is your knight in shining armor that can detect unusual spikes in negative sentiment before your setback goes viral and full public just the way it happened to Balenciaga in 2022.

The company faced a massive backlash over an ad campaign that might’ve seemed progressive and flashy at the moment the marketing department planned it. In its ads, Balenciaga featured kids holding teddy bears dressed in something not remotely reminding of a bondage-style outfit, more suitable for a kinky party than for an ad of a fashion designer. The outcome is predictable: the controversy spread like wildfire, costing the brand 100,000 Instagram followers, fell out of the Lyst Index’s top 10 brands, and saw a decline in sales.

Had they addressed the problem sooner — for example, tracking online sentiment as it built — they could have responded in a proper fashion at a faster pace, thus avoiding much of the backlash.

Spotting Industry Trends

Consumer behavior doesn’t change overnight: as a rule, such shifts take shape long before the actual change, as they resurface in social discourse more and more often. If brands succeed and seize the moment, correctly interpreting the message, they can release a trend before their competitors. It occurred many times before, but the most recent case would be Levi’s, whose team detected a rising demand for loose-fitting jeans through social media, promptly adjusted their product lineup, and, as a result, saw a 15% increase in sales.

Another such example is the abovementioned Stanley Cup. We've briefly covered the situation, but let us recap: not only did the cup withstand the fire (which is already impressive by itself; I doubt any of my belongings would survive a mere hot clime, let alone a real conflagration), but it still contained ice inside. Sounds like a bold fantasy move, but it wasn’t; the incident became viral, and Stanley’s CEO, responding to the trend, published a video where he offered to buy the woman a new car. Predictably, the audience loved the generous gesture as it felt human, not a calculated PR strategic step. In the end, the company received tons of positive mentions, and users praised Stanley for going beyond expectations and showing genuine care.

Analyze Brand Reputation

Social listening is a powerful tool that can reveal what people feel about your brand — or your campaign individually. Some such campaigns become historical landmarks in the world of marketing, helping future scions and descendants navigate the treacherous minefield of public opinion.

Gillette’s “The Best Men Can Be” campaign caused quite a stir in 2019. It became so popular that it even earned its own page on Wikipedia. In short, the brand launched this bold advertising campaign in January 2019, aiming to challenge toxic masculinity and redefine modern manhood. The ad tackled issues like bullying, sexual harassment, and the #MeToo movement, urging men to hold each other accountable and be better role models. Expectedly, the response was polarizing: some praised the brand for its progressive message and willingness to address tough social issues, while others criticized it as an attack on traditional masculinity (a little predictable, eh?) Social media erupted with heated discussions, and hashtags like #BoycottGillette started trending.

However, Gillette resorted to social listening tools to dig deeper into the conversation. Their analysis revealed:

1. Negative sentiment was coming from a vocal but narrow demographic. Brandwatch reported that the campaign led to a significant increase in online mentions of Gillette, with a 12% rise, reaching 1.4 million mentions over a week. While initial sentiment was predominantly positive, it became more negative over time. On January 10th, before the ad's release, over 85% of mentions were positive; by January 16th, this had decreased to 54.8% negative sentiment. (However, Brandwatch provides an explanation, saying that “negative feelings tend to linger with social users, causing them to post negative mentions longer than their positive counterparts.”)
   

   

2. Kantar observed that positive engagement was significantly stronger among younger consumers and women — key growth segments for the brand. The reaction was more negative among men, with 54% of known commenters being male. Despite this, positivity trended upward over time.
3. The campaign was being widely discussed not just in the U.S. but globally, amplifying brand awareness.
4. Additionally, Morning Consult found that 56% of consumers who used competitors' products indicated they’d be more likely to buy from Gillette after viewing the ad. Additionally, 71% agreed that Gillette "shared their values," and 72% believed the brand was "socially responsible."

Using these insights, Gillette chose to stand by the campaign rather than retreat. They doubled down on purpose-driven messaging in future marketing, reinforcing their new brand direction. While short-term backlash was intense, long-term sentiment analysis showed the campaign succeeded in repositioning the brand with a more progressive identity — and sparked meaningful conversations around masculinity.

Wrapping Up

So what does all this tell us? Social listening isn’t just a marketing tool — it’s a decoder ring for the digital subconscious. While the public says one thing in broad daylight, the real story unfolds in the shadows of sentiment analysis, keyword trends, and platform patterns.

So next time a brand makes a move that seems eerily well-timed or uncannily in tune with the cultural zeitgeist… don’t assume it’s luck.

Assume they’re listening.

And just maybe — watching, too.