The social media world is a constant competition of a variety of pieces of content all jammed into a person’s screen. From brands to personal contacts, a person’s social feeds are a never-ending scroll of posts trying to grab and capture their attention. This means your brand has just a matter of seconds to engage audiences. While this can be a tricky environment to stand out in, there is another strategy that can help your brand capture the attention of audiences in a more intimate way – social listening.
Social listening is the act of monitoring social conversations to gain insight, observe trends, and ultimately join conversations. Brands that go this extra step, beyond just being present on social media platforms, are who people remember. Reaching out to a consumer who uses a hashtag that is relevant to your brand or product and creating a one-on-one dialogue with them is more memorable than a post in their feed will ever be. We have talked a lot about how to truly humanize your brand and it doesn’t get any more straightforward than the practice of social listening.
Not only will partaking in social listening help your brand with personal relationships, but it also goes full circle and helps people as well. When audiences tweet using a hashtag, it is almost as if they are begging to join a conversation and be acknowledged. Give them the response they are yearning for and help them out in whatever way possible. Monitor social streams for certain words, not just specific hashtags, to find audiences who are talking about an issue or topic that you can engage with even without using the “#” symbol. While it is important to not cross the line into a clearly personal conversation, tread the waters and see how audiences respond to your one-off tweets to them. After establishing a good method of when and how to engage with audiences, continue to fit social listening in every other day, if not daily.
As mentioned, social listening can also help to observe trends and gain insight into consumer’s thoughts. Turn this insight into ideas of what type of content you should create in order to better serve your social communities. Social listening can also be beneficial if you are able to find what type of comments audiences are making about your products. Consider social media as a giant focus group. These are real, un-biased people who are just expressing their opinions to the world in hopes that someone will hear them.
We know that social listening is not a standard practice when it comes to social media management, but here at DMA we see the benefits of it loud and clear. Have questions or wonder how you can start implementing social listening for your brand? Reach out to us for a free social media consultation!
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