Social Listening
Listening goes a long way in all situations. Be the first to listen and the last to speak. These words of wisdom are timeless and it applies to all types of communication platforms, including social media! The last thing you want is for your company to make assumptions that are way off the mark. Active listening is key to building healthy brand awareness!
Social monitoring and social listening may sound similar and the phrase may be used in conjunction with each other in many instances. However, monitoring and listening are quite different.
Social Monitoring:
Involves tracking and analyzing key social metrics data for trends and measuring success from past campaigns and strategies.
Social Listening:
Focuses on the future by being more active and strategic. Findings from the analysis help shape future strategies and campaigns.
What is Social Listening?
Social listening is a two-step process that begins with information collection via social monitoring. This begins by looking into various metrics. Relevant data is then processed and active strategies are implemented. Actions may be as simple as responding to a customer. Listening looks beyond the metrics alone and focuses on the mood behind social media conversations. Strategies can then be improved and become more relevant to the target audience.
Reasons to start using Social Listening
Engaging with Your Customers
Customers like brands that respond. Period. Take the time to craft thoughtful messages that will bring real value to your audience. Feedback creates brand loyalty and this, in turn, increases customer retention and conversion rates.
Developing Real-Time Strategies
There’s always a reason behind the engagement. Equip yourself with the ability to turn around negative sentiments by listening and actively tweaking your strategies. Find the reasons behind why your recent posts did so well or why your strategies have been tanking. Uncover what your audience likes and dislikes. For example, monitoring and analyzing keywords can shed some light on what your customers care about. Make tactical moves, not only strategic ones.
Learning about your Competitors
Feedback about your own products is great! But, people’s opinions about your competitors are just as important. Learn where your company stands in the marketplace. Are your competitors launching new products or marketing campaigns? Social listening allows you to be on top of the latest information and tweak your plans and responses accordingly.
Finding influencers and advocates that matter
Being aware of the social conversations revolving around your industry allows you to get a sense of who the influencers are. These are the people you want to connect and collaborate with as they can have a lot of influence on how their fans and followers feel about your brand and your competitors!
Building new strategies and content
Create content that your followers actually want and come up with new ideas based on findings from social listening. Stay on top of the game and shift your strategies to fit the current need.
Social Listening Tools
Here is a list of some tools that do the hard work for you. Most of these tools are free but have paid options that offer more capabilities and features.
Google Alerts
Hootsuite
Social Mention
Tweetdeck
Tweetreach
Buzzsumo
And let’s not forget the social sharing websites Quora and Reddit! Sifting through the gold mine discussions on Quora or Reddit can also prove to be extremely helpful. Both are community-powered platforms that provide a great place to find content ideas. There are over 300 million members on Quora and any one of them can ask and answer questions about anything. Reddit currently boasts 330 million monthly active users who share articles, engage in discussions, and upvote or downvote posts. They are also participants of subreddits communities. Subreddits are boards dedicated to certain topics. So listen and listen carefully!
Listening to customers is essential for any brand to maintain its edge in the industry. Your brand is the sum of all the customer conversations. Contact us anytime to talk anything social! We’re always here to listen.