Pulsar Social Listening Use Case Guide
Use Case guide contents
What can you use Pulsar for? Discover the many ways social listening powers smarter strategy, sharper insights, and stronger connections.
In today’s fragmented digital world, understanding your audience isn’t optional—it’s essential. Social listening has evolved into a core strategic capability, helping brands and organisations uncover cultural and behavioural trends before they reach the mainstream.
Pulsar is more than a monitoring tool. It’s an audience intelligence platform that transforms online conversation into actionable insight—showing you not just what people are saying, but why they’re saying it.
On this page you’ll find the definitive hub of Pulsar’s use cases: practical applications of social listening for audience discovery, content strategy, customer experience, misinformation defence, and real-time event management. Each use case is backed by real-world examples and clear frameworks to show exactly how Pulsar can give your team a competitive edge.
Explore the Use Cases
Brand Tracking
From pit stops to continuous navigation.
Brand health moves at the speed of culture. Pulsar turns audience conversation into always-on brand intelligence—tracking visibility, sentiment, narratives and cultural shifts as they happen.
- Replace lagging surveys with real-time behavioural signals
- Map brand health across the full marketing funnel
- Forecast risks and opportunities early with TRAC, Narratives & CORE
👉 Read the full guide on Brand Tracking
Reputation Intelligence
Press is weather. Reputation is climate.
Pulsar turns always-on conversation into a climate model for trust—showing where pressure builds, which communities drive it, and how to respond before headlines hit.
- Detect weak signals and narrative shifts in real time
- Quantify misinformation adjacency with NewsGuard
- Segment stakeholders and tailor communications by community
👉 Read the full guide on Reputation Intelligence
Influencer Identification & Performance
Turn influence from a gamble into a system.
Follower counts don’t prove fit. Pulsar maps creator audiences, narratives and performance so you can pick partners with real cultural pull — then track ROI across channels.
- Verify audience overlap and behavioural affinity
- Surface trend-setters (not just big reach) with Narratives AI
- Benchmark and optimise partnership performance with CORE
👉 Read the full guide on Influencer Identification & Performance
Campaign Performance
From metrics to meaning.
Impressions and clicks tell you what happened — but not why. Pulsar transforms campaign measurement into cultural intelligence, showing which messages resonate, why they land, and how to optimise in real time.
- See campaign impact across audiences and platforms
- Track cultural resonance, not just engagement rates
- Optimise live with data from TRAC, CORE & Narratives
👉 Read the full guide on Campaign Performance
Crisis Management
Don’t just respond — see it coming.
Crises now ignite in niche corners of the internet, then explode into headlines. Pulsar gives you an early-warning system to detect weak signals, trace how incidents evolve into narratives, and activate the right response for the right audience before momentum builds.
- Monitor niche forums, TikTok, Reddit, and news for early sparks
- Map narrative escalation and the communities amplifying it
- Tailor messages by segment; track impact in real time
👉 Read the full guide on Crisis Management
Competitive Intelligence
See the race before your rivals do.
Markets move fast — competitors, faster. Pulsar turns social listening into a strategic edge, revealing what your rivals are doing, what audiences really think, and where the next big move is coming from. By mapping emotional drivers and cultural shifts, brands can act decisively, not reactively.
- Benchmark against competitors with live, contextual insight
- Spot exploitable weaknesses and unmet audience needs
- Turn signals into strategy with the Listen–Map–Activate framework
👉 Read the full guide on Competitive Intelligence
Real-Time Event Management
Master the moment.
Events unfold online as much as in person. Pulsar equips organisers with real-time intelligence to track sentiment, spot risks, and amplify what works. Whether it’s monitoring festival chatter, safeguarding attendees, or optimising campaigns live, social listening turns events into living laboratories of cultural insight.
👉 Read the full guide on Real-Time Event Management
Tackling Misinformation
Truth be told.
False narratives can spread faster than facts—impacting reputation, share price, and customer trust. Pulsar, in partnership with NewsGuard, helps brands measure exposure, understand cultural anxieties fuelling misinformation, and respond with transparency. It’s proactive defence in an era where misinformation is a business-critical risk.
👉 Read the full guide on Misinformation
Customer Experience (CX)
CX marks the spot.
Price and product matter, but today customer experience is the real differentiator. Pulsar closes the perception gap by capturing what customers really feel in unfiltered conversation. From pre-empting delivery issues to personalising journeys and understanding loyalty drivers, social listening powers experiences that win trust and drive growth.
👉 Read the full guide on Customer Experience
Content Strategy
Signals over noise.
In a saturated digital landscape, the brands that win are the ones who listen first. Pulsar helps marketers transform audience data into content that resonates—whether that’s tapping into viral cultural moments, mapping the complexity of sustainability narratives, or crafting authentic “unhinged” campaigns that feel human.
👉 Read the full guide on Content Strategy
Audience Discovery
Who’s out there?
Audiences aren’t static—they’re fluid, fragmented, and constantly evolving. Pulsar reveals new communities and motivations that traditional demographics miss. From anime fans reviving old songs, to sports audiences shaping food trends, audience discovery with Pulsar goes beyond the “who” to uncover the “why.”
👉 Read the full guide on Audience Discovery
Product Innovation
Design tomorrow’s winning products today.
Consumer trends rise and fade in the blink of an eye. Pulsar helps product teams turn the noise of online conversation into a roadmap for innovation—spotting micro-trends, unmet needs, and shifting behaviours long before they show up in surveys or sales data. With tools like Pulsar TRAC and Narratives, you can validate concepts, refine features, and launch with confidence—keeping your product strategy ahead of the curve.
👉 Read the full guide on Product Innovation
At a Glance: Pulsar Use Cases
| Use Case | What it Solves | Who It’s For | ||
| Brand Tracking | Replaces slow, survey-led brand measurement with real-time cultural signals
|
Brand strategists, CMOs, insights & comms leads, marketing teams | ||
| Reputation Intelligence | Predicting and managing brand trust by mapping long-term narratives, risks and resilience
|
Corporate comms, PR, ESG/CSR, reputation & risk leaders, CMOs | ||
| Influencer Identification & Performance | Finding the right creators and proving ROI with audience-fit, narrative alignment, and real-time tracking
|
Brand & social leads, influencer/partnerships teams, CMOs, agencies | ||
| Campaign Performance | Moving beyond surface metrics to understand why campaigns resonate and how to optimise in real time
|
Marketers, brand strategists, media planners, comms teams | ||
| Crisis Management | Early detection and response to issues before they mainstream; turning reactive firefighting into proactive preparedness
|
Comms, PR, corporate affairs, brand & risk leads | ||
| Competitive Intelligence | Uncovering competitor moves, market shifts, and exploitable gaps in real time
|
Strategy, insights, marketing and comms teams, innovation leads | ||
| Real-Time Event Management | Managing live sentiment, engagement, and risks during events
|
Event organisers, sponsorship managers, comms teams | ||
| Misinformation Tracking | Defending reputation against false narratives and trust erosion
|
PR teams, comms leaders, corporate affairs | ||
| Customer Experience (CX) | Closing the perception gap between what brands think they deliver and what customers actually feel
|
CX leaders, product managers, digital marketers | ||
| Content Strategy | Moving from guesswork to audience-first storytelling
|
Content writers, social media managers, brand strategists | ||
| Audience Discovery | Identifying new communities, passions, and cultural signals before they surface in traditional research
|
Marketers, strategists, insights teams | ||
| Product Innovation | Spotting early trends, unmet needs, and consumer pain points to shape winning products
|
Product managers, R&D teams, innovation leads |
Why Pulsar?
- Audience-first: Move beyond keyword counts into motivations, identities, and cultural signals.
- Cross-platform: Analyse conversations across social, news, forums, and more.
- Narrative intelligence: Surface the stories that shape public opinion with Pulsar Narratives.
- Real-time agility: Adapt campaigns and strategies in the moment.
Strategic impact: Build trust, grow loyalty, and lead with cultural fluency.
Ready to transform your brand with deep audience insight?
Explore the power of Pulsar TRAC, Pulsar CORE and Pulsar Narratives to start uncovering the insights that matter most. Our Pulsar newsletter for more expert guides and industry insights.
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