Ever feel like you're missing out on how people really view your brand and what they say about you online? Social media listening is a strategy that gives you a pass on those conversations. It is about truly understanding your audience, spotting trends, and staying ahead of the competition.
Let's have a look at how you can get smarter with your social listening strategy.
Why Social Listening Matters
You get a real-time idea of how customers actually feel about your brand so that you can respond to their needs and expectations.
Spot emerging trends and conversations within your industry so you can stay relevant and anticipate any changes to your industry.
Improve your products or services by listening directly to what your audience loves—or doesn't, so that you can make smarter decisions.
Monitor competitor activities to give you a competitive edge when developing your social media strategies.
Protect and build your brand’s reputation by staying engaged with the conversations that matter most.
Read more about how social media listening can improve your marketing strategy
Social Media Listening Strategies
Learn the language of your audience.
To really connect with your audience, you need to speak their language. This means understanding the words, phrases, and even slang they use when talking about your industry or brand.
It’s not just about studying posts that use your tracked keywords and phrases; it's about getting into your target audience's mindset. You should ask yourself.
What are their pain points?
What excites them?
Within your social listening strategy, we recommend you pay closer attention to how your audiences phrase concepts and which secondary keywords they often pair together.
Do they prefer simple sentences? Or do they lean towards something more complex? These observations give you a clue on how to craft your own content, so you can join the conversations in a way that feels authentic and relatable, which is great for your brand.
Advanced Keyword and Topic Tracking
Tracking keywords across social media should not just focus on obvious brand mentions. Include variations, common misspellings, and relevant industry terms, URLs, campaigns, and persons.
Also, have a look at the context in which these words are used and ask yourself.
Are there trending topics or emerging themes that your audience is engaging with?
Are people using them positively or negatively?
Is there a particular demographic or group that’s driving these conversations?
This helps you identify underlying issues or opportunities that are driving conversations online, which means you can adjust your strategy in real-time and engage better with your audience.
Analysis of Sentiment and Feedback
Sentiment analysis makes it easier for you to see whether your brand mentions are positive, negative, or neutral. Financial services, for example, often monitor keywords like “breach” or “litigation” to spot negative signs that could escalate to a crisis early.
With negative comments, you need to be strategic, you dont have to always respond to every single complainy, instead, focus on bigger issues that can be turned into opportunities to show that you genuinely care abut your customers feedback.
However, you should also track when your brand and product names are mentioned in a positive way. Sharing these comments, testimonials, and endorsements can boost your brand’s value to your current followers and potentially draw in new customers.
Learn New Audience Spaces
Don’t limit your social listening strategy to just common social media platforms. While popular social networks like Twitter and Meta are great, niche forums and community sites can provide a lot of information about how your audience talks about your brand.
For example, if you’re in the beauty or health industry, you might find that people are more likely to discuss their concerns and experiences on industry-focused forums rather than on mainstream social media.
Like we mentioned earlier, take time to read through these conversations, what are people talking about? What issues are they facing? This will help you tailor your content, products, and services to meet the specific needs of your audience.
Monitor your competitors
To stay ahead of the competition, it’s not enough just to monitor what your competitors are posting. You should understand their strategy and find gaps that you can exploit.
An easy way to go about this is to track their brand mentions, just like you do for your own, and pay attention to how their audience responds to their content. What gets the most engagement, and what falls flat? This should give you insights into what resonates with your shred target market.
Analysing the sentiments around your competitors is also important. Are their customers satisfied, or are there common complaints that you could address better? You can use this information to position your brand as a solution to the issues their customers are facing.
Our social media experts also recommend looking at the keywords and topics they’re associated with. Are there industry terms they dominate that you’re missing out on? If there is, you should refind your keyword strategy and fill any gaps in the market that your competitors might be overlooking.
Need Help With Your Social Media Listening Strategies?
We understand just how important social listening is to a brand's reputation and success. Our social media strategies are crafted to boost engagement, improve customer acquisition and satisfaction, and increase your brand trust.
Ready to reevaluate your social media management strategy? Let's connect and start outperforming your competitors.