In August 2025, after winning his US Open match, tennis player Kamil Majchrzak tried to gift his Asics cap to a young fan. Instead, a nearby spectator snagged it from the kid’s hand. This awkward scene quickly became viral. After the situation, Majchrzak posted the situation on his Instagram profile, tagging Asics and asking the internet to help him find the boy.
Within hours, the story spread widely, and Asics recorded a 215% increase in Instagram reach. This real-life example shows how a single unexpected mention can boost brand awareness. And why social listening on Instagram is more important than ever.
- What is Instagram social listening?
Instagram social listening means tracking and analyzing online conversations, mentions, and hashtags on the platform to gain insights into audience sentiment, latest industry trends, and overall brand perception. - Why is it important for brands?
Instagram listening allows brands to improve customer service, develop products, optimize communication & marketing efforts, and analyze competitors. - How to quickly start social listening on Instagram?
The fastest way to start Instagram social listening is to implement a relevant tool. With just a few keywords and filters, you can set up your first project and start collecting insights.
What is Instagram social listening?
Instagram social listening is a process of tracking and analyzing conversations happening on Instagram to understand what people are saying about a brand, its audience, competitors, and the industry it operates in.
It involves monitoring tagged and untagged mentions, hashtags, and other keywords to understand real audience sentiment, identify trends, discover patterns, and find opportunities to grow on the platform.
Brands that use Instagram social listening can improve marketing efforts, increase customer satisfaction, and gain a competitive edge by staying closer to what their audience really thinks and feels.
Start listening to Instagram conversations right now!
Importance of Instagram mentions
Instagram mentions are one of the most important elements of Instagram listening.
Technically, Instagram mentions are keywords you want to track or analyze. It can be a brand name (“Asics”), a hashtag (“#asicsfrontrunner”), or a niche-related phrase (“running shoes”).
They can be tagged with “@” (“Just finished first 5-mile run in my new @Asics Magic Speed 4!”) and untagged (“My new Asics suck!”).
Further read: What are and how to track Instagram mentions?
Here is why mentions are so important in Instagram social listening:
Identify the conversations happening around your brand.
Every Instagram mention (both tagged and untagged) signals that your brand is part of the conversation.
Tracking them enables you to uncover where and how people discuss your brand – even if they don’t tag you (thus, don’t notify you) directly.
Provide content ideas
Instagram social listening can guide brands in creating content that resonates with their audience.
By analyzing relevant mentions, you can see what topics excite your community, what language they use, and which niche trends get momentum.
Reveal sentiment from the context
Because Instagram mentions nearly always appear in context, they’re a natural way to discover sentiment. They come together with words, emojis, or sentences that reveal how the user feels.
A simple “🆕 Asics 😍” carries a completely different message than “Asics? Never again”.
Boost your traditional and AI search visibility
According to Ahrefs’ 2025 study, branded web mentions – including those from social media platforms like Instagram – have the strongest correlation with brand visibility in AI Overviews.
In other words, the more brand mentions you have, the higher your chance of appearing in AI-powered search results.
Mentions don’t just improve awareness on Instagram – they directly support your overall SEO and AI discoverability strategy.
Further read: What brand mentions actually do for SEO?
Business benefits of Instagram social listening
Instagram’s social listening has a tangible business impact by providing insights that can help make smarter decisions in marketing, customer service, and product development.
The four most important business benefits of an Instagram listening strategy are:
Better customer service
Monitoring Instagram mentions allows you to understand what customers praise and what their pain points are.
It’s especially important for untagged mentions.
According to a report by Palowise, companies adopting a social listening strategy enjoy a 17% higher customer sentiment than their competitors.
Competitive analysis
Social media listening – including the one focused on Instagram only – is an amazing way to discover your competitors’ content strategy, advantages, and failures.
You can use it to optimize your Instagram presence and efforts.
Further read: Instagram competitor analysis
Product development
Instagram conversations can provide valuable insights into your product’s reception.
By analyzing recurring issues, feature requests, and other indirect customer feedback, you can generate ideas for upgrading your products and services.
Marketing campaigns optimization
Instagram social listening reveals your audience’s opinions, needs, and preferences. And that’s a goldmine of first-hand data for optimizing your marketing strategy!
Business areaSocial listening impactExampleCustomer serviceInsights into non-direct customer feedback“My new Asics are finally here after a 2-week delivery” – a signal for improvement.CompetitorsSpotting industry trends and growth opportunities“Nike’s new trail running line is amazing!” – an opportunity to fill the new niche.ProductDiscovering recurring issues and development ideas“If you’ve wide feet, I wouldn’t recommend Asics Superblast” – an inspiration for wider-fit modelsMarketingUncovering the target audience’s needs and preferences“Looking for eco-friendly running shoes” – a trigger to promote sustainable product lines.
Instagram monitoring vs. Instagram social listening
Instagram social listening is often confused with Instagram monitoring. While initially these two approaches look similar, they serve different purposes.
Instagram monitoring is like a thermometer. It’s a tool to check your body temperature.
Instagram social listening is like a diagnosis. It interprets the data, finds causes, and guides future efforts.
Instagram monitoringInstagram social listeningCollecting data (what people say on the platform)Analyzing data (why they say what they say and what it really means)Immediate responses to mentions, messages, and feedbackGaining insights to guide business decisionsShort-term, real-life reactionsLong-term strategy, tracking industry trends
Try Brand24 – the best Instagram social listening tool!
How to implement an Instagram social listening strategy? [step-by-step guide]
01 Check what you can monitor on Instagram
Instagram social listening generally requires using relevant tools.
However, bear in mind that these tools have limitations resulting from the platform’s policy.
What do I mean?
Well, even the best social listening software cannot monitor Instagram Stories and private accounts. That’s impossible because Instagram prohibits this data.
Therefore, remember that – no matter what marketers and sellers try to tell you – social listening tools can only track and analyze data related to:
- Instagram posts from public profiles
- Reels
- Hashtags
- Engagement metrics (such as likes and comments).
02 Choose the right Instagram social listening tool
Now that you understand Instagram social listening software’s universal limitations, it’s time to choose the right tool.
There are dozens of different solutions in the market. Finding the right one can take you a while.
To make your choice easier, I picked three social listening tools that do an amazing job for Instagram monitoring:
ToolKey FeaturesInstagram IntegrationBest For Brand24Real-time monitoring across social media platforms, websites, blogs, forums, review platforms, etc.;
Sentiment analysis
AI-powered features, like Event Detector, Brand Assistant, AI Insights, Topic Analysis, etc.;
Influencer discovery and segmentation;
Geo-analysisFully supports Instagram mentions and hashtagsLarge teams, agencies, and enterprises Mention.comReal-time monitoring across social media platforms;
Sentiment analysis;
Influencer identification;
Team collaborationSupports Instagram mentions and hashtags, excluding commentsSmall-to-medium teams and agenciesSprout SocialReal-time monitoring across social media, blogs, and forums;
AI-powered insights and trends;
Influencer monitoring;
Social media managementFully supports Instagram mentions and hashtagsSmall-to-medium teams and agencies looking for social media listening & management
Further read: The 10 best Instagram monitoring tools to use
03 Set up your listening project
The process of setting up your social listening project is pretty similar, no matter which tool you pick. I’ll show you it quickly with the example of Brand24:
Choose the right keywords
Type in a keyword or keywords that will be tracked and analyzed. Use your brand name, a competitor name, your products or services, hashtags, keywords relevant to your industry, and so on.
Connect your project with Instagram
Usually, to get even more accurate analysis, you should add a direct link to your brand’s Instagram profile.
Filter mentions and results
Initially, the mentions tab may look like an overwhelming mess. To clean the things up, you should apply filters.
My recommendation: at the beginning, use the basic filters, such as sources (Instagram only), date range, language (i.e., English only), and author (to exclude your own posts).
Order the results by popularity to see which Instagram accounts drive the most visibility to your brand.
Set alerts
One of the key benefits of using social listening tools is that they can send you instant notifications and reports. That’s super useful, especially when there’s a sudden spike in mentions that might singal a viral moment or a crisis.
No matter which tool you use, setting alerts is highly customizable. You can choose the rules that trigger in-app and email notifications, as well as the frequency of standard reports.
Set up your first Instagram social listening project within a minute!
04 Analyze the data
After implementing all the settings, it’s time for an analysis!
There are numerous metrics, features, and methods you can use. That’s why I’ll show you the three most universal tactics to get Instagram social listening insights.
Sentiment analysis
Instagram sentiment analysis is a natural language processing-based technique for discovering people’s real feelings behind their online content.
It allows you to quickly understand whether Instagram users discuss your brand in a positive, negative, or neutral way. As a result, you can spot what makes your audience happy and what frustrates them.
Such an insight is priceless for managing conversations, addressing concerns before they escalate, and improving your products or services.
Sentiment trends over time show whether your brand reputation is moving in the right direction or quite the opposite.
Influencer analysis
Instagram is full of creators who shape public opinions.
Social listening tools can help you identify which accounts mention your brand most often and generate the biggest exposure.
Such knowledge can help you start data-driven influencer marketing campaigns that actually deliver results.
Instead of guessing who to partner with, you can focus on creators who already show interest in your brand or niche. It leads to a higher authenticity, stronger engagement, and better ROI.
💡 Pro tip: Cooperate with nano- and micro-influencers
According to the Social Cat’s Influencer Marketing Report, nano-influencers (1,000 – 10,000 followers) and micro-influencers (10,000 – 50,000 followers) enjoy much higher engagement rates than larger accounts (accordingly, 2.71% and 1.81%).
Besides, such creators have much lower financial expectations and are way easier to reach.
In practice, you can find them by applying the Influence score filter (1 – 7).
Topic analysis
Instagram mentions are rarely isolated. They usually connect to broader trends and discussions.
Topic analysis helps you understand what people are really talking about when they mention your brand, products, or competitors.
Social listening tools like Brand24 can recognize recurring topics and cluster them.
Such knowledge allows you to:
- Identify content gaps
- Adjust campaigns to resonate with what your audience already cares about
- Spot emerging problems
Start listening to Instagram conversations right now!
Advanced Instagram social listening techniques and tips
If you’re already confident with the basics of Instagram listening, here are some more advanced tactics to maximize the value of your data:
Boolean search
Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) let you filter out social media conversations to capture only the most relevant mentions.
By combining them, you can exclude noise and focus on particular aspects.
AI Events Detector
The Brand24 toolkit includes a feature that identifies anomalies within your Instagram conversations.
In short, whenever an unexpected event happens (i.e., a sudden spike in mentions), you can discover it by clicking the exclamation mark on the mentions chart.
Integrations
Connecting your social listening tool with platforms like Slack, Microsoft Teams, or CRM systems ensures insights flow directly to the right teams. This supports collaboration and ensures important mentions are never missed.
AI Brand Assistant
An AI-powered Brand Assistant interprets the data for you, turning raw mentions into clear, actionable insights.
Think of it like a ChatGPT but extra-powered with internal data that a regular ChatGPT doesn’t have.
It saves time by highlighting trends, suggesting responses, and even recommending campaign optimizations.
Shareable reporting
Automated, customizable reports let you easily share results with stakeholders or clients. This keeps everyone updated with brand health, campaign performance, and audience sentiment without extra manual work.
Further read: Social listening examples from inspiring brands (feat. GoPro, Ryanair, Samsung, and more!)
Conclusion
Instagram social listening is no longer a nice-to-have. It’s a core part of brand strategy in 2025.
Tracking mentions helps brands uncover hidden conversations and spot both risks and opportunities early.
These insights fuel better customer service, more accurate marketing campaigns, and faster product improvements. Mentions can also improve your SEO and AI discoverability, making them vital beyond the platform itself.
Tools like Brand24 simplify the process by combining real-time monitoring with AI-driven analysis. Sentiment, influencer, and topic analysis are tactics that open the door to data-driven partnerships and trend discovery.
If you mix them with more advanced features, like Boolean search, artificial intelligence, and automated reporting, you’ll use the full potential of your Instagram presence.
Final thoughts:
- Among the many Instagram social listening tools, consider Brand24, Mention.com, and Sprout Social. These tools combine real-time monitoring with sentiment analysis and clear reporting.
- While Instagram monitoring is a short-term process of collecting data and immediate responses to mentions, social listening works on a deeper level by analyzing patterns and guiding long-term brand strategy.
- Without social listening in 2025, brands risk missing early signs of crises, missing valuable customer insights, and losing to competitors who act faster on real-time conversations.
Start a Brand24 14-day free trial and listen to all the conversations about your brand on Instagram!
