What Is Social Listening and Why Is it Important?

With so many online conversations and platforms to keep track of, social media listening is key for brands looking to understand and track all of this unstructured data. 

A strong social media strategy should include social listening as an important part of its social media planning. Backed by AI, social media listening is important for brands to:

• Maintain a positive brand image and reputation
• Identify audience needs and feedback
• Focus on customer experience
• Manage any potential crisis
• Identify marketing and growth opportunities

Definition of Social Listening 

Social listening, or social media listening, is the process of monitoring and analyzing social media content related to a specific brand, individual, product, service, or industry to understand what is being said online with the goal of improving customer outreach, image, and product development.

How Social Listening Works  

Social listening can be separated into two main parts: monitoring and analyzing. The first part includes monitoring social media platforms to find any mentions about your brand, products, services, competitors, and any related keywords or topics. During the second part, you will be able to analyze all the data gathered from the monitoring phase to draw actionable conclusions to help your brand achieve its goals.

What’s the Difference Between Social Listening and Social Monitoring?

Understanding the difference between social listening vs moderation is key to knowing how and where to put your time and resources. 

Social listening is the practice of listening to online conversations related to your brand or industry with the use of an AI tool. It’s the practice of listening and processing what our customers, potential customers, and target audience are saying. 

On the other hand, social monitoring is actually utilizing that AI tool to track and measure what’s been said. So we can set up our tool and monitor for specific mentions of our brand, or mentions of specific competitors, related keywords or hashtags, for example.

Why It’s Important to Use Social Media Listening for Your Marketing Strategy

Your social media marketing strategy should include social media listening to ensure your brand knows and understands your customers’ needs and how your brand is perceived across all social media platforms. 

Social listening helps your brand track and analyze a plethora of data such as growth, sentiment, and social media trends while measuring your success and increasing your brand awareness.

What Is a Social Listening Platform? 

Social media listening platforms are pieces of software that allow users and brands to monitor, track, and analyze social media conversations and mentions. These tools also capture data such as trends, competitor activity, reach and engagement, hashtags, and keywords across new sites, online publications, review sites, and more.

The right social listening platform for your business will automate your tracking and monitoring processes with precision to give you clear and precise data to keep track of what people are saying about your brand or industry on social media.

Our top social listening platforms are Sprinkler, Brandwatch, Zoho Social, Mention, and Meltwater.

Benefits of a Social Listening Strategy   

A social media listening strategy is a great way to plan ahead and give your brand the best chance to reach your targeted goals. By planning ahead, your brand will be able to understand online conversations and data pertaining to your brand, products, and services.

Customer engagement 

Social listening helps to quickly identify conversations where your brand should potentially engage with current or potential customers that might not have been caught using your usual social media routine.

Understanding customer needs 

Social listening is a great way to access unlimited feedback from customers to improve products, services, and overall customer satisfaction. Customer insights can help your brand prepare audience-tailored content for more meaningful engagement and conversions.

Crisis management 

Social media crises can take many forms and cause short-term to potentially long-term damage. With social listening, negative comments can be identified, reported, and responded to quickly to reduce the risk of a potential crisis. Social media listening can also help understand what problems occurred and what can be done to avoid them in the future.

Discover market trends 

Social media trends come as quickly as they vanish. Social listening can help your brand act quickly on any social media trends and stay relevant in your industry.

Enhance your brand reputation 

Social listening can help you measure your social media presence and the value of organic search to help you position your brand in the best way possible.

Track your competition 

Back up your marketing strategy with a thorough competitor research analysis to know what your competitors are up to. Get a glimpse of what is working (or not working) in your industry. Your competitors’ customer feedback can also be leveraged to learn from their mistakes and offer solutions with products or services that they may be lacking.

Social Listening Strategies

Social listening involves the monitoring and analysis of social media conversations, mentions, and trends related to a specific brand, individual topic, or industry. A strong social listening strategy is key to understanding and identifying when and where you should focus your time and efforts.

Track and respond to mentions in real-time

Brands should monitor social media channels for any mentions of their brand, competitors, industry, products, services, and any specific keywords in real-time to provide a high engagement rate and high-quality customer service. Users enjoy interacting with brands to share their experiences with the brand and other users. Real-time responses become key to creating meaningful relationships with customers and building a strong online community.

Monitor sentiment and track changes over time

Performance measurement allows your brand to monitor sentiment and track any subtitle changes over time, positive or negative. This information will give you a feel for how your brand’s online reputation is growing, and enable you to react and make necessary changes in line with your social media goals.

Use social listening for crisis management

Social media listening and crisis management work hand-in-hand to identify comments, content, or any issues ahead of time. Your brand is then able to act quickly to reduce the chance of an escalating crisis. Social listening is crucial to stay on top of all related incoming content in this fast-paced social media world.

What Are Some Examples of Social Media Listening? 

Social media listening gives you an overview of conversations happening online related to your brand, industry, and competitors. Here are some examples of how social listening can help your brand:

• Negative complaints: React quickly to negative feedback, offer options to resolve it, and implement solutions to reduce the issue in the first place.
• Understand your audience: Actively listen and respond to user questions and issues to learn what they need, like, and dislike about your brand.
• Customer retention and engagement: A customer might tweet about how much they love your product or service. Reply to them to show your appreciation.
• Offer solutions: Spot a conversation about users discussing issues they are having with your products or services, and chime in to offer solutions.
• Attract new customers: Join conversations where people talk about issues that your products or services could resolve.
• Product development and marketing: Use customer feedback to improve a product or service, create a new one, or address technical issues with your website or applications.

Getting Started On Social Listening With ICUC 

Be the first to know what is being said about your brand on social media with our expert social listening service. Our expert teams will help you track and sort through conversations about your brand, competitors, and industry, as well as monitor social media opportunities, sales leads, trends, and sentiment. Our team’s goal 

Book a meeting with us to learn more about how our 24/7 social listening team can help your brand harness the power of social media listening.