Social media listening is used more often these days for many reasons. It’s partially because of the increased use of social media by the general public. However, it’s also because technology has enabled brands to get to the root of customer sentiment. You can find out a lot about your target audience and use the information to create a more effective marketing campaign.
It’s also useful when it comes to staying engaged with consumers and understanding your industry. You can even leverage information about the competition to get a bigger piece of the pie. Let’s delve into social media listening and what’s involved in an effective strategy.
Identifying Your Goals
Before you start any endeavor, it’s a good idea to get clear on your goal and the desired outcome. When you embark upon a social media listening strategy, you should define what you want to achieve. This can help you develop a roadmap for getting to your destination. Your strategy will likely include elements of lead generation, search engine optimization, market research, reputation management, and overall engagement.
When you get clear on your goals, you can also find the tools that you need to achieve them. As the top company in social analytics, NetBase offers tools to help you with social listening in a way that’s more tactical and efficient. It’s the reason why brands across industries have relied upon NetBase for years when developing a marketing strategy.
Conducting Research
One of the most impressive benefits of social listening is being able to gather data about your industry and information directly from consumers. You can expand the scope of your research so that includes more than just your existing customers. You can also gather more concentrated information to find out how your current customers feel about your brand and whether there are any issues that must be addressed. Instead of getting second hand information, you can hear exactly what customers think and how they feel.
Understanding Trends
Trends come and go, especial these days. You must be on top of new trends that arise so that you can publish the right types of posts on social media and on your website. It’s not good enough to know what was trending last month. Instead, you must know what was trending this morning. Failure to do so will result in missed opportunities. Social media listening will keep you updated on what’s hot and what’s not.
Managing Your Brand’s Reputation
There was once a time when people went directly to a company’s website to complain about a product or service. If they had an issue with something and wanted an immediate response, they would often call. These days, it’s not uncommon for consumers to post their grievance online. There’s often a feeling that posting online will garner a response faster than any other method of communication.
Sometimes a customer will only post online when they didn’t receive a satisfactory response from a phone call or email. Either way, social media listening should be used to optimize the customer experience. It can also help you respond much faster.
Developing a social media listening strategy makes sense no matter how you slice it. Not having a strategy can result in unnecessary issues and less effective marketing. Having a strategy can provide you with the information you need for next level marketing. It’s simply a more strategic way of handling all things related to marketing and that’s something every brand needs and wants.