Social Listening – Understanding Your Business Through the Eyes of Your Customers
As a business owner, it’s important to stay on top of what your customers are saying about you. Social media listening and social media monitoring, are good ways to do this. It allows you to identify trends and engage with customers in real time.
When done correctly, it can help increase sales, improve customer experience and generate brand awareness. In this guide we’ll explain what social media listening is, why it matters and share some tips for getting started on your own listening journey!
READ: Foundations of Social Media Marketing – Part 1 | A Critical Thinkers Guide to Social Media
What is social media listening?
Social media listening is the process of collecting and analyzing data across social media platforms. It’s a way to understand what your customers like and don’t like, how they interact with each other, and how they engage with your content. This information can help you tailor products to their needs, as well as identify potential opportunities for engagement.
Is Social Media Listening the Same as Social Media Monitoring?
Social media listening is closely related to social media monitoring, but they’re not the same thing. Social monitoring helps you track what’s going on in your industry and keep tabs on the latest news, while listening helps you understand how your audience interacts with each other.
Social monitoring helps you track what’s going on in your industry and keep tabs on the latest news, while listening helps you understand how your audience interacts with each other. Listening tools can help you uncover trends in customer sentiment, get an idea of what people are talking about around any given topic, and improve customer service through proactive outreach.
Social listening tools can help you uncover trends in customer sentiment, get an idea of what people are talking about around any given topic, and improve customer service through proactive outreach. Monitoring helps you track what’s going on in your industry and keep tabs on the latest news, while listening helps you understand how your audience interacts with each other.
Is a Social Media Strategy the Same as a Social Listening Strategy?
No, a social media strategy is not the same thing as a social listening strategy. A social media strategy is about creating content that your audience wants to see and share with their friends. It’s about getting people to engage with your brand on social media in the hopes of building an online community around it.
While a social listening strategy focuses on gathering data about your audience’s interests and preferences. It helps you understand what people are saying about your brand, how they feel about it, and what they want from it. This is important because it helps you develop better content that will resonate with your audience.
READ: How to Manage Your Social Media Marketing Week
Why is social media listening important?
- Because it allows you to keep up with your customers and make sure that you’re providing them with the products, services, and messaging that they want.
- It helps you understand how people talk about your brand online so that you can tailor products and services to them. This will help your SEO in the long run.
What social media platforms should I listen to and monitor?
Social media channels you should listen to and monitor include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube. You can also look into relevant forums, blogs and communities that your audience frequents.
You don’t need to listen and monitor every social media platform, but it’s important that you pick two or three channels that are most relevant for your business.
- Twitter: The first place to start is with your own brand’s Twitter account. You can monitor what people are saying about you, respond to their comments and questions, and promote your content.
- Facebook: As a business owner, you probably have a personal Facebook page that you use to connect with friends and family members. But did you know that there’s also a way for businesses (and brands) to create an official page on Facebook?
- Instagram: Instagram is a popular social media platform for brands and businesses, so you should definitely be monitoring what people are saying about you on this platform.
- LinkedIn: is a great place to monitor what people are saying about you, as well as promote your content and connect with your audience.
- Pinterest: Pinterest is a visual platform where users can share images (called pins) that they find visually appealing. These images are organized into themed boards called pinboards. You can create a free business account on Pinterest in order to monitor what people are saying about you on this platform—and also promote your content.
- TikTok: is an app that allows users to create short-form videos. The content on this platform is usually humorous, musical or dance related. You can monitor what people are saying about you on TikTok by creating a free business account and searching for your brand name or username.
Social Listening Tools
If you’re looking for more advanced social listening tools, there are a number of options available. These include:
- Brandwatch: Brandwatch is a tool that provides insights on what people are saying about your brand, competitors, topics and more. You can set up alerts to receive notifications when specific keywords are used online. This can help you identify trends and opportunities for content creation.
- Google Alerts: Google Alerts is a free, automated way to monitor the web for specific keywords. When Google finds new results that match your search query, you’ll get an email notification with a link to each new result.
- Hootsuite: Hootsuite is a tool that provides you with real-time insights on what people are saying about your brand, competitors and more.
- Sprout Social: Sprout Social is a tool that provides you with real-time insights on what people are saying about your brand, competitors and more.
READ: How Does Social Media Impact Your SEO?
How do you create a social listening strategy?
The first step in creating a social listening strategy is to create an account on the various social media platforms where you want to monitor your brand. For example, if you’re using Twitter as part of your campaign, then you’ll need to set up an account with that platform so that you can see what people are saying about your business.
Once you’ve created an account, you can start listening to what people are saying about your brand. In order to do this, you need to set up a feed that will display all of the posts made by the users whose profiles you follow. This can be done by going into the settings tab on each platform and selecting “following” under “listening tools” (if available).
Once you’re following your users, you should start seeing all of the posts they make. You can also use specific search terms to find people talking about your business by typing them into Google or the platform’s search bar.
Once you find a post that mentions your brand, take note of what they say and how many times they mention it. If there are any keywords that keep coming up over and over again, then these are definitely worth monitoring.
If you’re a small business, there may not be many people out there talking about you yet. That’s okay! It just means that you need to put in the work and start creating content that will get people talking. Once you do have some posts on your page, then it becomes easier to find mentions of your brand.
READ: The 7 Digital Marketing Strategies & Growth Insights You Should Use In 2023
Tips to better social media listening.
There are two main ways to approach social media channels:
- Listen to your customers. You should be listening to your customers on social media because they’re talking about you, whether it’s good or bad. You can learn a lot from their comments, as well as how they interact with other posts in the same thread. If someone has posted a picture of your product and tagged you in it, that means she likes your product enough to share it with others! This message provides an opportunity for engagement between that customer and your brand—you could reach out directly through Twitter or Instagram DMs (direct messages), for example. Or maybe another person commented on her post saying, “that looks delicious!”—this comment could also be used as an opportunity for engagement by replying back with something like “glad you like it! We love hearing from our fans :)”
- Listen to competitors and industry influencers. Social media is constantly changing; new platforms are being created every day while older platforms are dying out just as quickly. It’s important that businesses stay up to date so they know where their audience is going next—and who else will be competing against them there!
Social media listening is a must these days to keep up with your customers, tailor products and services to them, and help your SEO in the long run.
Social media listening is a must these days to keep up with your customers, tailor products and services to them, and help your SEO in the long run.
It’s no secret that social media has become an important part of marketing. In fact, we all know that businesses need to be active on Instagram, Twitter and other platforms if they want to succeed in this competitive market. But what you may not know is that social media listening plays an equally important role in helping your business stay relevant — especially when it comes to creating content that resonates with customers or following trends as they emerge.
Social Listening – A Quick FAQ
Why is social listening important?
Social listening is critical to the success of your business. It gives you the information you need to make informed decisions, build relationships with your audience, and understand their needs.
What are the three benefits of social listening?
The three benefits of social listening are:
1) You can learn what your customers want.
2) You can figure out how they talk about you, your competitors, and their industry at large.
3) You can become more humanized, which will make consumers feel more connected to you and more likely to trust you with their business!
How can I improve my social listening?
The best way to improve your social listening is to use social media as a tool for listening in, rather than just posting.
It’s tempting to get into the habit of posting and tweeting about everything under the sun. But if you’re looking to improve your social listening, it’s important that you focus on listening and understanding what people are saying about your brand or your industry without trying too hard to respond.
Are there affordable social media listening tools for small businesses?
Yes! There are plenty of affordable social media listening tools for small businesses.
One thing to keep in mind is that, while they may be less expensive than their enterprise-level counterparts, they’re still not free. You’ll want to make sure you have the budget to pay for the tool you choose.
You should also consider whether you need to use paid social media listening tools at all—many tools offer free options that can be sufficient for most businesses.
Conclusion
Social media listening is rapidly becoming a standard part of marketing—but if you’re still not sure how to use it to your advantage, we’ve got you covered. In this post, we broke down what social media listening is, why it’s important, and how to get started with your own strategy.
Now that you have some new insights into the world of social media listening, let us know: what questions do you still have about how this practice can benefit your brand? What other topics would like covered in future posts? Let us know in the comments below!
