What is social listening in simple terms?

Social listening is the process of tracking, analyzing, and interpreting conversations happening online, especially across social media platforms to understand audience sentiments, trends, and brand perception.

Catch the pulse of online conversation.

Boost brand engagement, get competitive insights, and drive higher ROI through deep, real-time social analysis.

Define what to track

Add keywords, hashtags, mentions, or creator handles you want to monitor.

Collect real-time data

Phyllo fetches conversations across platforms like Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and more.

Analyze with built-in AI

Get sentiment, relevance, engagement, and trend scores—automatically.

Visualize the insights

Send data to your dashboard or download as CSV/PDF to power your next campaign.

How social listening works

Social listening follows a clear four-step process to turn online conversations into actionable insights.

Listen across multiple platforms

Track conversations on all major social platforms—Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, X, and more.

Stay updated with real-time data

Get continuously updated, accurate social insights as they happen.

Save up to 80% on integration

Slash development and maintenance costs by using our ready-to-use social listening API.

Built-in AI enhancements

Reduce the cost of integration by up to 80%

Advanced intel on brand & competition

Track mentions of your brand, competitors, hashtags, and keywords across channels using our powerful brand monitoring API.

Check platforms we cover ->

Build Google Analytics for influencer marketing

Drill into social media campaigns with powerful influencer marketing analytics. Track traction, measure campaign performance, and report true ROI in one place.

Custom sentiment analysis, your way

Define the categories that matter to you and get AI-powered sentiment analysis on every post—so you know what users are saying, without the endless scrolling.

Help brands avoid PR disasters

Use brand sentiment tracking to monitor shifts in audience mentions, engagement, and tone—spot risks early and stay ahead of negative press.

Frequently asked questions

1. What is social media listening?

Social media listening is the process of tracking, analyzing, and interpreting online conversations across platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. It helps brands understand what people are saying about their products, competitors, and industry trends. These insights are then used to shape marketing, product, and support strategies.

2. How does social media listening work?

Social listening tools or APIs collect public data from social media platforms, analyze it for sentiment, keywords, mentions, and trends, and provide insights businesses can use for strategic decisions. 

3. What are some examples of social listening?

Examples include monitoring how customers talk about a product launch, analyzing competitor mentions, or identifying rising trends within a niche community online.

4. How is social listening different from social monitoring?

Social monitoring focuses on tracking specific mentions or brand tags, while social listening goes deeper by analyzing sentiment, context, and trends to drive strategic decisions.

5. Why is real-time social listening important?

Real-time insights help brands act quickly on customer feedback, prevent crises, and stay ahead of market trends, especially during product launches or viral moments.

6. What platforms can be tracked using social listening APIs?

Most social listening APIs like Phyllo support platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and LinkedIn, depending on data availability and user consent. 

7. How can businesses use Phyllo’s social listening API?

Businesses can integrate Phyllo’s API to access consent-based creator and audience data, monitor trends, and gather actionable insights from creator-driven platforms.

8. Is social listening suitable for small businesses or only enterprises?

Social listening benefits both. Small businesses can use it to understand local sentiment and niche trends, while enterprises can scale efforts across multiple markets and audiences.