Key points for small businesses:
- Social listening tools help businesses understand customer conversations in real time, discover emerging trends faster, and respond to opportunities and concerns faster. Companies using these tools report higher ROI and are able to make data-driven decisions about marketing, product development, and customer engagement that would take weeks to uncover with other tools. This isn’t just limited to enterprise brands. Even small businesses can start with free tools and simple monitoring strategies.
Companies like Neuro, Unilever, and Crayola have all driven outcomes based on insights gleaned from high-tech analysis of social media conversations.
That’s because artificial intelligence-powered analytics is enabling companies to identify trends and respond to consumer concerns faster and more sensitively than ever before.
Faster response times are what today’s market demands. “As the media cycle accelerates, the problem is that the amount of media is increasing, it’s all fragmented into a million places, and the stories within it move very fast,” said Chris Hackney, chief product officer at Meltwater, which provides social media analytics and other data-driven tools to companies.
He explained that brands need to stay on top of these narratives, as they can provide an opportunity to increase brand engagement with consumers, and because they can spread negative and potentially damaging content.
“AI gives you the tools you need to succeed in that environment, which is especially important on social media where so many conversations happen in real time,” Hackney said.
Determine whether the conversation about your brand is positive, negative, or sarcastic.
He said most of Meltwater’s customers primarily use the company’s tools to detect patterns and the emotions expressed by those patterns. The company’s AI tools also help brands identify key influencers driving specific trends on social media.
“What determines emotions is [online] Conversation has always been a challenge, but AI allows us to account for it more quickly and effectively, allowing us to understand whether a conversation about a brand is positive, negative or sarcastic,” said Hackney.
According to Hootsuite’s 2025 Social Media Trends Report, nearly a quarter (27%) of social media marketing professionals surveyed by Hootsuite said they switch content based on memes and trends. Additionally, the study found that brands that employ social listening tools report higher confidence in their return on investment across all nine social media channels surveyed.
For example, 76% of social media marketers who use Instagram’s social listening tools say they are confident that engagement on the platform is delivering ROI, compared to 63% of social media marketers who don’t use social listening tools.
“The information social listening provides is valuable in two ways,” the Hootsuite report concludes. “It helps your social team provide meaningful insights about your brand, customers, and competitors to the rest of your organization, and allows you to track hard numbers that prove your return on investment.”
[Read more: How Brands Both Big and Small Are Tapping Reddit to Drive Business]
With our old workflow, it could take days to process something that went viral. We needed a solution that could act in real time.
Brittany Mehalick, Crayola Social Media Engagement and Trends Manager
Neuro Chewing Gum: Targeting online gamers with Instagram giveaways and other viral promotions increases sales by 406%
Neuro, a maker of functional chewing gums and mints, uses Meltwater’s social listening tools to analyze market and surface data to inform its go-to-market strategy.
Using AI to analyze audiences based on opportunity, size, and relevance to the energy nutrition category (which refers to consumer products designed to provide energy boosting and nutritional value), Neuro found that online game players were a key target audience. As a result, the brand partnered with 100 Thieves, a company that makes apparel and other products for esports gamers.
The partnership, which included giveaways and other initiatives on Instagram, went viral on social media, generating 4.6 million impressions across 30 social media posts. Neuro received over 1 billion impressions and posted a 406% year-over-year revenue increase.
“We had a theory that a gaming audience was a low-hanging fruit for us, but we wanted to really test it with hard data,” said Jennifer Chan, VP of Commercial and Head of Marketing at Neuro, in the Meltwater case study.
The company said this success reflects the ability of AI to enable data analysis at scale. Enables data analysis that would otherwise take an entire team of analysts weeks or months.
Unilever uses social listening to make Vaseline look cool to Gen Zers
Consumer goods giant Unilever, parent company of brands like Dove, Ax, Hellmann’s, and Vaseline, has begun applying AI tools to its social media listening. In recent months, the company has used the information it collects to create award-winning social media marketing efforts and even launch best-selling new products.
While monitoring social media mentions about the various uses of Vaseline petroleum gel, which consumers were tagging using the #VaselineHacks hashtag, Unilever was able to piggyback on these posts using its own official #VaselineVerified hashtag.
“This campaign disrupted the social landscape and forever changed the way Gen Z views, uses and speaks about society,” the company said in an online post about its latest AI efforts.
The campaign was recognized by winning the Titanium Award at the Cannes International Festival of Creativity.
[Read more: AI Is Revolutionizing Product Returns — And Every Business Can Benefit]
Crayola: Real-time social listening allows brands to jump on new trends 90% faster
Crayola, a maker of crayons and other art supplies and toys, has enhanced its social media listening by partnering with Emplifi, a provider of AI-powered customer experience solutions that include social listening.
Crayola engages with its followers on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and
“With our old workflow, it could take days to process something that was spreading. We needed a solution that could act in real time,” she said.
The company was able to leverage social listening skills as part of its 2025 marketing campaign promoting the return of eight previously discontinued crayons. Dandelion, Blizzard Blue, Magic Mint, Mulberry, Orange Red, Violet Blue, Lemon Yellow, and Raw Umber each had its own unique personality to match the campaign.
The company developed a social listening strategy that responds to mentions of the brand with an image of one of the revived colors and the personality of that color.
“This allowed us to have fun engaging with consumers,” Mehalick says.
Case studies show that Crayola was able to process content 80% faster and detect and respond to emerging trends 90% faster using the Emplifi solution.
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