Social listening, a subset of social media marketing,
analyzes what people say about businesses in real time to inform brand
strategies and business objectives.
What Exactly Is Social Listening?
Social listening is a marketing strategy used by businesses
to capitalize on what customers, influencers, and social media users say about
their brand on social media. Market research is used by businesses to inform
business decisions and perform competitive analysis. You can better understand
industry trends, brand reputation, and content marketing strategies to serve
your target market by studying social media conversations, hashtags, reviews,
and mentions of your brand.
Social Listening vs. Social Monitoring
Social media analytics is divided into two parts: social
listening and social monitoring. Social monitoring entails gathering all
possible social media metrics, such as brand name mentions and shares, as well
as hashtags and views, that businesses can use to analyze social listening. The
"what" is social monitoring, and the "why" is social
listening. Sentiment analysis, a subtype of social listening, analyzes data
context using natural language processing.
Consider how a pet food company might employ social
monitoring and listening. A video of a dog eating food is shared on social
media by the pet food company. It receives 5,000 views. After a week, the
company posts a video of a cat eating food. It only has 3,000 views. The
quantitative data set is social monitoring. The company can determine that it
reaches more dog owners than cat owners through social listening, especially if
multiple tests confirm this result. These insights may have an impact on the
company's social media marketing strategy.
5 Advantages of Social Listening
Companies can benefit from listening in on online
conversations via social media channels. Consider how businesses can benefit
from social listening:
1. Facilitation of customer support: People use social media
to interact publicly with brands. Companies should track mentions in social
media posts to improve customer service and respond quickly to needs,
demonstrating to other potential customers that support is a priority.
2. Better social media strategies: Using social media data,
a company can learn about the content that performs well. Brands can use social
listening to improve content creation and optimize ads to better meet the needs
of their customers. Social listening can also assist brands in identifying
supportive social media influencers with whom to collaborate on influencer
marketing efforts.
3. Improved reputations: Analyzing likes, comments,
hashtags, and subtweets across forums informs businesses about the reception of
their brand. This can assist businesses in establishing benchmarks for their
reputation management efforts.
4. Informed content creation: Social listening data can be
used in a variety of ways in digital marketing. Companies should analyze how
social users interact with general content in addition to monitoring brand
mentions. Companies can learn what their followers are watching, commenting on,
and sharing in order to determine what content resonates with those
demographics.
5. Product performance analysis: To understand the customer
experience, brands can monitor social engagement around a product on social
media platforms and review sites.
4 Social Listening Strategy Hints
Follow these social listening tips to maximize your company's
digital marketing:
1. Purchase social media management software. Social
listening tools can track hashtags and brand name mentions in real time,
allowing you to monitor social engagement in real time.
2. Know what you're looking for. You can search for
hashtags, keywords, and specific topics relevant to your target audience in
addition to brand monitoring. This can help you decide what kind of content to
share when developing your social media marketing strategy.
3. Pay attention to competitors. You should pay attention to
what social users say about your brand and competitors. Moving forward,
competitive analysis can help to inform business strategies and product
decisions.
4. Recognize channel variance. Content preferences differ by
channel; understand what content performs best in order to create
channel-specific content as part of your overall social media strategy.
