How Can Social Listening Help With Your Digital Marketing?
Rawan Al Sayed
Social Media Marketing Research & Management / MBA graduate Université Paris Saclay / Multilingual Speaker
Why Is Social Listening Important?
social media listening is “the process of identifying and assessing what is being said about a company, individual, product or brand on the internet and across social media channels”.
To understand our audience better we need to know what they are saying about our brand and the products and services that we offer. This valuable consumer data can help us gage where we stand in the buyer cycle. Whether we are still in the early phases of awareness or moving into conversion. This data allows us to prepare our next marketing move.
Social Monitoring vs Social Listening
Social media monitoring involves tracking and identifying mentions of the brand across social media channels. Social media community managers are usually responsible for monitoring and even at times engaging with user feedback across social media channels. This process comes first and is more objective.
On the other hand, social media listening involves a deeper dive into the brand’s online presence. We can find relevant keywords, analyze sentiment using repeated phrases, find our top locations for engagement and more using social media listening tools.
What Are Some Social Listening Tools?
Sprout Social: This platform is easy to use and can accommodate multiple social media accounts. You can set up your own dashboard, use listening to detect keywords relevant to your brand and measure your performance across custom timelines.
Emplifi: One of the most powerful platforms that encompasses many different social media management features. For listening Emplifi manages to capture credibility and user friendliness with precision.
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Netbase: Netbase is a tool that is more focused on social listening and manages to capture market intelligence in a readable and time friendly manner.
An Example Of Innovative Social Listening
Yes I never thought I would say it but this is an example from the man who has been making waves recently: Elon Musk. Although this is not the traditional practice of performing social media listening this is a prime example of being innovative with obtaining user insight. Elon directly asks Twitter user about their feedback on adding an edit feature. Over 2 million votes were received and Twitter was able to develop a new feature that would guarantee customer satisfaction as a result.
In Conclusion
You can never go wrong with more data and insight on your consumers! Social media listening should be at the core of your brand strategies and is a great tool to monitor performance, recognize opportunities and avoid pending public relations crisis.
What tools does your brand use? Is there an example of a powerful insight you gained from a social media tool you used?
About Me
My name is Rawan Al Sayed and welcome to my business blog! Join me as I write about business related stories that inspire, inform and entertain.
Currently, I am pursuing my masters in business administration at The University of Paris-Saclay and I will graduate in March of 2023. My previous work experience includes social media account management, copywriting for social/websites/blogs/newsletters/press releases, influencer marketing, data reporting/analytics and client servicing. I am interested in growing in the digital marketing and communications field.
Stay tuned for more articles coming your way and feel free to share these articles with your network!
Freelance Marketing and Social Media Professional, currently a Creative Writing and Publishing MA student.
1yI think the method that Elon Musk is employing is similar to brands utilizing Instagram stories to gather insight on their audience in terms of what the users are looking for, what they like/dislike about the brand, if they have tried the brand or certain products from the brand, etc - it's works for him because he's a mogul, but social media listening tools give more insights about the sentiments of overall conversations around the brand and whether it's received well or poorly, if a certain campaign has generated positive buzz or not, etc - it's especially beneficial when looking at campaign. I'm eager to try Talkwater and Sprout Social, so far I've only tried to look at sentiments across various platforms manually and have tried Brandwatch.