Social Listening Why brands need to take it seriously

The social media is today an established marketing channel as brands are paying more attention to their social presence and daily increasing digital marketing spend. With all the budgeting and spending a recent Industry report by Social Media Examiner says about 87% of marketers still see it as a big concern locating their ideal customers. To get the most of your social media marketing campaign spends, social listening is key for the few reasons stated below; Know who is talking: As you plan your digital and offline marketing campaigns it is very important to know who is talking, what they are saying about your brand, and where. This is very essential as social listening goes beyond what your direct followers on any of the social media channels are saying. It goes as far as monitoring a random positive or negative comment that might crop up anywhere online about your brand – this could be a Facebook post, tweet, a blog or website mention etc. It could also be a random question about your brand which if properly taking care of might just gain you some brand loyalty from a happy ‘fan’ or customer. Knowing who is talking and what they are saying could be very relevant in helping with your inbound marketing strategy, content marketing and development strategy across all channels, and also know what the FAQs are. Monitor Competition “ If you are ignorant of both your enemy and yourself, then you are a fool and certain to be defeated in every battle. If you know yourself, but not your enemy, for every battle won, you will suffer a loss. If you know your enemy and yourself, you will win every battle .” - Sun Tzu, 'the Art of War' Let’s face it, you are not the only one in business with a similar product or service, and know very much how competitor analysis or intelligence is to making key business decisions. The same concept could be used online or for your digital marketing strategies. With social listening you could easily discover, monitor, and analyze your competitors’ activity on online; this helps you see how they’re doing – monitor their customer’s interaction and reaction, helps you evaluate and better plan your digital/social media marketing efforts based on competitors strength and weaknesses. Keep Up With the Industry Whatever industry your business falls under; FMCG, Media/Publishing, E-commerce etc. it’s very important to know what’s going on in your industry. This includes knowing and monitoring industry key players, Influencers and advocates, keep up with the latest industry discussions and trends, then also look out for opportunities and possible threats in the industry. Daily hundreds if not thousands of discussions and industry related mentions crop up; and its best you are in the know as Social listening is one major way to stay up-to-date. Managing and Preventing Crises Some conversations going on about your brand online could just be ticking time-bombs waiting to explode. Sometime in 2013, a private university included some extra optional payments for which the students misunderstood for an increase in tuition. To cut the story short, the students couldn’t face the school admin but took their grievances online. It was first a tweet, then a blog a popular blog put it up with statements from students on the increase in school fees - in less than 48 hours, this became a trending topic on twitter and was up on all other major blogs. Internally the school administration took this to be a crises situation and didn’t like the image it created. What was the result? It cost the university administration more to reach out to these platforms with a press statement refuting the increase and breaking down the cost to the public even though the damage was done. Lessons for your organization: With social listening you can identify, monitor and prevent such crises situations by addressing the topic as soon as possible. This could be directly contacting the aggrieved party. If this has gone beyond one person you can identify key influencer driving the discussion or in the case of a blog or news content online, you can strike a deal with such platforms before it goes viral. Setting up social listening for your brand/business is not much of a difficulty to properly set up and to ensure you are using the right tool you might have to contact digital marketing professionals to show you how best this could be done, and preferably you could live the stress to them.