What is Social Listening?

July 31, 2023

Social Media

Listening more is a habit we should all embody, and this also applies on social media. Social listening can be a tricky aspect to master since it involves a lot of technical sides. Despite this, we will attempt to answer what social listening is and how it applies to marketing strategies.

What is Social Listening?

Before pitching to a client, marketers need to whip up a plan that involves having to analyze netizens and their interactions. These can include figuring out what is trending between different age groups, what products are famous, why it is famous, etc., and how all of it relates to a certain business.

Social Listening allows for clients to further understand how a target audience speaks about their business, while also opening a window into what the audience thinks about certain competitors. To put it simply, it is the act of monitoring a client’s business, competitors, and keywords pertaining to the business.

The number of conversations netizens are having online can be referred to as raw data. There are a million things being said about another million different things, which is why it’s crucial to have a solid strategy to organize the data to see what is beneficial and what is not.

Why is it important?

Tons of consumer data can be obtained from social listening that can be used for a business’ brand awareness to improve the services and products that are being provided to customers. There are different types of consumer data that can be determined too, and these can include

• How well a marketing campaign has done
• How customers reacted to different campaigns
• Determining trends that the company can take advantage of
• Customer feedback

Real-life Applications

For example, Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour is dominating world charts currently, and fans are swarming to purchase concert tickets, book flights, and get their hotel reservations under way. If the client’s business is related to traveling, this tactic will help them see what hotels and flights are popular amongst Swifties. This can help the client figure out what needs to be done in order to boost their own business.

Another great example would be how gaming companies actively listen to their fanbases on social media, and actively try to seek out what is being said about their games, which then leads to multiple bug fixes and events that players would love. This is the mark of a good gaming company.

Since this is the case, social listening opens up a lot of new roads that you didn’t know were there. Listening to users online can uncover things about a business that previously were not there. These can pertain to certain application bugs or whatnot. This leads to great customer service as well.

Is Social Listening hard to achieve?

Social listening is meant to analyze the conversations between netizens that can be responded to by marketers with a strategy. Marketers he need to understand how the target audience talks and interacts. Moreover, marketers should also be familiar with the social media platform used since interaction differs here.

Final Thoughts on Social Listening

The center of social listening still lies in how it can tap into your business, and competitors. It opens windows to competitors and generally is a good way to tap into potential customers’ (or old customers) thoughts.

Overall, it offers only raw data so it is still up to us to decipher it. Understanding the audience is key to a great social media strategy.