Developed by Breakthrough RESEARCH, this guide will provide social and behavior change (SBC) program implementers, as well as monitoring, evaluation, and research practitioners with information needed to apply social media monitoring and social listening techniques to inform and evaluate campaigns that make use of social media platforms and other internet-based channels, and highlights where additional or external resources, partnerships, or tools may be needed. This guide is one of a series of Compass SBC how-to guides that provide step-by-step instructions on how to perform core SBC tasks.

From formative research through monitoring and evaluation (M&E), these guides cover each step of the SBC process, offer useful hints, and include important resources and references. 

Social media platforms can engage users in multidirectional communication and provide public health programs with a tool to inform and engage diverse audiences on a wide range of public health issues, as well as monitor opinions and behaviors on health topics. Public health campaigns routinely feature social media advertisements,create fan pages, and promote conversations on social media around campaign topics, which makes social listening and social media monitoring useful tools for research and adaptive management of programs. 

 Social media monitoring refers to quantitatively tracking mentions and comments on social media regarding a specific topic, while social listening allows public health campaigns to better understand the context of online interactions by qualitatively tracking and analyzing conversation content.

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