can someone explain social media listening?

basically tracking what people say about your brand, your competitors or your topic across social platforms, including posts that don't tag you. monitoring is replying to mentions. listening is looking at the patterns over time, like which complaints keep coming up, what people compare you to, how the mood shifts after a launch. tools like brandwatch or sprout do it at scale, but for a small brand searching your name and product terms by hand once a week gets you surprisingly far.