6 Major Differences between Social Media Monitoring and Social Media Analytics

With everybody talking about social media analytics and social media monitoring, it is easy to get confused between the two. Did you know that the two are very different concepts yet very often (mis)used while referring to the other?

The fact is that social media monitoring and social media analytics, though different, often overlap and sometimes are even interwoven  whenever social analytics are applied. Most social media analytics softwares today, including Shout Analytics are incorporated with social media monitoring capabilities.

Yet, since the two technologies are often misunderstood, we decided to list out the factors that distinguish the two. I hope that this list will clear the ambiguity around social media monitoring and social media analytics, simplify separately their finer details and explain how the two are different from each other.

Social  Media Monitoring	Social Media Analytics
Qualitative in nature	Quantitative in nature.
Only tells what is being said about the brand or product.	Informs in detail how much is being said about      your brand or product.
Assists you best in defining a particular search term related to your brand and then monitor it.	Provides you with a detailed quantitative analysis   of the said term, complete with graphs and reports.
Gives you an account of the positive, negative and neutral sentiments surrounding your brand.	Enumerates how those different sentiments will affect your brand.
Limited to monitoring alone.	Social monitoring is a part and parcel of social media analytics.
Helps brand managers understand a brand’s social standing – explains on which social platform the brand is faring well and on which it is not.	Measures the social standing and even gives critical insights to help intelligent decision making – the quantified analysis provides enough input to direct the next course of action.

In a nut shell, while social media monitoring allows brand managers and leaders of organizations to get a clearer picture of their social media marketing efforts, social media analytics allow them to evaluate their social media efforts, correctly identify problem prone areas and most of all glean valuable insights from the analysis data. 

What do you think are the factors that differentiate social media monitoring from social media analytics? Share your thoughts in the comments below. To know how Shout Analytics can provide