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.
play
Know who is talking(netbase)
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.
play
Manage your feedback(auroradawn)
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.
Ringier Digital Marketing
would be your best bet, if you are in search of that agency to put you
through the process or totally handle your brand social listening.
Contact us at RDM today.
Written by Innocent, Uchenna D.
This is a feat
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