What is social media listening?
Social media listening - or simply social listening - is all about finding out what people say and feel about your brand by monitoring specific brand mentions, keywords, topics, industry trends, competitors, and more. These may not be hard numbers, but they’re just as important if you want to cater to the right audience, establish trust, and beat out the competition.
It can include (but is not limited to): answering questions through direct messages, replying to posts or in comment sections (whether directly or indirectly mentioned), observing reactions to competitor marketing, and generally keeping up to date with audience trends.
What are the benefits of social media listening?
Customer Insights & Feedback
In an era where consumers want to feel more connected to the brands they purchase from, your marketing strategy should absolutely include tapping into the wants and needs that your customers are openly expressing. Users typically provide more unfiltered reactions on social media than they might in a survey with specifically framed questions, so you’ll be able to gather raw, honest feedback to shape the development of products, services and marketing campaigns.
Brand Image & Crisis Management
By establishing what people are saying about your brand in real time, social media listening allows you to be proactive, rather than reactive, and anticipate reactions before they happen. This can be invaluable when it comes to judging how audiences will respond to certain content and the best way to respond when things do go wrong. Reaching out via social media also allows you to improve customer relationships both publicly and privately.
Competitor Analysis
If you see your competitors starting to surge ahead in sales and growth, the reasons for this can often be found through social listening. Monitoring positive reactions to other brands can provide inspiration for your own products and marketing. Equally, if competitors are facing backlash from customers, it can be reveal opportunities for you to jump in and do the opposite, fulfilling the needs that your competitor has failed to deliver.
Trend Analysis
With attention spans getting shorter, the time in which a trend lives and dies on social media has rapidly decreased. If you’re going to tap into viral trends, you need to make sure you’re not arriving at the party too late. Social media listening allows you to recognise trends as they form, including hashtags, storytelling styles, sounds on TikTok and Reels, and more.
In addition to individual trends, being aware of the general direction of trends - described on TikTok as Trend Signals - can help you anticipate the what, where and how of social media trends before they even happen.
How do I do it?
The best way to carry out social media listening is to use a dedicated social listening tool. There are a variety of options depending on your personal goals and preferences and usually operate within wider social media content management software. These include Hootsuite, Sprout Social, Brandwatch, Mention, and Brand24.
Many of these tools have been developing AI-powered capabilities to broaden the scope of their analysis, condense information into actionable points, and spot developing trends.
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Want to know more about using social media listening for your brand? Get in touch with our Newcastle digital marketing agency today to arrange a no-obligation call.