There is this common saying “listen before you speak’ while individuals have consciously mastered this act and the importance of active listening for a thoughtful communication, most brands haven’t mastered this act or strategy to improve the way they communicate with their audience for better digital customer experience and to improve their brand health.

This strategy is crucial to the success of brands and businesses, If we don’t listen to what our audience wants, we won’t be able to connect with them, or even help or influence them, which have an overall effect on customer experience. As this fact is true in our personal lives it’s as well true in the digital marketing and marketing world at large.

What is social media listening

Social listening can be defined as the process of monitoring social platforms for gathering information. This information includes customer’s feedback, mentions, as well as discussions regarding specific topics. The ultimate goal of social listening is to extract actionable insights from this information.

With social listening, you will get to more about what people are saying about your brand why they are talking about it (brand)and where the discussion is actually coming from the platform, the places.

It involves monitoring specific keywords, topics, industries, and brands to know more about how you can improve your social strategy.

Knowing what people think about your brand is the great weapon you need to develop winning campaigns, develop an effective content strategy, and also to stand out against and among competitors.

Importance of social listening

1. Engage with customers

Social listening gives you opportunities to engage with your customers about your brand.

You would get to communicate directly with your audience and know how they are desperately in need or your service.

 2. Manage crises

Social listening also helps you manage sentiment before they get out of hand by pulling a problem post, and apologizing if need be. With social listening, you can look for the cause of sentiment and make changes right away and also review the social feedback for lessons that could prevent a similar mistake in the future.

3. Track competitors

Social listening provides not only relevant information about your brand, but you can also know what people say about your competitors. With this kind of information, you would have important insights into where you fit in the marketplace.

Social listening allows you to find out about new opportunities and threats as well as provide you with insightful information about your competitors, You will get to know what new about them so you can plan and respond accordingly.

4. Find pain points

Monitoring conversations around the industry uncover loads of information about what’s working and more importantly what’s not working for your customers.

You’ll get learn about what frustrates your clients about your products or services then you can come up with a solution.

5. Identify advocates

Social listening allows you to find people who already love your brand and are saying great things about you on social media.

A social conversation about your brand will give you a sense of who is advocating for you. And also to know important people to connect with. As the term implies, this set of people can have a huge influence on how their followers and fans feel about your brand.

Getting started with social listening

Social listening tools will help you learn what kinds of words people tend to use when they talk about your business and your industry. You’ll also start to get a sense of what kinds of insights are most useful for your brand.

According to Hootsuite blog, These are a list of important keywords and topics to monitor right from the start:

• Your brand name and handles
• Your product name(s), including common misspellings
• Your competitors’ brand names, product names, and handles
• Industry buzzwords
• Your slogan and those of your competitors
• Names of key people in your company and your competitors’ companies (your CEO, spokesperson, etc.)
• Campaign names or keywords
• Your branded hashtags and those of your competitors
• Unbranded hashtags related to your industry show you some social listening tools that can help you keep an eye (or ear) on all of this at the end of this post.

Below are  Example of social media listening tools

1. Hootsuite

You can make use of Hootsuite to set up social media streams that monitor conversations, keywords, mentions, and hashtags.

Hootsuite also allows you to respond to conversations or mentions immediately from one dashboard instead of going through different social media sites. It also allows you to follow, potential customers, and advocates.

2. Adview

Adview is designed for social listening on Facebook and Instagram ads. You can monitor up to three different Facebook Ad Accounts with several pages.

You will also be able to take a look at the analytics behind your Instagram and Facebook ads to see which one is getting more engagement.

3. Talkwalker

Talkwalker offers many social listening features that analyze blogs, forums, videos, news sites, review sites, and social networks all in one dashboard.

You will be able to monitor conversations around your brand and also analyze the engagement, reach, comments, and sentiment behind them.

4. Synthesio

Synthesio tracks conversations on highly-specific topics in carefully segmented audiences. You can tag mentions by language, location, demographics, sentiment, and influence with this software.

5.Reddit Keyword Monitor

If you’re not on Reddit, you’re missing out on a lot of insights. Reddit is a Keyword Monitor, you would be able to monitor unlimited keywords and easily respond and engage in different posts that discuss your brand and keywords.

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