Top 10 Social Listening Freelancers to Hire for Improved Insights in 2024

Gaining insights into your customers' needs, interests, and concerns is more important than ever for shaping effective business strategies in our highly connected world. With countless conversations happening across social platforms, tapping into social listening gives you invaluable data to inform your marketing, product development, CX, and more.

Partnering with a skilled social listening pro allows you to monitor branded mentions and industry trends, understand customer sentiment, identify opportunities, and stay agile in meeting audience demands. Their insights empower you to refine messaging, offer relevant solutions, and foster meaningful engagement.

Our top picks for the top social listening freelancers

1. Gabriela O.- Best overall

2. Tom M.- Best for financial insights

3. Alex M.- Best for enhancing engagement through social listening

4. Gary E.- Best for gathering info on consumer insights

5. Matthew S.- Best for discerning interests from consumers

6. Michael M.- Best for connecting with audiences

7. Philip J.- Best for uncovering precise customer needs

8. Cody W.- Best for maximizing campaign relevance through listening

9. Brad J.- Best for transforming insights into strategic content

10. Katia G.- Best for data-driven messaging for SaaS brands

What is a social listening freelancer?

A social listening freelancer is your online ear to the ground. They meticulously track and analyze social media conversations, uncovering valuable insights about your brand, competitors, and industry trends. These digital detectives help businesses make informed decisions, enhance customer engagement, and stay ahead of the curve.

What is social listening?

Social listening is like being a fly on the wall, gathering insights into what people say about your brand on social media. It involves monitoring and analyzing social media platforms to understand customer feedback, sentiment, and emerging trends.

With social listening, you can track mentions of your brand, competitors, industry keywords, and even your CEO's latest interview. It's an excellent way to understand your customers' needs, improve your products or services, and make informed decisions about your digital marketing strategy.

How social listening helps your ROI

Keeping tabs on what people say about your brand and industry provides valuable insights into customer preferences, pain points, and behavior. Monitoring these conversations allows you to optimize marketing efforts and product offerings to meet customer needs better, improving marketing ROI.

Social listening also enables early detection of potential crises, allowing swift action to mitigate reputation damage. Further, identifying and engaging influencers can amplify your brand message to wider audiences. Adding social listening capabilities with a freelance specialist allows more strategic digital marketing and finer content tuning to your audience.

» Let us teach you how to measure your social media marketing ROI.

What does a social listening expert do?

A social listening expert uses sophisticated tools to monitor and analyze online sources to uncover trends, sentiments, and engagement opportunities with your target audience.

Essentially, they help you understand what target audiences are saying about your brand and use those real-time insights to improve reputation, customer experience, and the bottom line. Their capabilities also aid influencer identification, competitor tracking, and marketing strategy. If you want to know what people are saying and use that to grow your business, a social listening focus will help.

Skills top social listening freelancers have

Have you decided to hire a marketing manager to handle your social listening? Since this person's skillset has to be at the confluence between multiple marketing disciplines, general marketing skills are a must. Aside from that, look for someone with the following aptitudes: 

Social media marketing

A social media listening freelancer with skills in social media marketing understands how to apply insights from social media listening to optimize social media marketing campaigns. They can use the information gathered from social listening to target customers with effective campaigns.

This can result in improved engagement, increased followers, and higher ROI for your business. Having skills in social media marketing can complement a social media listening freelancer's work and add more value to their clients.

Communication

Social listening experts should be able to communicate their findings concisely and compellingly. Someone who is available to communicate any emergencies promptly has mastered the art of communicating effectively.

Social media tools

A social media listening freelancer should have a range of tools in their arsenal to effectively monitor and analyze social media conversations. Some essential tools include Hootsuite, Sprout Social, Mention, Brandwatch, and Google Alerts.

These tools allow the freelancer to track brand mentions, monitor social media conversations, and analyze social media data, providing valuable insights to businesses. 

Analytics and insights

Social media managers should have a knack for analyzing data and extracting insights from social media conversations to inform their clients' strategies. At a baseline level, a digital marketing specialist should have Google Analytics knowledge to provide insight and report on key metrics. 

Collaboration

Sometimes, social listening can lead to unexpected findings or challenges, so these listening experts should have a creative and flexible mindset to adapt and find solutions.

Questions to ask a social listening professional

When looking to hire a social listening professional, there are several kinds of questions business owners can ask to help determine if they are the right fit for your business:

• What tools and technologies do you use for social listening?
• Can you provide examples of past clients or projects and the results achieved through social listening?
• How do you handle negative comments or feedback on social media?
• How do you measure the success of a social listening campaign?
• What industry trends have you noticed for our niche?
• Can you give us some social media listening examples from businesses you appreciate? 
• How does social listening help build a social media community? 
• How does social listening help build a loyal community? 
• How do you find who your ideal audience is? 
• What is your favorite social listening tool, and why is it the best? 

By asking these questions, you learn more about your candidate's professional experience and expertise in social listening and their problem-solving and client management approach. This will help you select the best social listening professional for your business.

How to hire a social listening specialist

Not sure how to find the best social listening expert for your business? Here's a hiring process you could use: 

• Post on a job board: Posting on job boards can help find candidates but may be time-consuming and attract an overwhelming volume of applications. Be clear in your posting about the required skills and qualifications to filter for the best fit.
• Post on social media: Posting on your company's social media can leverage your existing audience to find candidates familiar with your brand. Ask followers to share the post to widen the reach.
• Ask your peers: Tapping into your professional and personal networks can efficiently surface candidates vouched for by those you trust. Reach out and ask if anyone can recommend a specialist.

Hire the top freelance social listener through Mayple

You gain an invaluable competitive advantage by using the full breadth of social data through an experienced social listening specialist. Their expertise in sifting through the noise transforms complex information into actionable insights that drive business growth.

A vetted freelance social listener from Mayple will give you the dedicated skills needed to uncover hidden opportunities and empower data-driven decisions. With strategic guidance from a social listening professional, your business can actively listen, engage, and convert today's socially connected consumers.