Can we start by giving you the accolades you deserve for always being so open to learning new stuff? Kudos to you!
You will agree with me that there’s so much going on in the social world that it can get difficult to keep tabs on what’s important. This concept might seem only suitable for big brands with high marketing budgets, but it’s definitely relevant to small businesses. Social Media Listening should be a part of your social media strategy.
What is Social Media Listening?
Social Media Listening involves monitoring online conversations around your brand, competitors, specific keywords or hashtags, and analyzing that information for actionable insights. It is great business practice to respond to queries and comments on all your social media platforms, but imagine how helpful it would be to have access to every relevant conversation related to your industry. While it can be overwhelming to stay on top of every relevant keyword, similar brands and conversations around your industry, there are specific tools specially designed to help you manage everything in one place. First, here’s why you should be listening on social media:
You realize how people feel about your brand
So you just launched a product, have been pushing it out a lot, even run some paid ads and the responses have been okay but what are the trends? What common questions did people ask and how was new product received on different platforms relatively? High engagement rates are great but you want to know the exact sentiments surrounding your brand and what to look out for when designing future campaigns. You can also monitor campaigns run by other brands in your industry, see how your target audience feels about them and get some action points for your brand.
Compare your social media accounts
The conversations around your brand on Facebook can be totally different from what’s being said on Instagram and the best way to build a suitable strategy is to know exactly what people are saying and where they saying it. This would help you build an appropriate content strategy and show what you should be focusing your efforts on.
Find the right keywords and create the content your audience wants.
If you’re not creating the content your audience wants to see, your social media strategy might not be very effective. Social media listening shows you keywords and phrases that people are using when talking about your brand or industry. Now, you know what you should be talking about and how you should say it. You might even find the idea for your next marketing campaign from the conversations going on around certain keywords.
Find out who your competitors are and what people are saying about them.
You really don’t have to follow everything that your competitors are doing but it will definitely be helpful to have access to the conversations in your industry, see how well you’re doing relatively and know what’s working for your competitors. It would also be really helpful to understand what has worked for bigger brands and see what you can adopt to move your brand forward.
Identify the pain points and gaps in your industry.
What’s your target audience complaining about? Maybe these conversations are not directed at you because you’re new in the market but they are definitely going on. Find out what these pain points are and leverage on the opportunities to fill the gaps in your industry. You can even jump in on these conversations and let people know what you have to offer.
Identify influencers and advocates.
If you’re thinking of infusing influencer marketing into your strategy, great idea! But it’s not just about the numbers and engagement, you want to know the influencers that ‘can be bothered about your business.’ Or imagine an influencer randomly tries your product and maybe tweets about it but doesn’t tag you! Oh, please don’t miss that aha moment!
Provide the Best Customer Experience.
Yes, you get to see the comments that your brand name is directly tagged in but what happens when your brand name or handle is not spelt correctly or the loads of Instagram comments you are mentioned in? You don’t want to be that brand not providing top notch customer service! It might just be a case of someone else handling your social media accounts and looking over a message.
Social media listening impacts every aspect of your business, you will gain insights into what customers like about your products and capitalize on this to drive up sales, get great content and marketing ideas based on the trends in your customer’s behaviour and a look at what your competitor is up to can help you stay ahead of the curve.
