The benefits of social media monitoring and listening: part 3

Last week we covered how social media monitoring can give you insights into how to become more useful to your audience and how to gauge how your audience feels about your organization. In our final post of this series, we’ll explain two benefits which can impact your bottom line.

Interact with influencers

Who’s talking about your brand? Social listening is the most efficient way to find out – and who knows, you may even discover a few social media influencers are already fans of your organization. Influencers – a.k.a. social media mavens with high follower counts – could make a big impact on your brand’s social media success, especially if their target audiences are similar to your own. Connect with those on-target influencers in order to spread your keywords, messages and hashtags to their followers.

Building relationships with people who have already bought into your brand is the best way to influence those who are still deciding. One of the key questions you should ask yourself is “Who does my audience trust?”

Think With Google researched the influence of media touch points when audiences converted:

• 74 per cent: Word of mouth
• 69 per cent: Retailer and store visits
• 64 per cent: YouTube
• 61 per cent: Twitter
• 59 per cent: Company websites
• 56 per cent: Facebook
• 55 per cent: Newspapers and magazines
• 51 per cent: TV and movies

 

Social media ranks high up there and we would argue that most word-of-mouth communication – the number-one touch point – happens online in the form of comments, tags and shared links on social media. Influencers play a big role in spreading those messages online.

People who are not sure about your organization will be looking to understand what made other brand advocates buy in. Empower influencers and remind them why they are advocates by maintaining consistent contact on platforms like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

If you want to convert, you’ve got to get social.

 

Learn through competitors’ experiences

There are a number of benefits to expanding your online listening beyond your own brand.

First, knowing how your competitors are positioning themselves in the market can help you in deciding how to differentiate your own organization. Ask yourself: Are your competitors using the right strategy for your industry? How could you do it more effectively? Who can help if you still don’t know?

Second, making mistakes can be costly. If your competitors have made some recent stumbles, you could identify what went wrong and learn that lesson without having to go through it as well. Check out the comments on your competitors’ social media posts to identify what’s working and what’s not. If you can identify the pain points of the competition’s target audience, you can position your organization as a better alternative and build new relationships with that audience.

Third, listening can help identify what’s next for your organization. If you are better at spotting and capitalizing on upcoming trends than the guy next door, you’ll have a competitive advantage. Listen for what is frustrating your audience, what they feel is missing from their life, what problems they are trying to solve. Can your organization provide the solution?

Every organization in 2018 should have some knowledge of social media, or should at least put darts on the board. If you feel like your social media efforts are in a rut, get back to the basics and reinvest in listening to what your audience is saying to and about you – you might just find the inspiration you are looking for.

Organizations are becoming more creative, hiring better talent and creating more targeted strategies and executing them. If you want to be among those who can confidently say they have a handle on their online marketing, we’d love to talk.