However you choose to conduct it, social listening plays a necessary role in analyzing and adjusting your content efforts. Here’s the low-down on starting up social monitoring for your business.
What is social listening?
According to the Social Media Examiner, social listening is the process of monitoring social media for information relevant to your business and industry.
You can monitor mentions of:
- Your company name
- Your company slogan and/or hashtags
- Competitors’ names
- Your competitors’ slogan and/or hashtags
- Industry-relevant terms
- Names of industry-relevant people
And more!
Why use social listening?
Tuning into these terms will bring valuable insights your customers might not otherwise tell you outright. Especially the negative things.
For example, you can keep track of customers who have had a bad experience by monitoring mentions of your company. Then you can work to make the situation right before you end up with negative reviews and word of mouth.
You can also use social listening to innovate before your competitors. By monitoring industry-relevant terms, you can see what types of products and solutions people are looking for and provide them before your competitors.
Additionally, monitoring industry terms allows you to find and engage with leads. Everyone knows it’s annoying to barge in with decision-stage content, but if you wrote an eBook about paid ads you can monitor the term “paid ads.” Then, if someone asks how much they should be spending on paid ads for their business, you can gently offer up your resource to position yourself as an industry thought leader.
There’s so much you can do with social listening, especially if you get creative as to what terms you monitor.
How can I start using social listening?
You can conduct social listening manually by searching for specific terms or hashtags, or you can set up social listening through software.
We use HubSpot’s paid platform for our social monitoring efforts, but Hootsuite is our favorite free tool.
Here’s a blog from Hootsuite that discusses social listening and explains how to get started in the Hootsuite platform.
Brainstorm words, phrases, and hashtags to monitor and start listening! But remember, the most important step in social listening is the analysis. If you don’t adjust your content based on what you hear, what’s the point of tuning in in the first place?
Learn more about content reporting and become a marketing rock star! Click below to download the latest free offer from Hey Now! Media.
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