Social Media Monitoring 101: What Government Affairs Teams Need to Know

Just a few years ago, policy professionals could get by with a handful of keyword searches on a few familiar social media platforms. Now, that playbook is obsolete.

With new sites like Truth Social and Bluesky vying for attention — and the transformation of Twitter into X fueling deeper fragmentation and polarization — tracking stakeholder conversations has become far more complicated. 

Clearly, staying on top of social media in 2025 calls for sophisticated solutions. 

“The key piece to a social media monitoring tool is getting comprehensive data,” says Natalia González, account director at the Beekeeper group, a consultancy that specializes in federal and state advocacy campaigns. “You want to know that it’s covering where your audience is.”

Why it Matters

The lion’s share of today’s advocacy work occurs online, says González, who coordinates digital projects for Beekeeper’s clients. “Most advocate acquisitions, advocate letters, and calls to action are happening on social platforms — more so than at an in-person state level, which is why I think these tools are just more important now.”

According to Danielle Leach, a consultant who works with policy teams in non-profits, social media monitoring is essential for modern government relations, especially as more lawmakers and executives embrace niche networks like Bluesky and Truth Social. “It is a window into what stakeholders feel about issues, policy, or legislation,” she says. “It can also flag potential opportunities for policy solutions.”

Using monitoring tools, “you can capture insights earlier than traditional media and identify issues, tone, and risks to your organization as they emerge,” says Leach.

Monitoring can also help you keep pace with rapid legislative shifts. “Policies can change quickly, and the earliest signals often surface long before a bill is introduced,” says Josh Resnik, CEO and president of FiscalNote. 

Here are three steps for harnessing the power of social media monitoring.

1.      Understand the Terms

Social media monitoring is part of an organization’s broader media monitoring strategy. However, the lines between traditional media, online forums, and social media are not as clear as they once were, with the latter playing an increasingly important role in shaping public narratives. “Social media used to be a tool where you put your organization’s statement out, but now it’s more like the space where the conversation is happening,” González explains.    

“Media monitoring is tracking mentions of your brand, keywords, competitors, and industry across various media channels,” says Allegra Tasaki, a marketing and communications professional who has worked at associations for more than 30 years. “I see this as primarily reactive — what is being said.”

Social listening, on the other hand, is a related but distinct process. “(This is) analyzing conversations and trends on social media to understand sentiment, identify emerging topics, and discover customer insights,” Tasaki says. “I think this is more proactive — why it’s being said and what to do about it.”

While determining the right mix of reactive and proactive approaches depends on your strategy, savvy government affairs teams will integrate both to be effective.

2.      Develop a Strategy

Even the most advanced tracking technology isn’t helpful if you don’t have a solid strategy in place. Since responsibility for social media cuts across organizational departments, be sure to partner with colleagues in communications, marketing, and IT/digital media.

“That's the goal, that everybody’s talking together,” says González, so “these social media monitoring tools are part of their briefing, or their weekly huddle, so they know what they need to react to.”

In addition to cultivating a shared understanding of your goals, metrics, and core messaging, you’ll want to hash out roles for reporting on what you measure and respond to.

“Not every mention or negative feedback requires a response,” says Leach. “Having a strong policy agenda and comms strategy will always be the north star of responding to any social media insights.”

Staffing and resource realities matter too. Strategy “cannot happen in a vacuum and must align with the organization’s capacity to be proactive versus reactive,” says Leach, “especially for advocacy organizations who may have limited staff.”  

3. Translate Data into Action

Once you achieve organizational alignment, it becomes possible to leverage monitoring tools strategically. A few examples of how you can do this include:

• Understanding “share of voice.”  In other words, “how are you sharing that social media space with opponents?” González says. “Are we in the right position to be a thought leader on this issue?”
• Refining talking points and policy messaging on ads, organic social, email, and other outreach. This requires going beyond the traditional positive/negative/neutral framework for characterizing sentiment to understand more nuanced tones like sarcasm, González says.
• Identifying new allies and relaying social intelligence to existing ones. “Social media monitoring will never replace traditional relationship-building,” Leach says. But “it is a helpful and efficient way to identify potential allies and opportunities for education.”
• Paying close attention to knowledge gaps. This “is super helpful in terms of figuring out what type of policy materials we need if there’s misinformation about something,” Gonzalez says.
• Gleaning 24/7 feedback to facilitate crisis management and immediate follow-up through searchable monitoring with real-time alerts.

A Powerful Solution

PolicyNote integrates social media monitoring into existing policy workflows. The tool allows government affairs professionals to place the insights they glean directly into stakeholder reports, track mentions of their organization, and gauge sentiment on legislation.

What’s more, its social media listening capability detects early signals by monitoring real-time posts from lawmakers and executives and surfacing key mentions and sentiment from a variety of platforms, including X, Truth Social, and Bluesky, as well as CQ News. And its AI assistant allows you to tailor its settings to your strategy in a few clicks.

Learn how PolicyNote can power your government affairs strategy today.