In this Viewpoint, Annie Pettit investigates the validity of sentiment analysis in social media listening research and argues for the necessity of quality guidelines. While long verbatims such as blog posts and editorials contain many points, summarised in one neutral opinion, shorter opinions such as those found on Twitter tend to focus on one specific detail and sentiment. However, focusing on a specific website has its own pitfalls as brand opinions can differ massively depending on data source. Also, while the speed of receiving responses can be beneficial to research it can also bring a lot of spam, which will greatly distort results. These examples demonstrate the need for guidelines in social media listening research, however the most stifling guidelines can prevent any useful, truly observational research at all.