Social media listening is an increasingly popular service. It measures the effectiveness of a brand’s identity, posted content and social campaigns. Following a primary checklist can provide your insight on how to improve your digital marketing efforts, but it also can show you what is working.
Social media listening will provide vital information in the following four ways:
- Narrow down your main social media audience behaviors.
This may be according to age, location and income. However, you might notice attitudes, actions and opinions of your target market that transcend traditional demographic barriers. The way they respond to the content you post and the conversation you start will clue you in on what matters to them most.
- Find out if people are talking about your company.
This information might present itself in a variety of ways during the social media listening process. One thing you may notice is the way you are mentioned in comparison and contrast to your competitors. You also might pick up on what is said about you across the Web in general. Your name may also come up indirectly in topical discussions in ways that may concern you or encourage you.
- Observe social media channel activity.
Even if you think you know where a product or brand might have the most influence, listening socially may surprise you. You might be more popular on channels you wouldn’t expect and not as influential on the platforms where you would most expect to be.
- Monitor content, topic and conversation trends.
Watching what people say on your pages as well as other places on the Web can provide insight on how they view your brand. It also can provide information that can help you improve targeting of social media ad campaigns. This ties in with how your competitors might use online conversations to target ads to consumers, and you can use this information as well to improve your marketing efforts.
How Social Media Listening Will Benefit You
It will prepare you for what exactly to say to your target audience. This includes not only responses to comments on your sites and pages, but it also provides you an edge when preparing content to post. It can even help you know exactly the timing of when you should send specific messages to your viewers.
Social listening can also help you see how your audience responds to different types of content as well. For example, some potential customers may like, comment or share the videos more often, but others perhaps enjoy the short inspirational quotes or will react to the long-form blog posts.
Social media listening also provides insight that extends beyond just lists of numbers and graphs. There’s nothing that compares much to real-time interactions versus studying statistical data. The live listening helps you feel exactly what your audience is feeling in a way that cases studies cannot. This includes any comments about issues you can make right before the discussion damages your reputation.
NetBase Can Help
Social media listening will do you a world of good for your business. However, you may not have time to sit online all day keeping an eye on your online audience. After all, you have current customers you need to satisfy right now. If you need help, NetBase can be your eyes and ears for you.
