Social media has become one of the most powerful digital marketing tools.
Billions of people actively use social media platforms every day, and businesses can monitor this activity to their advantage. But as social media continues to grow, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by the volume of information out there.
So how can you effectively monitor the online conversations about your brand and industry?
Enter ‘social listening’. In this blog post, we’ll discuss social listening and why it’s important.
What is Social Listening?
Social listening is a social media analytic technique that involves tracking conversations surrounding your brand across different platforms.
Rather than only monitoring your brand specifically, social listening analyzes conversations about your market, industry, and competitors. It involves actively listening to how your audience interacts with products or services in your industry. Businesses should even monitor mentions that don’t directly contain their brand name. Social listening helps businesses understand customer opinions, pain points, motivations, and preferences as a way to help formulate marketing strategies.
How Social Listening Works
Social listening is about creating an efficient system for monitoring online conversations.
Certain tools help businesses effectively monitor social media. Tools like Hootsuite, Sprout Social, and BuzzSumo are used to collect data on brand mentions and audience demographics. The data collected from these tools provides valuable insights about customer opinions, engagement, and behavior that can then be used to inform marketing strategies and business decisions.
In addition, social listening monitors for conversations and mentions of relevant keywords, such as brand names, product names, industry topics, and more. Businesses can track, analyze, and respond to what their customers are saying about their brand in real-time. Instant cross-analysis of multiple social media platforms saves valuable time and resources.
The Importance of Social Listening Tools
Social listening is essential for businesses that want to stay ahead of their competition. With the right tools (like the ones we mentioned above), businesses can gauge customer insights and track mentions about their brand. That data can then be used to improve products and services, optimize online customer service, and gain insights into new markets or product categories. Social listening helps businesses stay up-to-date with customer needs, and facilitates better communication with them.
In-depth data helps develop more targeted campaigns and ads. By understanding what customers are actively engaging with, businesses can create or promote tailored products and services that align with customers’ needs. Showing your audience that you recognize and understand their needs builds brand reputation and credibility.
The Benefits of Social Listening
Social listening provides a variety of potential benefits. Businesses can track their audience, gather feedback and reviews, identify influencers, and uncover emerging trends and shifts in the industry. Additionally, social listening helps to understand competition and identify opportunities to stand out. Customer engagement and online conversations enable businesses to respond to customer feedback, enhancing the customer experience.
Monitoring industries as a whole on social media gives businesses a competitive advantage. Brands gain insight into the behavior of their customers, as well as how customers in general interact with products, services, competitors, and relevant industries. This provides a ‘whole picture’ approach, presenting an overview of customers’ conversations, interests, and pain points.
Best Practices for Social Listening
Identifying that your brand should include social listening in their strategy is the first step. The next is making sure it’s done with best practices.
These practices include:
- Establishing clear goals and objectives
- Selecting the right software
- Knowing when and how to respond to online conversations
- Conducting competitor analysis
- Regularly analyzing and reporting on data
By following these best practices, businesses can leverage their social media presence to gather comprehensive data about their industry.
Conclusion
Social listening is an important part of social media marketing. It helps businesses keep track of their brand reputation, get customer feedback, uncover new trends, and stay informed of industry changes. As online conversation continues to grow more complex, investing in social listening is the key to successful digital marketing.
Crafting an effective strategy with social listening in mind can be time consuming. Let Vervocity handle the market research for you, so you can focus on running your business. Our marketing department has experience monitoring a variety of industries, and can make suggestions or create complete strategies that drive results.
Interested in learning more? Contact us online today or give us a call at (217) 222-1451.
