Social media shouldn’t be taken lightly - it is how your brand is portrayed to your current and future customers. It can make or break someone’s decision to choose your product or service. Social media holds the key to unlocking important knowledge that helps you understand and monitor your audience. But, let’s cut to the chase, monitoring and listening to your consumers are very different.
Social media monitoring involves engaging with your audience on your social media by responding to comments, messages and other types of direct engagement with your brand. You are able to directly take note of what your audience is doing and saying.
Social media listening means using social media to understand your target consumer. It involves finding information that may not be as obvious. This includes researching topics and conversations related to your industry and the product or service you provide. Finding those conversations and topics means looking outside your profiles. Take a look at your competition and online forums. Listening involves taking the information you’ve learned and using it to optimize and execute your current and future marketing strategies.
When it comes to social media listening, you need to actively seek out and research what your target audience is saying.
Don’t be afraid to stray away from the major social networking sites such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. The world wide web is HUGE and there are so many other places to gather your information and do research. Try checking out other platforms such as Reddit and YouTube. These platforms allow you to easily search for relevant information and view a wide variety of conversations and opinions.
If you’re still not sure where to start, visit www.answerthepublic.com. It's a great website where you can type in some keywords related to your industry and see what questions people are asking about it!
Here are a few reasons social media listening is beneficial for your business:
1. Crisis Prevention
Social media posts can so viral in the blink of an eye - and it’s not always positive content that grasps everyone’s attention. Whether a customer had a bad experience or an unhappy former employee has taken to the internet, things can turn sour quickly. By taking note of the positives AND negatives, you can develop a strategy that will help you (hopefully) avoid an online crisis involving your brand or help you to appropriately handle one.
2. Improving Your Relationship With Your Audience
If your audience is posting and conversing online, it’s important to let them know you hear them and understand them! Make sure your audience knows that your brand is approachable when it comes to the good and the bad. Whether it’s questions, complaints, messages or comments, these are all opportunities for you to engage and build brand awareness. By taking advantage of those opportunities, you will become more responsive and your audience will notice.
3. Creating Relevant Content
Social media listening gives you the ability to hear directly from your customers about what they want to see. You can learn from that to produce the most relevant content possible. Producing content that your audience wants to see shows that you are listening to what they have to say. It’s a positive reflection that you are willing to adjust your strategy and meet their needs to keep their loyalty.
The Gabby Girl experts are experienced when it comes to social media listening. We can help you better understand what to look for, where to look for it and how to incorporate it into your marketing strategy.
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