32 Ways Brands Can Be Better Using Social Media Listening

Brands are using social media listening, also known as social media monitoring, to track and analyze conversations and activity on the web to gain insights. When you consider that each day over 500 million tweets and 55 million Facebook status updates are created, this provides a lot of opportunity to collect data and utilize it to make your business better. There are many different kinds of software that you can use for social listening, offering different features and functionality. But the main idea is to find information online that can help you improve your brand and the way you do business.

Here Are 32 Ways Brands Can Improve Using Social Media Listening:

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Pinpoint Current Conversations

‍Using social media listening, you can find out who’s talking, what they’re talking about, and how they’re talking around your brand or in your space.

1. Determine which social networks make the most sense for your brand to use

2. Identify keywords for SEO purposes

3. Figure out what kind of content will resonate with your audience

4. Take advantage of trending topics for “newsjacking”

5. Acknowledge brand advocates who are praising your company and provide positive reinforcement

6. Measure the use of a particular hashtag

7. Engage your audience and maintain customer relationships

8. Identify what causes spikes in conversation

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Consumer Research

‍Using social media listening you can aggregate information about the people who are talking about your brand and gather key consumer insights.

9. Find out consumers’ wants, needs, frustrations, interests, desires, etc., for persona development

10. Find out how people perceive your brand in order to effectively position your brand

11. Identify audience segments for more accurate targeting, such as age, gender, geographic location, etc.

12. Find out what resonates with your audience and what kind of language they use to talk about your brand in order to craft more effective brand messaging

Industry Research

Using social media listening, you can identify information about users, conversations, and trends that apply to your industry as a whole.

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13. Learn how your competitors are using social media before you jump in – so you can find a way to do it differently and/or do it better

14. Find out what’s already been done so you can avoid using stale ideas or copycat campaigns

15. Determine who your competitors are targeting

16. Identify your competitors brand influencers

17. Find out how your industry is perceived as a whole

18. Identify potential business opportunities

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Customer Service and Risk Management

‍When people are unhappy, they often take to social media to air their grievances. They don’t do it just for the sake of complaining. They want to be heard, for the brand to acknowledge the problem, and for the brand to take steps to remedy the situation.Unhappy consumers can band together quickly on social media to create a media frenzy that can turn into a PR firestorm if you don’t react quickly. Even people who don’t appear to have a very big following on social media can leverage network effects to make their voice heard. Using social media listening, your company can proactively jump on opportunities to make the customer experience better.

19. Respond to negative comments in real time

20. Identify customers’ problems and provide support

21. Alert customers of potential problems before they experience them and reassure them that you’re doing your best to fix it as soon as possible

22. Build out an FAQ knowledge base

23. Make changes if your audience reacts poorly to company announcements (like Maker’s Mark did)

24. Clear up confusion, correct an inaccuracy, or give further explanation to prevent people from stirring up unwarranted negative publicity

25. Keep a running log of social media activity for record-keeping purposes

26. Get alerts around a particular keyword or conversation topic that’s a hot button for your company

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Influencer Identification

‍Influencers can help your brand expand its reach and provide added credibility. Using social listening software brands can find people who are talking about their brand who have a big audience, are particularly influential to their target audience, or who have a level of authority.

27. Identify niche influencers who can expand reach

28. Identify expert influencers who can add credibility

29. Find potential brand partnership opportunities

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Product Improvement

You can use social listening to find information to help your product managers and R&D team make product improvements.

30. Glean insights to help make the product functionality better

31. Find out what options consumers wish they had (for example, if consumers are dying to have your product in a particular color not currently offered)

32. Find ways to improve packaging

Conclusion

‍Using social media listening is necessary for brands to stay relevant, have sustainable relationships with their customers, and maintain positive PR. It’s not enough to just use social media to talk, brands also need to listen. They need to be proactive about responding to their audience to keep them happy. Brands that effectively leverage social media listening insights will have happier customers and healthier brands.