Where Does Social Listening Fit Into My Social Media Strategy?
Social listening is the practice of tracking online conversations about your brand, industry, and competitors and using insights to drive strategic decision-making.
As the name suggests, it’s most often focused on the social web: Social media platforms, review sites, and forums like Reddit.
Social listening activities include:
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Monitoring brand mentions, competitor content, and key brand messages;
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Sentiment analysis to identify how people view your brand;
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Joining relevant conversations to improve brand visibility and engagement;
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Quickly responding to customer feedback to resolve issues and build customer loyalty; and
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Monitoring industry trends to ensure your brand is aligned and up-to-date with what your clients care about.
With that definition in mind, social listening has a few valuable use cases in a broader social media strategy.
It Helps With Customer Research
Sentiment analysis and keyword or brand mention tracking can help you understand the “mood” online about your industry and your company.
This could help you grow online if you respond properly.
Beyond social growth, you can share this data with product, sales, and marketing teams, making sure they are aware of how the customer is feeling as they build go-to-market campaigns.
It Helps Marketers Understand How People React To Campaigns
When you’re working on a campaign, you’re likely tracking a lot of data to see if it helped you reach your goals.
Social listening adds an extra layer, explaining how people feel and how they are reacting to the campaign.
It Helps Uncover (And Avert!) Issues
If conversations start bubbling about concerns — for example, let’s say someone disagreed with some of your practices — you can get ahead of any potential business impacts.
These insights have value, too. Paying attention to a customer issue could help you make a business case to improve your customers’ satisfaction.
It could also become an opportunity for clarifying communication; maybe the customer is upset because of something they misunderstood.
In any case, social listening can help you connect with your audience and make them feel heard.
