With more than 5 billion active social media users around the world, your social listening strategy can help you tune in. Then, you’ll be able to monitor what your customers are saying about your business across a variety of platforms.
This allows you to listen to your customer base, learn more about them and interact with them.
You can also identify possible new customers, and learn more about your industry or competitors.
Social listening needs to be actionable. To use it to your advantage, you need to make the most out of conversations that happen about your brand and industry.
Here are 16 social listening strategies you can incorporate to grow your business and a bonus tool to execute your strategy:
1. Develop leads by pinpointing prospects
By tracking a range of terms, you can reveal users in your target market who may not know about your business.
To locate potential customers, track keywords and hashtags related to your niche that reflect:
- Trade publications
- Common practices
- Issues in your sector
- Leading figures and products
It can take between seconds and days to find posts containing your terms, depending on the social scale of your business and industry. Regardless, consider users who post with those terms as prospects.
The next step involves putting your social media sales hat on. Join the conversation by replying to them.
For example, give your opinion about a trend or send the prospect to a relevant page on your website.
This can earn you a fan and generate interest in your brand. The user may engage with you in the future or explore your website and eventually convert. Explore more ways to make you website profitable and monetize it in the best way possible.
2. Develop leads through dissatisfied competitor customers
With similar tactics, you can find users eager to try new products and services.
Track your competitors’ usernames, brand hashtags, and product names to locate prospects who may be tired of their services.
Along with these terms, monitor negative keywords such as:
- Not
- Can’t
- Won’t
- Doesn’t
Depending on your social media monitoring tool, this can be done by typing the following into the search function:
“competitor name” AND “negative keyword”
As you identify unhappy customers, ask them what they’re looking for in an ideal product. If you can meet their needs, link them to a demo, discount, or free trial.
But remember, they’re upset. Use gentle language and don’t force a reply from them.
3. Learn your audience’s language
Effectively marketing a product through content such as ads and landing pages involves speaking the audience’s language.
This is largely because it shows you understand their common train of thought. As a result, you can better communicate with them.
As you study posts that use your tracked keywords, you may notice that members of your market:
- Phrase concepts in a specific way
- Use common secondary keywords
- Write simple, complex, or somewhere-in-between sentences
Without compromising clarity, implement the findings in your content.
Unconvinced it’ll make a difference? Run a landing page A/B test using your writing style versus an adjusted style that uses your audience’s diction.
Go forward based on the winning conversion rate.
4. Identify influencers
As brands turn to popular online personalities to post about their products, social listening is becoming a viable way to identify influencers.
To find social media thought leaders in your niche, track the URLs and titles of:
- Popular blog posts
- Authoritative case studies
- Content from industry-leading blogs and publications
You then need to determine who’s earning the highest engagement rate when sharing this material.
Use this simple formula to calculate the engagement rate:
After you identify influencers, reach out to them by pitching your campaign idea. Explain how they’ll benefit and then ask for their participation.
5. Find feedback
Tracking your brand and product names can uncover customer feedback across niche and popular social platforms.
Combined with positive and negative terms, such as “does” and “doesn’t,” you can locate reviews, complaints, and endorsements.
As customers post positive comments, ask to use them as testimonials on your website, and make an effort to repost or retweet positive feedback.
This is a great strategy because it reminds your followers of the awesomeness of what you’re selling, and will likely interest new leads who happen to hear others raving about you.
Money saving app Piggybank does a great job at this. They repost the positive reviews they get from Twitter right on their Instagram page.
Since consumers resonate more easily with reviews from fellow consumers than from ads sent out by brands, Piggybank’s happy customers see fit to testify to the customer review Piggybank posted…
And there are also bottom-of-the-funnel customers asking how to get started; here’s one:
On the flip side, you can also find negative feedback or comments through social listening.
But what you do after getting bad reviews is what matters the most.
It can be overwhelming to take note of every single piece of negative feedback, but the trick is to find the public embarrassments your company can do something about and handle the situation with finesse and style that impresses onlookers.
For example, JetBlue got a tweet from a customer who was complaining about being on a flight that had a bad headphone jack and a malfunctioning TV.
JetBlue responded with what clearly looks like more than just an apology; they offered to compensate the customer with a $15 credit for the inconvenience (once she can confirm she’s the actual customer who had the experience).
6. Start conversations with users who don’t tag you
If you only pay attention to your direct mentions on platforms such as Twitter and Instagram, you can miss chances to connect with prospects and nurture leads.
As well as not tagging you, it’s common for users to:
- Misspell your name when trying to tag you
- Talk about your products or services without mentioning your business
- Misspell those products and services, too
The solution is to monitor the names of your business, products, and services, along with their common incorrect spellings.
For the latter, type the names into your phone. Note any autocorrects and create social listening trackers with your tool of choice. You can also think up misspellings on your own.
7. Keep tabs on industry news and developing trends
Monitoring the social web for news and trends can provide topics to post and blog about, keeping your content marketing strategy fresh.
To stay on top of what’s relevant, track keywords and usernames of big players and authoritative publications in your sector.
A tool like Keyhole can help you track other accounts, hashtags, or keywords.
Along with these keywords, monitor standard news terms such as:
- Breaking
- Developing
- Trending
Depending on your social listening software, you can do this by typing a news term and publication name into the search function:
“breaking” AND “Wall Street Journal”
As you collect data about news and trends, your business can demonstrate expertise by creating and promoting articles that explain a story’s background issues.
8. Track and measure the results of social campaigns
This may seem like a moot point to some, but many marketers don’t track social media campaigns run by rivals, role models, or even their own brands.
Since many social listening tools have analytics suites, you can collect data surrounding hashtag campaigns on Twitter, Instagram, and other platforms.
Beyond tracking performance, this data is useful for:
- Setting goals for future campaigns
- Analyzing which demographics within your target audience were most active, tailoring upcoming ads and content toward them
Another simple way to collect valuable data is to share your content using custom short URLs in place of generic short links.
By doing this, you’ll be able to collect click data at its source, giving you the ability to analyze your content’s performance, easily identify which types of content your audience engages with most, and set a strong social media strategy going forward. It’s also a good idea to take advantage of other marketing management tools to track results and make more informed decisions for future planning.
9. Discover new audience spaces
A multi-channel social listening strategy can reveal audience activity on platforms you didn’t know about.
You may uncover conversations surrounding trends, competitors and even your business by searching through different forums, communities and social sites.
For example, people thinking about cosmetic surgery may not take to Twitter to express their concerns. Instead, niche forums are more common:
As you discover platforms that audience members frequent, read their posts to gain more insights about their needs, desires, and pain points.
10. Answer indirect questions
Answering questions isn’t always a way to overtly promote your business. Rather, it introduces you to prospects and helps build rapport.
You’ll inevitably stumble upon queries as you track brand and industry keywords.
For example, if you make task managers, you’ll likely find questions about prioritization and project management. You can respond by giving an answer or link to a relevant blog post.
It’s less common for people to ask for task manager recommendations. But when that time comes, feel free to make the case for your product.
11. Monitor competitor content
Monitoring how your competitors’ content performs on social media can help your content strategy, ideas and tactics.
Since you likely share an audience with opposing businesses, content that works well for them can work well for you. And not only that – by monitoring your competition, you will also be able to spot new link insertion opportunities. Only look for a good match because not everything will be a good fit for you and your brand.
Start by tracking your competitors side-by-side. Depending on your tool, this should key generate engagement data – how many times it’s been engaged with, seen, etc. You may also see opinions and conversations about the piece.
Use these insights by:
- Seeing which issues and pain points resonate with your audience
- Modeling posts, studies, and infographics of the most popular content
- Reaching out to users when they have expressed discontentment with your competitors
Keyhole Comparisons allows you to monitor and compare competitor content such as their accounts and hashtags.
12. Create customer and prospect personas
Analyzing the profiles of users who post with your monitored terms is a way to build buyer personas – representations of customer groups to help you understand your target markets.
First, make a spreadsheet and fill it with the profile URLs of people who use your brand-specific keywords and hashtags. Second, once you’re comfortable with the size of your list, look at each profile for information about:
- Age
- Gender
- Position
- Industry
- Business size and scope
Third, sort the profiles into groups based on this data. You may be surprised to learn which kinds of people make up your social audience.
Understanding who you’re communicating with should boost clicks and teach you how to increase social media engagement as you craft messages and campaigns.
13. Research and develop
You can think up ideas worth investigating by sifting through social listening reports, such as:
- Creating new services or products
- Launching events or campaigns your audience would likely enjoy
- Altering brand positioning based on what consumers say about you and the competition
Depending on your organization’s structure, putting these ideas into action could involve collaborating with a different department or the team member beside you.
Regardless, uncovering them starts by tracking broad industry terms.
For example, if you’re a marketer for an analytics brand, you might monitor “metrics” and “social data.” You’ll eventually see someone express a need or desire. Reach out if you can already solve their pain point.
If not, consider taking the necessary steps to do so.
14. Detect and mitigate issues before they escalate
Monitoring brand and industry keywords can inform you when concerns and problems develop, helping you quickly react.
Let’s say you’re in the software business. One day, you notice someone tweeting about a significant error.
You would immediately try to replicate that error, and:
- If you can replicate it, try to fix it. Then, reach out to the user to explain it’s on the mend.
- If you can’t replicate it, show your concern. Tweet with the user and ask for more information.
A slow, or non-existent, reaction can push customers away and damage your reputation.
15. Send bottom-of-the-funnel customers to gated free trials, product pages, or waiting lists
Bottom-of-the-funnel consumers are also always lurking around conversations about your industry, brand, or specific product.
These people have heard about your brand before.
And they’re ready to buy. They just need a few questions answered.
So they ask questions like “Is there a version that will include xyz feature coming soon?” OR “Can your product do this specific thing?” If you’re keeping tabs on conversations in your industry, you’ll be able to pull these prospects into the fold.
In 2017, Audi had a tweet where a prospective buyer (Godwin) asked if they had any new upgrades on a couple of their cars.
Audi responded saying the feature is coming in 2018, and sent the buyer a link where he could sign up with them to get updated once it’s out.
Once the buyer clicks the link, Audi sends him to a well-designed landing page where he’s being welcomed as a lead. The car brand gets his info and gets the chance to alert him once his desired feature is out in the market.
This means while Audi is responding to Godwin with a signup form to fill, there are probably other potential buyers around who have the same question Godwin asked and would sign up to get updates from Audi as well — via the same page Audi sent to Godwin.
This way, Audi is using social listening as a tactic to generate more leads for their new car upgrade coming in 2018.
It’s a powerful social listening strategy to monitor these industry interactions and earn the opportunity to convert bottom-of-the-funnel prospects into actual paying buyers.
And if, like Audi, you don’t already have the feature or exact product a potential buyer is asking for, have a well-designed page ready to convert the person into a lead — so you have the opportunity to draw them back to your business when it’s time.
16. Refer top-of-the-funnel customers to ungated content
Top-of-the-funnel customers are also lurking around.
There’s always someone hearing about your brand or product for the first time, or seeing conversations about your brand or industry.
Unlike those on the bottom-of-the funnel, these people aren’t ready to buy anything.
They only want to learn more about the matter being discussed — your product, brand or industry.
You can refer these customers to a piece of content, a handy tool, or any value that answers their questions and get them ready to buy.
Audi, in the example above, sent ready-to-buy prospects right from social interactions to a gated page; should you do the same for top-of-the-funnel customers? Not quite.
Picture this for a moment: you go to Twitter and find a promoted tweet that interests you. The tweet is from a brand you’ve never seen or heard of before, promoting a product you don’t entirely understand.
So you’re curious. You want to learn more about what’s being promoted. You reply to the tweet asking “How do I get started?”
To which the brand replies, “Go to [this url] to learn how to get started.”
Would you click or not? You probably would. After all, you’re the one looking for answers.
But upon arrival on the page, you find a form asking for your personal information.
Would you give your information just to learn more about a product? You probably won’t. Especially when you’re just trying to see how to get started with a product.
If you were ready to get started, that’s a different case, you’d sign up. But gating a page that’ll teach you how to get started? Not ideal.
So it’s best to make your tool, content, or any other value ungated for people who just want to “learn more”.
Bonus: A social listening tool to grow your business
A great social monitoring tool will analyze the most engaging posts about your brand, alert you when influencers talk about you or identify possible influencers, as well as indicate when a keyword or topic you’re tracking is being buzzed about on social platforms.
Keyhole monitors real-time and historical data around URLs, hashtags, keywords and usernames on Twitter and Instagram.
By inputting up to five terms in this social listening tool’s search function, it will generate and track metrics such as:
- The number of posts and people using your terms
- User demographic information, including gender and location
- Top posts, based on engagement data such as shares and replies
- Influence data, such as which users are drawing the most attention to your tracked terms
In a shareable and printable dashboard, it displays this data in tables, timelines, pie charts and bar graphs.
Price: Custom
Whether people are having conversations directly about your brand, your industry, or your competitors, there’s a constant information exchange at high volumes.
Social listening can contribute greatly to your business’s growth in a variety of different ways. You need to keep listening and monitoring to inform your social media and business strategies.
Keyhole is a real-time conversation tracker that provides keyword and hashtag analytics for Twitter and Instagram.
Related Articles:
Top 29 Social Listening Tools for Marketers
Frequently Asked Questions
What are social listening strategies?
Social listening strategies help you monitor what your customers are saying about your business across a variety of platforms. This allows you to listen to your customer base, learn more about them and interact with them. You can also identify possible new customers, and learn more about your industry or competitors.
What are social listening tools?
A social listening tool analyzes the most engaging posts about your brand, alert you when influencers talk about you or identify possible influencers, as well as indicate when a keyword or topic you’re tracking is being buzzed about on social platforms.
What are the top social listening strategies?
Here are the top social listening strategies:
1. Develop leads by pinpointing prospects
2. Develop leads through dissatisfied competitor customers
3. Learn your audience’s language
4. Identify influencers
5. Find feedback
6. Start conversations with users who don’t tag you
7. Keep tabs on industry news and developing trends
8. Track and measure the results of social campaigns
9. Discover new audience spaces
10. Answer indirect questions
11. Monitor competitor content
12. Create customer and prospect personas
13. Research and develop
14. Detect and mitigate issues before they escalate
15. Send bottom-of-the-funnel customers to gated free trials, product pages, or waiting lists
16. Refer top-of-the-funnel customers to ungated content
