The undisputed leader in social media management
For over a decade, the world’s largest enterprises have trusted Sprinklr Social for its in-depth listening, unmatched channel coverage, enterprise-grade configurability and industry-defining AI.
TikTok social listening: Everything you need to know
TikTok is no longer just a platform for viral dances and challenges — it’s become a crucial tool for businesses looking to understand and engage with their audiences. Companies of all sizes are tapping into this vast, dynamic platform to reach their customers in creative and impactful ways.
But it’s not just about creating content. To truly succeed, businesses need to listen to what’s happening on TikTok. That’s where TikTok social listening comes in. By monitoring trends, conversations and audience feedback in real time, you can make smarter decisions, refine your strategies and create more meaningful connections with your customers.
As the platform continues to grow, understanding the power of TikTok social listening is more important than ever for staying ahead of the curve. In this blog, we’ll explore how TikTok for social listening can give your business the insights needed to drive smarter decisions and stronger connections with your audience.
What is TikTok social listening?
TikTok social listening is the process of monitoring brand mentions, analyzing conversations and gathering data-driven insights on TikTok to understand what content resonates with the audience.
This tool helps businesses cut through the noise and focus on strategies that drive engagement and align with customer expectations. By listening to TikTok conversations, you can gain real-time insights into how users feel about your products or services — insights that can guide content strategies, inform purchasing decisions and keep businesses ahead of trends.
Quick Stat: With users spending an average of 52 minutes daily on the platform, social listening provides critical intelligence to optimize engagement, refine marketing strategies, and improve the customer journey.
Insightful Read: What’s the Difference Between Social Monitoring and Social Listening?
Importance of social listening on TikTok
TikTok social listening helps businesses with actionable insights to enhance their strategies on one of the most dynamic social platforms. Here’s why it’s crucial:
Stay ahead of trends: TikTok trends drive massive customer engagement, making them invaluable for brands aiming to remain relevant. Social listening tools allow brands to identify emerging hashtags, sounds and challenges early and adapt quickly, helping them capture audience attention before competitors.
Increase engagement and visibility: Understanding what resonates with TikTok users helps brands craft content that aligns with user preferences, boosting engagement and visibility. Social listening on TikTok ensures that every piece of content is data-backed, increasing its chances of connecting with the audience.
Create impactful content: Studies show that audiences retain up to 95% of a message provided in video format, compared to only 10% in text. With video being TikTok’s primary format, social listening reveals what type of social media content works best. This enables brands to produce videos that are not only memorable but also strategically designed to drive brand messaging and impact.
How to conduct social listening on TikTok
Before you start using a social listening tool on TikTok or devise a strategy, it's important to outline a clear approach. Here’s how you can do it effectively:
Align social media goals with business outcomes
Start by defining SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-Bound) that align directly with your organization’s broader objectives.
For example, instead of just aiming for more engagement, focus on driving customer acquisition by 20% through TikTok campaigns over the next quarter. Clarity in goals ensures your TikTok strategy contributes to ROI and aligns with your brand’s growth priorities.
Select social listening tools that align with your needs
Efficient social listening on TikTok calls for tools that go beyond surface metrics. Look for platforms that handle large-scale, multilingual data analysis while offering advanced features like AI-driven social media sentiment analysis, competitive benchmarking and trend forecasting.
Sprinklr’s Social Listening platform checks all these boxes, plus it integrates seamlessly with your existing CRM and marketing tools, keeping your team connected and efficient.
Target influential keywords and hashtags
TikTok thrives on trends and staying ahead means identifying the hashtags and keywords that resonate with your audience. For instance, if your brand is focused on eco-conscious products, hashtags like #SustainableLiving or #EcoTok are perfect starting points.
With Sprinklr, you can pinpoint trending keywords, analyze top-performing content and even identify key creators driving the conversation. Use this data to craft content that resonates, boosting your chances of appearing on your target demographic’s For You Page.
Learn More: 7 TikTok Hashtag Strategies for Viral Success
Monitor competitors for actionable insights
Monitoring competitors on TikTok offers actionable insights into their strategies, audience preferences and performance benchmarks. For example, identifying which content types or collaborations are driving their engagement can help you refine your approach. This isn’t just about keeping up — it’s about gaining a competitive edge.
Sprinklr’s Competitive Intelligence platform make it easy to track engagement metrics, audience sentiment and trending topics, giving you the insights needed to refine your own approach.
Integrate metrics with analytics
TikTok metrics includings likes, shares and comments are valuable, but they tell only part of the story. To measure real impact, combine these metrics with enterprise-level analytics.
Sprinklr Insights enables you to connect TikTok insights with KPIs like customer retention, brand equity and even qualified leads, ensuring your social media investments are driving meaningful business outcomes. It collects data from various social media platforms, including TikTok and integrates it into a single platform. This unified approach provides a holistic view of your social media performance — offering detailed metrics and insights, correlating them with broader business KPIs.
The customizable dashboards allow you to track specific KPIs relevant to their goals. For instance, you can set up a dashboard to monitor how TikTok engagement metrics impact customer retention rates over time. Additionally, it uses AI to provide predictive analytics and insights, helping you understand trends and patterns in your social media data. This enables data-driven decisions that improve customer retention and other key metrics.
Bridge TikTok insights with market trends
Listening on TikTok provides a wealth of real-time data about emerging social media trends and customer sentiment. For example, the rise of hashtags like #TechTok signals growing interest in tech-related content.
By integrating TikTok insights with broader market trends, your team can anticipate customer needs, innovate faster and proactively position your brand in new markets.
TikTok social listening best practices
Implementing effective social listening strategies on TikTok is the key to developing a sound TikTok strategy. Here are three key practices to consider:
1. Control what you can influence
TikTok's ever-evolving algorithm is beyond your control, but other impactful factors are within your grasp. Focus on producing high-quality, engaging content with optimized video lengths and compelling voice-overs.
You can use Sprinklr’s Social Listening to identify trends and preferences, then adapt your social media strategy to resonate with your target audience. This data-driven approach ensures maximum reach and relevance.
2. Address negative sentiment proactively
Negative comments on TikTok can spread rapidly, turning isolated incidents into major reputational challenges. For brands with a large audience, it’s critical to stay ahead by keeping a close eye on the tone of conversations. This involves not just identifying negative sentiment but also understanding its context and potential to escalate. Advanced tools like Sprinklr enable real-time sentiment analysis, helping you catch and address concerns before they snowball.
By acknowledging mistakes authentically and outlining corrective measures, you can build trust and minimize backlash. This proactive approach mitigates reputational risks while strengthening your brand’s credibility.
3. Maximize your social listening tool potential
Once you've chosen a social listening tool, focus on using it effectively.
- Prioritize features like hashtag tracking, sentiment analysis and engagement monitoring.
- Use AI-powered insights for trend prediction and audience understanding.
- Train your team to use the tool intuitively and ensure its integration with existing systems to avoid silos and inefficiencies.
For better understanding, check out this complete guide on social listening.
5 examples of TikTok social listening
Seeing successful examples of TikTok social listening can inspire you to refine your strategy. Here are five standout cases where brands used social listening to create significant impact:
1. e.l.f. Cosmetics
e.l.f. Cosmetics has consistently stood out on TikTok by actively listening to their audience and tapping into their desires, enabling them to craft content with lasting impact. This authentic, audience-first approach has not only strengthened its bond with its community but also positioned the brand as a cultural icon on TikTok.
One shining example of this strategy is the #EyesLipsFace challenge. By tapping into trending Gen Z behaviors, crafting a catchy original song and encouraging user-generated content, the campaign inspired over 3 million videos and amassed 4 billion views during its run. BuzzFeed even called it “the most successful piece of TikTok marketing to date.” This fun, consumer-driven approach drove high engagement, with the hashtag surpassing 9.4 billion views.
2. Vita Coco
Vita Coco, a coconut water brand, was seen using social listening to identify recipes featuring berries, ice cubes and pomegranate seeds. These were then recreated using its products. The company had its ad running within 36 hours of the "nature's cereal" trend starting to gain traction on TikTok. The benefit? It doubled the brand’s following on TikTok.
3. Duolingo
Duolingo’s TikTok success stems from its clever use of social listening to tap into viral trends and audios, using its owl mascot, Duo, as a chaotic and beloved character. By turning Duo’s meme status into a relatable personality — twerking on conference tables, sliding down walls to Taylor Swift and playfully engaging with pop culture — the brand has built a strong emotional connection with audiences. Its culturally aware content, like defending LGBTQ+ inclusivity with popular Cardi B sounds, has helped Duolingo build a vibrant, inclusive TikTok community while driving millions of views.
Do you want to tap into that kind of magic? 👆
The solution lies in accurate and timely social listening with a tool like Sprinklr. With its specialized AI and Generative AI, Sprinklr provides in-depth insights faster, offering industry-best accuracy across sentiment, emotions, entity identification and text classification. This can help you tap into viral trends and create culturally relevant content that resonates with your audience.
4. Chipotle
Chipotle uses social listening to identify viral challenges and trends, like funny dance routines and UGC such as the #ChipotleLidFlip, the #GuacDance and the #Boorito. This engagement not only builds community interaction but has also elevated Chipotle’s TikTok presence to over 1.8 million followers and 56 million likes. The brand’s ability to act on insights in real time exemplifies the value of enterprise-grade social listening tools.
Must Read: 7 Trends to Power Your TikTok Marketing Campaigns
5. Pepsi
Pepsi jumped on the #JLoSuperBowlChallenge, using social listening to maximize its relevance during a viral moment. By engaging with the trend strategically, the brand reached an audience of 1.1 million and stayed top-of-mind for weeks. This demonstrates how enterprises can harness viral opportunities to maintain their cultural resonance.
Conclusion
Social listening on TikTok is no longer optional for brands looking to grow — it’s essential. With tons of data coming in every minute, tracking mentions and understanding your audience can be tricky. That’s where social listening tools come in.
Sprinklr makes it easy to stay on top of TikTok trends and engage with your audience. The AI-powered platform is designed to give you real-time insights and help you connect with customers, making it a key tool for growth on TikTok.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, TikTok social listening can be a powerful tool for competitor analysis. By monitoring comments, mentions, hashtags and trends associated with competitors, brands can identify what resonates with their audience, analyze competitor content strategies and even spot gaps in the market to differentiate themselves.
Yes, brands must respect privacy and avoid misuse of data. TikTok protects younger users through private profiles for those under 16 and a “kids-only” mode. Transparency, ethical data use and cultural sensitivity are key when analyzing trends or creating campaigns.
Insights from TikTok social listening — like trending hashtags or audience sentiment — can inform campaigns across platforms, ensuring relevance and cohesion. Social listening tools like Sprinklr help track, analyze and integrate these insights into a unified social media strategy.
