Ever wondered what people think or are saying about your brand? Thanks to social listening, it’s now possible to track every mention of your brand! So, what is social listening, and how does it work?
In simple terms, social listening involves tracking conversations related to your brand. From these conversations, you will get access to information that can help you build your brand better.
It’s safe to say every business owner should know the importance of social media marketing. However, do you know you also need to have a social listening strategy to improve your marketing efforts? This guide goes through what social listening is and some practical strategies to give you an edge over your competitors.
What is Social Listening in Marketing?
A lot of conversations are happening online, primarily through social media. People discuss news, sports, celebrities, brands, and many other topics. How do you monitor what people say about your brand, business, and products? By listening!
Social listening is an activity that involves monitoring your social media channels to find conversations about your brand and products/services. In other words, you track mentions of your brand across different platforms. Over time, the data you collect through social listening can help improve your brand and customer service.
Meanwhile, social listening doesn’t have to be about tracking your brand only. Business owners now track the mentions of their competitors in the industry for added advantage.
There are three types of social listening techniques:
- Listening to your customers and potential customers
- Monitoring your competitors
- Tracking industry trends
At the end of a great social listening activity, you should be able to understand:
- What customers are saying about you and your brand.
- The perception other audiences and potential customers have about your brand.
- The performance of competitors in your industry.
- Current trends and news in your industry.
How Does Social Listening Work in Marketing?
Social listening works by monitoring conversations about your brand using metrics like:
- Brand mentions
- Competitors mentions
- Branded hashtags
- Industry hashtags
- Trends
Meanwhile, social listening goes beyond just collecting information but also analysing information collected. By analysing information collected through social listening, business owners can find opportunities to improve. Therefore, your social listening strategies are not complete if you don’t analyse information and use it to improve your business.
In essence, there are two steps involved in social media listening;
- Track what others are saying about you, your brand, competitors, and things related to your business. This may include searching for specific keywords, checking brand mentions, finding industry trends, etc.
- Analyse the information from [1] so you can discover how to perform better as a brand. Once you understand what people are saying online about your brand or competitor, analyse the data to find growth opportunities.
What Is The Difference Between Social Listening and Content Analysis?
Content analysis and social listening are similar in using data to gauge your performance as a brand. However, content analysis focuses on using metrics to gauge how well your content or competitor’s content is doing. On the other hand, social listening isn’t only focused on content. Instead, it focuses on what people say about your brand, products, competitors, and other topics of interest. Content analysis measures the performance of your content, while social listening tracks your brand mentions.
What Are The Benefits of Social Listening?
Social listening is a powerful and reliable source of insights for business owners who want a competitive edge. Here are some of the most important benefits of social listening:
1. Improved Relationship With Customers
Social listening helps brands jump into conversations about them, which can help build authentic relationships with (potential) customers. For example, when customers say something about your brand, you can drop a comment in response. This is an excellent way to engage customers and improve relationships.
2. Insight for Marketing
Social listening can help create marketing strategies that appeal to the emotions of your target audience.
First, what is social listening in marketing?
It involves understanding what people expect from your brand and using this information to improve your marketing strategy. What better way to understand what people expect from you than listening to social conversations?
Also, social listening can help you get ideas for your content marketing. By following conversations in your industry, you can get content inspiration to serve your customers’ needs. For example, if customers are always searching for a particular topic, you can create content around that topic.
3. Competitor Intelligence
Social media listening doesn’t end with what people are saying about your brand but also about your competitors. As a business owner, you want to know what is going on in your industry. What are your competitors up to? What are people saying about them? By monitoring your competitors, you can know what they are doing right and learn from it for your growth. Also, you can learn what they are doing wrong so you can avoid it. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors will give you an edge in your industry.
4. Improved Customer Service
What is the use of social media listening if you are not using it to serve customers better? Social listening lets you keep an eye on what customers are saying about you. You may think you are doing well with your business but do your customers think the same? You won’t know unless you actually track down your brand mentions through social listening. This way, you can uncover what’s working and not working and then act accordingly.
5. Identify Key Influencers
Some online influencers have opinions that hold weight and can influence the perception of your brand. By being active with social listening, you can find out the key influencers in your industry. You can monitor what they say about your brand and even collaborate with them to boost your marketing strategies.
6. Crisis Management
Social listening is a good tool to build your reputation as a business owner and prevent crises.
How does social listening work to manage crises?
First, social listening tools send spike alerts if there is an unusual increase in your brand mentions. In a case where the spike is due to something negative, you can quickly mitigate the issues. Also, staying abreast of conversations about your brand helps you reply fast to negative comments before it gets out of hand.
7. Increase Lead Generation and Sales
Besides the fact that social listening helps serve customers better, it also helps you generate quality leads. For instance, if someone is looking for products like yours, you can reply by offering them a solution. Also, social media listening makes it easy to track inquiries, complaints, and questions people may have about your brand. When you respond, you are likely to have higher leads and sales.
8. Product Improvement
Social listening helps you get customers’ feedback about your products, and you can use this to adjust your business. Track what your audience is saying about your products and use the information to improve and serve them better. For example, if customers complain about the small size of your product, you can create a maxi size.
Top Social Listening Tips For A Competitive Edge
Now that you have answers to “what are the benefits of social listening?” let’s dive into effective tips to adopt. Here are some practical strategies to rise above your competitors through social listening:
1. Listen in the Right Places
Where is your audience having conversations? This is an important question because you need your ears where the conversations are happening. It’s best to conduct your social listening campaigns across multiple platforms for more results.
2. Choose Your Social Listening Tools
Social listening tools help keep track of your social media activities on one dashboard. This means you don’t have to keep going through all your social media channels before knowing what’s happening. There are many free social listening tools to monitor what people are saying about you and some of them include;
- Hootsuite
- Mention and
- Sprout Social
3. Track the Right Terms
You need to be familiar with the correct terms, hashtags, and keywords in your industry to do social listening right. Effective social listening involves tracking down relevant keywords for your brand. If you are tracking the wrong terms, you will not get accurate results.
Some relevant keywords to consider include:
- Your brand name
- Your product name
- Competitor’s brand name
- Your branded hashtags (if you have any)
- Industry hashtags
- Key people in your industry
4. Look at Your Competitors
One of the major types of social listening involves tracking your competitors. This form of social listening is the best way to stay ahead of your competitors. When you track what your competitors are doing right and wrong, you will be able to gather strategies to stand out.
5. Reach Out To Competitors’ Unsatisfied Customers
One way to generate leads through social listening is by monitoring your competitors’ unsatisfied customers. The key is to monitor customers who have problems with a competitor’s product/service and then offer them a solution.
You can do this by tracking your [competitor’s name] + words like “can’t,” “won’t,” and “shouldn’t.” Once you identify unsatisfied customers and their pain points, you can now reach out to them. You can then recommend your product, offer a discount, or introduce them to your brand.
6. Start Conversations With Those Who Didn’t Tag You
One of the best social listening strategies is starting conversations with customers who mention you. However, you don’t have to wait for people to tag you in conversations before responding.
Customers may talk about your brand without tagging you, and you may miss the mentions if you don’t track them. Also, customers may misspell your name, so it’s best to track misspelled versions of your name and products.
7. Keep Tabs on Industry News and Trends
Social listening can help you stay track of what’s happening in your industry. You can monitor trending news, products, key players, and other things in your industry. This can help you improve your services and marketing services. When monitoring industry trends, ask questions like:
- Is there a trend you can implement in your marketing strategy?
- Is there a product that customers want but you don’t sell?
For instance, if you notice a trend, you can adapt it to serve customers better.
8. Track Your Social Media Campaigns
Social media tracking tools can help users calculate their campaign views, reach, and engagement. This helps you measure your marketing efforts and performance so you can make informed decisions for your subsequent campaigns. There are free social listening tools that can track your campaigns and monitor your brand mentions.
9. Interpret and Act on Data Collected
Gathering information from your social mentions is just a part of social listening. The second part of social listening is analysing the data you collected so you can make informed decisions. If you are not acting on the information collected, you may as well not conduct a social listening. Therefore, analyse what you found from your social listening and find areas you can improve your brand.
Best Social Listening Tools 2022
Leveraging social listening tools makes it easy to implement your strategies effectively. Here are some great social listening tools to boost your efforts:
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Buffer
Buffer is a social media management tool that helps schedule posts, analyse performance and engage in conversations with your audience. This tool is suitable for managing your social media presence across different platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Buffer also tracks your social mentions in real-time and provides information to understand your audience better.
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Hootsuite
Hootsuite is one of the best social listening tools 2022 for business owners and marketers. With Hootsuite, you can monitor conversations about your brand and keep track of relevant keywords, mentions, and hashtags. Also, Hootsuite is an excellent tool for keeping track of your competitors and industry trends.
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Sprout Social
Sprout Social is a social management tool and also a social listening tool. Sprout Social can track brand mentions across different platforms and get social listening insights to perform better. Another great thing about Sprout Social is that it provides insight into your audience, which will result in better marketing.
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Tweetdeck
Tweetdeck is one of the best free social media listening tools, and it works for Twitter only. This social listening tool helps analyse your brand mentions and manage your Twitter presence. You can also get an overview of industry news and trending topics via your Tweetdeck dashboard.
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Keyhole
Keyhole tracks performance across different social media platforms collects mentions, and analyses data to make improved decisions. You can also use Keyhole to track hashtags and know more about your target audience.
It’s important to know what social listening is to build a better brand and rise above your competitors. All you need is the right tool and strategies, and you can boost your business through social listening.
