Build a Weekly Competitor Mention Brief

Competitor monitoring becomes useful when the brief shows what changed this week. A list of every name match creates work without helping a decision.

This workflow searches all supported sources and keeps only new, material records with source URLs.

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

Step 1: Define competitor queries

Create a SocialListeningAPI account and claim the 100 free credits. List each competitor, product, common misspelling, and a few change phrases:

• competitor name launch
• competitor name pricing
• competitor name alternative
• competitor name problem
• competitor product review

Keep plain name searches too. Launch posts do not always use the word launch.

Step 2: Run competitor monitoring searches

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

One phrase across all eight sources costs 15 credits because Facebook post search costs 7 credits, LinkedIn search costs 2 credits, and each other search costs 1. The MCP can run the same searches through Claude or ChatGPT.

Step 3: Store only new records

Use cron, n8n, Make, or Zapier to run approved queries weekly. Store source URL, platform, date, competitor, query, and first-seen time in an external database. Skip URLs seen in earlier runs.

SocialListeningAPI performs each public search. Scheduling, history, and deduplication happen outside the API.

Step 4: Classify material changes

Use an external LLM to suggest labels such as launch, pricing, question, praise, complaint, hiring, or unknown. A person should open the source and decide whether it changes product, sales, or market research.

Do not infer sentiment from the Facebook request. Sentiment is disabled, and a human should review all material claims.

Any Reddit reply also needs a human to read the community rules and approve the response.

Step 5: Write the weekly brief

For each change, include one sentence, its source, date, and practical implication. Add an unknowns section when a claim cannot be verified. Leave routine mentions out.

Conclusion

Send a short brief with five material changes before attempting a full competitor digest. If there were no meaningful changes, say that.

Consistency matters more than volume. Keep the query list, schedule, and inclusion rule stable so each week can be compared with the last.

Continue with Build a Sales Objection Library.

Written by ShashFounder at sociallisteningapi, focused on product and growth