Data Sources in Listening | Sprout Bites
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In this Sprout Bites video, you will learn about the available data sources for Social Listening queries in Sprout Social. You will see the difference between connected profiles and public sources, understand the strategic purpose of each network, and learn key considerations — like hashtag requirements and data limitations — to help you build more targeted and relevant listening topics.
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In Social Listening, knowing exactly where to pull data from is key to tracking conversations around the web — whether around your brand, your competitors, or your broader industry. Hi, my name is Sam, and in this Sprout Bites video, I will walk you through the available data sources for your queries. We're going to help you identify the available sources, understand their strategic purpose, and go over important things to consider for each one. When you build a query, your data comes from two main areas: connected profiles and public sources. Connected profiles is where you pull data directly from your owned Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok accounts. You can set your controller to Query Only, which surfaces messages that match your keyword query, or go with All Data to bring in all available messages from those profiles regardless of the keyword. Public sources track the broader conversations happening across the web. Let's run through the lineup. Bluesky captures posts, replies, mentions, and quotes. Facebook captures posts, visitor posts, and comments — and requires that you input the specific pages you want to track, up to 250 per listening topic. Instagram captures organic posts and reels, and for public tracking your queries must include specific hashtags. Reddit provides real-time listening to posts and comments. TikTok brand hashtags: when connected, we automatically subscribe to the top 50 hashtags relevant to your connected business profile — but to guarantee specific hashtags are pulled, I recommend explicitly including them in your query. Tumblr includes articles only; reblogs are not included. Web sources includes blog posts, forum posts, and news articles only. X brings the most information to your queries, tracking posts, replies, mentions, quotes, and reposts — and whenever you click the Preview Topic button in the query builder, the messages are pulled directly from X. Finally, YouTube brings in descriptions of YouTube videos only, not comments. By selecting the sources you need — whether connected profiles, public sources, or a strategic blend of both — you ensure you gather the most targeted data possible. Try adjusting your source mix the next time you build a listening topic to see how much sharper and more relevant your insights become.
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