As we’ve said before: good social media marketing treats your chosen platforms like a conversation with your customers rather than a billboard to splash adds on. However, social media has expanded massively over the years. Nowadays there are more networks than you can shake a router at. Even the best funded marketing division would struggle to find everything being posted about the company online. A SMB has little to no hope! So how so we deal with the problem and keep track of online opinion across the web? Social Listening my friends.

What is Social Listening?

First up, it’s not social monitoring. Completely different thing. We apologise again for the marketing industry’s overlapping jargon. Social Monitoring is, effectively, a fancy name for social media business best practice – keep watch for active interaction/mentions and respond to them in a timely manner.

Social listening, on the other hand, seeks to discover ALL the instances a specific keyword (whether that’s company name, product, industry, concept, etc.) is used across any and all social platforms you’re interested in. This info can then be leveraged to your advantage when it comes to making business decisions.

In case you were worried about the amazing amount of time this might take: there is tech for this. Various companies provide a social listening SaaS, you won’t be surfing the net for the rest of time!

How can you use the data?

So now you can keep track of everything being said about you in social media land. How should you leverage that?

• Well first up there’s the obvious customer research. Look not just ‘do people like me?’ but focus on WHY they like you and what you do. Even better – why do they dislike you? Work out what you can do to win them over. Every mention of your brand online is an opportunity to understand ‘why?’
• You can also set up your listening to follow your competitors. Do that. You’ll be able keep abreast of the latest ideas in the industry as well as understand the differences in how customers view your and other businesses. Any gloating over their failures will also be a bonus.
• Many companies believe they know exactly what their market wants. With Social Listening you can find those ideas that haven’t been picked up on yet. By tracking the industry conversations at large you can find problems that no one is addressing. Get there before the competition!