Jump-start your Social Media presence with Social Listening
Jump-start your Social Media presence with Social Listening
Did you know that there is a difference between hearing and listening? Hearing is our perception of the sound, whereas listening is when we are truly understanding and reciprocating what we are hearing. Picture this: you are traveling, and your favorite playlist is playing. You are enjoying the music, looking outside, and observing the world go by. But then you start paying attention to the lyrics and just reveling in the beauty of the lyrics; this is known as listening.
This same concept can be applied to social media as well. When you monitor and analyze customer behaviors, their reactions to the posts, and popular trends, it is social listening.
What is social listening?
Social listening is the process of monitoring internet discussions to understand what people are saying about your brand, products, and services, as well as anything relevant to your business. It involves researching and collecting data on conversations and trends surrounding your brand’s social media presence.
Unlike traditional monitoring and analytics, social listening focuses on understanding the context and emotions behind the conversations. It provides deeper insights into your target audience and enables data-driven decision-making.
Benefits of social listening
- Identifying Negative Mentions: Social listening helps filter mentions to identify negative comments about your brand, allowing you to respond promptly.
- Understanding Sentiment: Gather all mentions of your brand to understand their sentiment (positive or negative), influence, and reach.
- Engaging in Conversations: Jump into conversations when someone is looking to buy products like yours.
- Analyzing Trends: Analyze industry developments and catch trends to make better decisions about product development and marketing strategy.
- Identifying Industry Influencers and Partnerships: Discover influential voices within your industry and establish strategic collaborations and partnerships. These partnerships can amplify your brand’s reach and credibility.
- Answering Customers’ Questions at Scale: Use social listening tools to find out what customers commonly ask by analyzing their queries and feedback. Organize these questions into a detailed document or knowledge base to offer efficient answers to customer queries at scale.
- Improving Marketing Campaigns: Discover what customers appreciate about your brand by closely tracking their feedback and sentiments. Integrate this valuable insight into your campaigns and content strategy to boost engagement and connect more effectively with your target audience.
What are the objectives of social listening?
Now that you’ve got a fair idea of how listening on social media can help your brand, let’s get straight to the key things you can aim to accomplish with social listening.
- Understanding Your Audience: Tune into their conversations to connect better and learn about their needs, likes, and pain points.
- Monitoring the Competition: Social listening provides insights into competitors’ strategies and movements.
- Preventing and Managing Crisis: Social listening acts as an early warning system for negative buzz around your brand.
- Strengthening Customer Relationships: Use real-time consumer insights to tailor offerings and improve customer satisfaction.
- Strategic Decision-Making: Align your marketing and product plans with customer demands and market trends.
- Gaining a Competitive Edge: Build proactive strategies based on customer sentiments.
- Simplifying Influencer Marketing: Identify key influencers and collaborate strategically for brand visibility and trust.
- Monitoring Brand Health: Detect signs of crisis through real-time conversations and negative comments.
- Analyzing Campaign Performance: Monitor how a campaign is performing.
- Monitoring Events: Gauge audience response to conferences or events.
How do you know if your listening strategy is working or not?
Once you have your social listening strategies, you should also check in to see if the strategies are yielding any benefits. Here are some sample listening metrics to consider:
- Clicks
- Reach
- New followers
- Profile visits
- Engagement rates
- Engagement speed
Social listening tools:
- Hootsuite is a comprehensive social media management tool with robust scheduling, monitoring, and analytics features.
- Talkwalker is an advanced social listening and analytics platform known for its deep insights and real-time monitoring capabilities.
- Brandwatch is a powerful consumer intelligence tool that provides extensive data and insights from social media and online sources.
- Brand24 is an easy-to-use social listening tool that tracks online mentions and provides sentiment analysis.
- Digimind is an AI-powered social listening platform offering detailed analytics and insights for market intelligence and brand monitoring.
- Mentionlytics is a social media monitoring tool that offers real-time mention tracking and sentiment analysis across multiple platforms.
- Meltwater is a comprehensive media intelligence platform with extensive social listening and analytics capabilities.
- Sprout Social is a social media management and analytics tool with strong features for engagement, publishing, and listening.
- Mention: A real-time media monitoring tool that helps track online conversations and brand mentions across various sources.
- Quid: An advanced data analytics platform that provides insights from complex datasets, including social media and news.
Cases where social listening helped the business
McDonald’s excels at online listening, crucial for tracking campaigns. Their Grimace’s Birthday campaign in June 2023 unexpectedly went viral on TikTok with the Grimace Shake trend. Monitoring social media closely, McDonald’s seized the opportunity, engaging by posting a meme of Grimace joking about the trend. This witty response resonated with the online community, showcasing McDonald’s ability to leverage social trends for marketing success.
Barbie’s team used social listening when fans linked Ken’s movie wardrobe to BTS’s Jimin. Quickly, they teamed up with Ryan Gosling (Ken) for a playful video, acknowledging fan discussions and giving Jimin Ken’s guitar. The video went viral, boosting Barbie the Movie’s fame on TikTok and Facebook. Jimin’s Instagram post amplified engagement, showing how listening and timely action can turn buzz into meaningful online interaction for brands.
Social listening can revolutionize your social media strategy. By utilizing social media or client listening, you gain a clear understanding of your brand’s perception and its standing in relation to its competitors. Brands are increasingly prioritizing client listening platforms to obtain direct customer feedback on their image. To leverage this valuable information, it is crucial to listen first, which is the core principle of social media listening.
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