What is Social listening and why brands need it

Do you know what others are saying about you?

How can you generate more leads on the internet?

Is there a way to know how you’re doing in comparison to your competitors?

There is a way to know the answers to all of these questions. It’s called Social listening. 

According to a Crowdfire survey, 82% of brands believe that they are responding to their users/ customers on Social media. Click To Tweet. (But do the customers agree? That’s going to be another survey.) This number is only going to go higher because, hey competition! So let’s get into the depths.

Photo by kyle smith on Unsplash

What is Social listening?

Social listening is the process of tracking your brand mentions on Social media and around the web and then analysing them.

That is the monitoring of the entire internet for specific knowledge of who is talking about you, what are they saying and what is the sentiment behind their words, discussions around the specific keywords, competitors, topics, industries etc. that help you gain deeper insights using analytics.

Example 1 – Zomato here is listening to the keyword ‘order food’.

Example 2 – Netflix is listening to the keyword ‘Netflix’.

Social listening is a little different than Social monitoring. 

What is Social monitoring?

Social monitoring means tracking your social mentions and responding to these mentions.

Here, Wendy’s responded to a customer. That’s called Social monitoring.

Why is Social listening important?

Social listening helps you understand and answer some really important questions like:

1. Who is your audience?
2. Where does your audience hang out? 
3. What are their interests and their favourite topics of discussion?
4. What’s their tone?
5. What do they want and expect from a brand/ business?
6. How do they feel about your competitors?

Answers to these questions can help you refine your marketing strategy and can give you the right direction.

Ex: If you know who your audience is, where do they hang out, what are their favourite topics of discussion and their tone, you will have answers to

1. Which social network you should be on.
2. What topics you should be discussing and creating content on.
3. What tone you should use.

That would take care of the major part of your content strategy!

Now, let’s break the Social listening process down

Step 1 – Track and monitor your social mentions. Also, monitor your competitor’s mentions and the keywords that are important for your brand.

Step 2 – Analyse the overall sentiment of these mentions, respond to these mentions and deep dive into volumes and frequency of these mentions.

Now, do this on repeat. 

Social listening needs to be a major part of your Social Media strategy. If you haven’t thought about it yet, now is the time. 

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Introducing Crowdfire Social Listening! 

• Listen to your and your competitors’ keywords.
• Competitor Analysis.
• Detailed analytics.
• Know everything you need to about your audience.

and more!

Try it out today – Social Listening

Already in the game? Tell me in the comment section which tools you’re using to listen. I’m all ears.

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Social Listening and CRM on Crowdfire

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With Crowdfire, you can find curated content, schedule your posts, engage with your audience, deep-dive into analytics and create custom reports. Try it for free.