Social listening
Social listening is gathering social data on a particular topic, brand, or person. It can be done through online monitoring, scanning, and essential word search monitoring. Social listening helps brands engage in two-way dialogues with their customers to understand their needs and desires better so they can be met. Brands use it to increase customer engagement by using data from social media networks, such as Twitter and Facebook conversations. It focuses on the positives that are being said about a product or person rather than looking at negative comments. NetbaseQuid and Synthesio are examples of social listening tools.
How To Use Social Listening To Identify Industry Influencers And Advocates
1. Identify who your ideal customers are
Social media is the most effective tool for quickly identifying your ideal customers’ voices or pinpointing niche communities that you want to engage with. Your list may include people who have purchased your product in the past and people who have LIKED your product on Facebook or similar networks. You can also identify these people by what they say about you on their Twitter profiles.
2. Collect hundreds of tweets from the social influencers you want to engage with
It may take hours to go through all of the Twitter feeds to find the most relevant to what you hope to accomplish with social listening. Once you have collected the tweets, identify how many retweets and favorites they receive on average. If a tweet doesn’t receive any engagement, move on to the next one and repeat this process until you find relevant tweets. It helps to have a list of the people important to your industry, so you can target them first when mining for data on them.
3. Scan through their tweets and use an online keyword search tool
Such tools as NetbaseQuid and Synthesio will allow you to search through all the keywords used by these influencers. Use these tools to identify unique and highly searched words or use the competitor’s keywords.
4. Engage with these people
After you have found the most relevant Twitter users, engage with them by following them and liking their status updates. Please take note of the frequency of their tweets so that you can update your brand to be more in line with their interests. An example would be a food truck that tweets and interacts with customers about food truck festivals. It is a good idea to interact with these people 1:1 by contacting them through private messaging or email but keep it simple. You want to be considerate of their time and avoid being perceived as spammy.
5. Network with these people
Now that you have identified the people most relevant to your brand engage with them by retweeting them to their followers and messaging them directly to tell them that you like what they are tweeting about. You can build a stronger community around your product or brand by engaging and networking with the people who are most engaged on social platforms. An example would be a food truck that retweets popular food trucks every day and provides tips on where to find these trucks locally. It is best to provide information rather than ask the users to retweet or try to sell your product.
Social listening can be very effective for building a stronger community around your product or brand. It gives you insight into what people like about your product and lets you know where you can improve. By working alongside social influencers, you can reach a larger audience and better engage with customers in the future. It is a powerful tool to understand your ideal customers’ mindset better and identify and engage with the social influencers in your industry, which can increase your reach and engagement. It helps you control the conversation about your brand to avoid negative comments and increase overall awareness.
