How social media managers can use social listening for more than measurement

For social media managers, the pressure to show results and prove the ROI of social media can be overwhelming. So when it comes to using social data, the priority is often to measure the impact of their work. In other words, social data only comes into play at the end of the marketing process.

But social listening can provide so much more. In the right hands, insights from social listening can inform multiple aspects of your marketing processes. From shaping your strategy to inspiring your creative concepts, social data and the insights it offers can be a powerful tool for optimising your comms. And, the good news is that there are tools that will make your job much easier. Content management platforms such as Agorapulse will let you conduct social listening and manage your content calendar.

Let’s take a look at how you can use social listening for more than measurement.

Protecting brand reputation

Are people publicly sharing a terrible experience they’ve had with your business or product without tagging you? Could there be someone impersonating your brand on social media?

All of this could seriously harm your brand reputation unless you take swift action to resolve it before it gets out of hand. That’s where social listening enters the picture. It allows you to monitor conversations involving your brand and quickly identify any damaging posts and comments as well as malicious brand impersonators.

Check out how SEMrush quickly jumped in and tried to address the issue in the following Tweet from a user who faced an embarrassing situation at work due to a slip-up with the platform.

Finding inspiration for content

Your social listening efforts can even help you get a better sense of what types of content resonate with your audience. What topics are they interested in based on their conversations? What’s the sentiment around a certain trending topic? What major pain points do they have?

Use this as inspiration for your content strategy. For instance, you might be able to come up with social media content or blog posts based on the topics your audience is talking about. Or you could address a major pain point with a very informative and helpful article providing a solution.

Discovering opportunities for engagement

One of the main reasons you’re using social media for business is to engage with your audience on a personal level. While your posts and replies may be driving sufficient engagement, you can scale these results with social listening.

Social listening tools will help you look for trending conversations involving your brand or your industry as a whole. Social media managers can use these opportunities to participate in relevant conversations and engage with people outside your follower base. For these conversations, come up with a response appropriate to the situation and your brand image.

We saw this work really well for brands who jumped in on the Weetabix and Heinz Baked Beans tweet. This thread, which many major international brands got involved with alongside consumers, went viral.

Perhaps a funny comeback to a joke about your brand might work if you have a fun and friendly image. But for more serious and professional brands, it might be more appropriate to provide helpful suggestions and tips.

Here’s an example from Evernote, which saw the opportunity to comment on a Tweet where a user recommended the tool to her friend for organising lyrics.

Identifying valuable leads

Your social listening efforts could also help uncover people who are looking for suggestions on what to buy, solutions to certain pain points, and more. These are valuable leads for your business since they’ve explicitly expressed an interest or a need. And you can then jump in with the answer they need.

This feels much less intrusive than pushing your products to people who may not want or even need them. Instead, you’ll be giving suggestions to people who are actively looking for solutions or recommendations.

For example, Sendible gave a friendly and helpful answer to the following Twitter user who wanted to learn about a tool for scheduling Instagram Stories.

Uncovering key influencers

Who influences your target audience? Are there certain social media accounts that tend to lead trending conversations in your industry?

Social listening can help you uncover these insights by tracking all the top conversations around a specific topic along with the people leading those conversations. So you can discover some great content that they’ve created and share them with your audience.

Plus, you can think about including these influencers in future marketing campaigns as a way to boost engagement. That’s exactly what Chrysler did with the help of Agorapulse. Through social listening, they were able to identify ThatDadBlog, a micro influencer with a highly engaged audience. They worked with him on a campaign to showcase their new Pacifica model and highlight the fun that can be had with it, like being able to escape to a Winter Wonderland.

Informing your marketing campaigns

Social listening helps you unearth critical insights about your customer preferences and behaviour. What topics are they currently talking about? How do they feel about certain trends? Which platforms are they most active on?

All of these insights can be the backbone of a powerful marketing campaign. Use social listening to find out what your target audience likes and dislikes, how they like to shop, and more. And then create a campaign based on those findings for a chance to make an impact.

For example, let’s say you find that a lot of people within your target market are talking about a particular TV series. If you’re launching a new product or ad campaign, you could make a reference to that series in your copy.

Ready to take social media management to the next level?

When you realise the full potential of social listening for social media managers, there’s no other way but forward. But the challenging part is filtering social listening insights in addition to your usual responsibilities as a social media manager. That’s why it’s important to look for tools that can help not only with the social listening part, but also in organising and executing the insights you gather.

Check out Agorapulse to learn more about how they can help with your social listening strategy.

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