Compare Category Demand Across Platforms

The platform with the most returned posts may still have the weakest discussions for your topic. Compare volume, recency, available engagement, and relevance before choosing where to research.

This social media intelligence workflow produces a directional channel-priority report.

SocialListeningAPI searches public posts on LinkedIn, X, Reddit, Hacker News, TikTok, and YouTube for the phrases you choose and returns normalized records with source URLs.

Step 1: Fix the comparison method

Create a SocialListeningAPI account and claim the 100 free credits. Choose three to five narrow phrases and record:

• Exact query wording
• Sources included
• Run date and time
• Duplicate rule
• Relevance scoring rule
• Sample size for manual review

Use the same phrases on every source.

Step 2: Run the social media intelligence searches

for endpoint in \
  linkedin/search-posts \
  x/search-posts \
  reddit/search-posts \
  hackernews/search-posts \
  tiktok/search-posts \
  youtube/search-posts
do
  curl --get "https://api.sociallisteningapi.com/api/v1/$endpoint" \
    --data-urlencode 'query=customer research API' \
    --header 'x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY'
done

One phrase across six sources costs 7 credits. The API introduction describes the normalized fields and source differences. The MCP can run the comparison from Claude or ChatGPT.

Step 3: Calculate comparable counts

Store platform, query, source URL, date, and available engagement fields in an external system. Remove duplicate URLs and count unique returned records for each platform.

Available engagement fields differ by source. Show missing values instead of treating them as zero. SocialListeningAPI performs search. Counting, sampling, and scoring happen outside the API.

Step 4: Review topic quality

Take the same-sized sample from each platform and rate whether the result matches the task, contains useful detail, and offers a realistic place for deeper research or participation.

If Reddit is included in a participation plan, a human must read each community’s rules and approve any reply.

Step 5: Set the channel priority

Show raw counts, recency, available engagement, sample relevance, and coverage limits. Use the report to choose where to spend manual research time. Do not call returned results total category demand.

Conclusion

Pick the platform with the strongest useful sample, even when another source returned more records.

Repeat the same method later before changing channel priority. Different queries or sample rules create a different comparison.

Continue with Measure Public Search Share of Voice.

Written by ShashFounder at sociallisteningapi, focused on product and growth