How to Create a Social Listening Report? Template & Example [2025]

Need to create a social listening report? You’ve come exactly to the right place! Let me guide you through this short but highly practical guide on how to build an effective report that delivers real insights instead of just boring data.

• After reading it, you will:
  
  
  • Comprender what a social listening report is
  • Be equipped with social listening report templates
  • Know how to create such a report thanks to a step-by-step process
  • Get inspired by real-life examples of Ferrari and The Witcher brands

What is a social listening report?

Social listening report is a comprehensive document that compiles, interprets, and summarizes online conversations about a brand, product, service, industry, or topic.

It supports marketing, PR, customer support, and product teams by providing actionable insights based on real-time online feedback and conversations.

Such a report usually includes both quantitative data (like the reach and volume of brand mentions) and qualitative insights (like sentiment analysis or brand health), gathered from a variety of data sources, such as:

• Plataformas de medios sociales
• News sites and blogs
• Foros
• Plataformas de revisión
• Video platforms and podcasts.

Social listening report template

Okay, you know what the heck a social listening report is. 

Before we move to creating one from scratch, let me show you three social listening report examples. I did them all with Brand24.

What’s that?

Brand24 is an AI-powered social listening tool that allows you to track & analyze brand mentions and generate & share comprehensive reports.

The tool accesses multiple data sources, including:

• Social media channels: Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter), TikTok, LinkedIn, Bluesky, Telegram, and Twitch
• News sites, blogs, forums, video platforms, podcasts, and other websites
• Boletines y sitios de reseñas.

With a few clicks, Brand24 enables you to generate a ready-to-use social listening report, complete with key metrics, sentiment breakdowns, trending topics, actionable insights, and more.

Click and download social listening report templates:

⭐ Social Listening Report Example

⭐ Social Listening PDF Report

⭐ Social Listening Competitor Comparison Report

How to create a social listening report? 6 steps

01 Elija sus objetivos

The very first step of organizing chaotic social listening data into a well-organized report is defining your primary goal(s).

A clear objective works like setting a final destination on Google Maps – it guides the entire trip, keeps you focused on what’s relevanty minimizes the risk of not sticking to the main point.

Otherwise, it will become an overwhelming collection of random stats and quotes that no one understands or cares about – time-wasting!

Besides, goals make you remember to include only these insights that are important to your report’s target audience. 

Because the content and depth of the report vary depending on who you’re creating it for.

A CEO may expect a bird’s eye view summary, while stakeholders from the customer service team would more likely be interested in details about recurring complaints.

The most common social listening report goals are:

• Reputación de marca control – to track how the brand is perceived online
• Campaign performance evaluation – to check how well your latest marketing efforts resonated with the audience and guide your future campaigns
• Industry trends tracking – to spot emerging topics and shifts in customer preferences
• Análisis de la opinión de los clientes – to identify frequent problems, requests, and customer sentiment trends. Besides, la escucha social puede ayudarle a encontrar clientes potenciales.
• Evaluación comparativa de la competencia– to compare brand visibility, sentiment, and engagement with other brands in your industry
• Gestión de crisis – to discover potential issues early and respond to negative sentiment before it escalates.

02 Elegir las métricas clave 

Selecting key performance metrics depends on the chosen primary goals and is a logical second step to compile an effective social listening report.

If a goal is your final destination, key metrics are like road signs showing whether you’re on the right track. 

They help you measure progress, spot potential wrong ways, and ensure your analysis stays aligned with the report’s purpose.

But no worries! There are universal metrics that fit all social listening reports:

• Análisis del sentimiento – the ratio of positive, neutral, and negative brand mentions
• Puntuación de presencia – the indicator presenting your notoriedad de marca and popularity at the given time
• Volumen y alcance de las menciones – tells you how impactful and engaging your content is
• Parte de voz – presents your visibilidad de la marca in relation to your competitors/industry
• Equivalencia del valor publicitario (AVE) – estimates the amount of money you would have spent on paid ads to achieve the same results.

For more details about social listening metrics, I strongly encourage you to read our article: What is AI social listening?

03 Present insights, not just data

If you want to create an impactful report, it must tell a clear story. In other words, your report must provide valuable insights rather than raw data.

Don’t just list numbers – explain what they mean, why they matter, and what actions should follow. 

Highlight key patterns, unexpected changes, and potential risks or opportunities. 

This way, your audience won’t have to search for meaning – you’ll serve it directly, making the report useful, engaging, and easy to navigate.

And – speaking about the audience – remember that the content and depth of your report must be tailored to its recipients.

Now, let me show you how to turn raw data into deeper insights with a quick example.

On June 3rd, the gaming industry was thrilled by an exciting technical demo of The Witcher 4 – one of the most anticipated games in the world.

The event generated over 15,000 brand mentions, reaching nearly 170 million people. 25% of those mentions were purely positive, while 6% expressed negative sentiment only. The rest was neutral.

Okay, enough data. Let’s dig a bit deeper to uncover insights.

To make it easier, I’ll use my favorite Brand24 feature – Inteligencia Artificial.

In short, it’s an AI-powered report presenting the most essential social listening insights, recommendations, and trends.

So, according to AI Insights for The Witcher 4:

• The tech demo was hugely praised for its amazing graphics and open-world potential. It was the most significant contributor to the positive sentiment increase (from 10% to 28%).
• The most serious concern about The Witcher 4 is whether the game developer (CD Projekt Red) can deliver on the promise of the tech demo due to the troubled launch of its previous game (Cyberpunk 2077)
• The gaming community is also slightly worried about the hardware requirements, especially on PCs, as many fear that the game may demand high-end equipment that not all players can afford.

By surfacing such insights, your report is much more than a summary of what people are saying. It highlights what really matters to your audience.

And that’s another level of quality and impact!

04 Compare data with rivals or past performance

From their nature, detailed social listening reports need reference points.

Significa que you have to have context to compare your performance with.

Otherwise, how would you know if you’re heading in the right direction or not? 

Your brand doesn’t exist in a vacuum, just like your social listening report.

Basically, there are two ways you can compare your brand performance:

• With your market rivals – to have a reference to competitive brands within your industry or niche
• With your past performance – to understand how your brand’s online presence, sentiment, and engagement evolve over time, spot patterns, or detect potential warning signs early.

For example, I benchmarked three luxury sports car brands – Ferrari, Lamborghini, and Aston Martin. 

The Brand24’s projects comparison table presents a set of 10 essential social listening metrics that directly show who’s ruling in the industry. 

At least when we discuss visibility, reputation, and overall social listening strategy, the winner is obvious – Ferrari. 

However, the situation changes when we compare the brand’s current rendimiento en línea with a past period. 

What does it tell us?

Overall, Ferrari outperforms its market rivals in most social listening categories. However, its performance has strongly declined compared to the previous period.

A conclusion?

Ferrari remains the leader, but the drop in performance may signal the need for fresh social media efforts or reputation management to maintain its position.

That example shows why data comparison should be another thing to include in a social listening report.

05 Include plans and recommendations

A goal guides your report. Metrics concretize your measurements. Insights describe the existing reality. 

Comparisons give you reference points. So far, so good.

But there is one more layer to add to your report to make it impactful – plans and recommendations.

Let’s make it clear – if your report doesn’t explain what to do next, it’s just a nice summary.

Incluido plans and recommendations turns it into a real decision-making tool.

They connect the dots between what happened and what should happen. Each insight you present should lead to at least one clear action:

• If negative sentiment grows — suggest addressing customer concerns through improved communication or product upgrades
• If engagement drops — recommend refreshing your content strategy or exploring new platforms.
• If competitor visibility rises — propose analyzing their recent activities to get inspired for future campaigns.

Here, again, I encourage you to use the power of Brand24 AI Insights.

Next to valuable insights and trends, the feature shares personalized recommendations for your marketing strategy based on your brand mentions.

For example, in the case of Ferrari, AI Insights recommends:

• Create more engaging content for the Ferrari 296 Speciale and 12 Cilindri Spider models
• Address the concerns about Ferrari’s Formula 1 performance and create more content about technical aspects (as it receives a lot of positive reception)
• Boost engagement around automotive events like the Hillsborough Concours

Concrete!

06 Remember about data visualizations

Your social listening report’s content is ready. Now, it’s time to make it visually appealing and easy to digest.

Data visualizations turn complex numbers into clear, understandable graphics that help your audience grasp insights in a blink of an eye. 

Well-designed charts, graphs, and tables guide the reader’s attention to the most important takeaways without overwhelming them with raw data.

Por ejemplo:

• Utilice pie charts to showcase sentiment distribution.
• Solicitar line graphs to present trends over time (mentions volume, reach, engagement).
• Implementar gráficos de barras for comparing brand performance or share of voice.
• Cree word clouds to visualize the most frequently used keywords or análisis de hashtags.

The right visualizations make your report not only more professional but also far more convincing. Especially for busy decision-makers who need to understand the key insights quickly.

With Brand24, many of these visual elements are generated automatically, so you don’t have to create them manually. 

You can download the ready report or – if you have your own template – take screenshots from the Brand24 dashboard.

Conclusión

Social listening reports help you organize chaotic online conversations into powerful business tools. They combine numbers with real meaning, so you know what’s going on with your brand. 

The whole process is simple and logical. 

En primer lugar, debe set a clear goal that will keep you focused and prevent you from wasting time on random data. 

Next, choose the right metrics. They’ll show whether you’re on track and what needs attention.

Remember, though, to compare your data with competitors or past results, which gives you valuable context. 

All that to discover insights, turning raw data into stories your team, CEO, or stakeholder can act on.

Also, remember to include clear recommendations. They can transform your report from a simple description into a document that makes a real impact. 

At the end, remember that AI-powered tools like Brand24 make the whole process much easier by collecting data, analyzing it, and generating ready reports.

Reflexiones finales:

• Always keep in mind who you’ll present your report to when deciding on its content and complexity.
• A análisis de opiniones, Presence Score, volume of mentions, share of voice, and Advertising Value Equivalency are universal metrics you can apply to any type of social listening report.
• Una imagen vale más que mil palabras. So, instead of going too wordy, use visuals.
• Herramientas de escucha social like Brand24 can save you a lot of time due to their automatic reports, AI-powered insights and recommendations, as well as comparison features.
• Good reports lead to better decisions, not just better charts and shorter meetings. It’s essential both for B2C and Escucha social B2B efforts!

Iniciar una prueba gratuita de 14 días de Brand24 and create an amazing social listening report in minutes!