Social Listening: Everything You Need to Know [2025 Guide]
You may have heard the phrase social listening before, but what does it actually mean? At its core, it is the process of monitoring online conversations to understand what people are saying about your brand, products, services, and anything that may be relevant to your business. Wisely used, it will be a game changer in your marketing strategy. According to the 2025 State of Social Listening report by Social Media Today: Sounds interesting? In this post, we’ll discuss everything you need to know. So read on to learn more! What is social listening? Definition Social listening is monitoring online conversations to understand what people say about a brand, product, industry, or topic in real time. It goes beyond counting mentions because it focuses on interpreting context, sentiment, and trends across various digital platforms. In simple words: Social listening = What are people saying? + Why are they saying it? + What should we do about it? Why do you need it? It will help you discover: To listen to conversations, you need a tool that monitors the entire web in real time, including social media, news, blogs, forums, and reviews. Such a tool should track both tagged and untagged mentions and offer advanced analytics. Key elements of social listening in 2025: