What is Social Media Listening?

Social media listening (a.k.a. social media monitoring) is a process in which you identify conversations that are happening online about your company. As an added bonus, you can also use social media listening to keep tabs on your competitors.

People are talking about your brand online — do you know what they are saying?

The Basics of Social Media Listening

There are a number of both paid and free tools you can use to monitor conversations taking place on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and other social media platforms. Hootsuite is one great example of a tool with both free and inexpensive paid options for both social media listening as well as scheduling and managing social media posts across all of your channels.

Most apps work in similar ways. Simply set up a keyword search or select specific social media profiles to follow, and you’ll get a live stream digest of the conversations you want to “listen” to.

Advanced Levels of Social Media Listening

If you want to see hard numbers and stats to show you what is being said online and how well your social media campaign is performing, more advanced tools like uberVU (recently acquired by Hootsuite) and SproutSocial may be worth the investment.

While Hootsuite does provide basic analytics, some of the more advanced tools allow you to track social media mentions for your own brand, as well as competitors. Those numbers are then put into a line graph to allow you (or your company executives) to visualize what is taking place online and how that activity compares to competitors.

The Benefits of Social Media Listening

Not only does social media listening allow you to follow what is being said about your brand online, it also provides the opportunity to start conversations, build relationships and offer an increased level of customer service to your consumers.

For example, someone who has a negative experience with a product or company may take to social media to vent his or her frustrations. An effective social media listening strategy allows you to pinpoint those negative conversations and reach out to the customer in a more personal and time-effective manner.

Whether or not you think your brand has something to “say” on social media, at the very least, you should be monitoring social media conversations about your company, brand or products. If not, you are missing out on valuable opportunities to engage new customers and establish lasting relationships with existing customers.

Frozen Fire is a Dallas internet marketing and video production company that helps companies harness the most powerful aspect of modern marketing—the internet—to engage customers in memorable and meaningful ways. Ways that ignite sales and business growth. Contact us to learn how we can help your business.