Social listening, or social media listening, is the process of monitoring and analyzing social media conversations that are relevant to your business.
A smartphone lying down with sound waves on it: social listening
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What is social listening?
How does social listening work?
Social Listening Metrics
What is the difference between social listening and social monitoring?
4 advantages of social listening
4 Tips for Successful Social Listening
Frequently asked questions about social listening
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In Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' 1987 graphic novel Watchmen , the character Adrian Veidt is the smartest man alive.
He watches tons of TV channels at once, allowing him to instantly get a full picture of the current social climate, anticipate future events, and plan accordingly.
Today, this is essentially the role of a social media analyst: processing information from various data streams and synthesizing it into useful insights. This type of analysis is known as social listening.
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Social listening can help businesses of all sizes optimize their marketing and business strategies.
Below, learn more about social listening and how you can start implementing it.
What is social listening?
Social listening (or social media listening) is canadian consumer email lists the process of monitoring and analyzing social media channels relevant to your business. For example, you can track mentions of your brand, mentions of competing brands, and specific keywords related to your products, services, or industry.
A social listening strategy can provide you with insights into consumer behavior, audience preferences, industry trends, and competitor activities.
Companies can use this information to build relationships with current and potential customers, increase brand loyalty, optimize marketing campaigns, and tailor their products and services to market needs.
You can engage in social listening on any social media platform, but since this practice relies on user comments and posts, companies tend to start with platforms where their target audiences are active and engaged.
How does social listening work?
Social listening involves monitoring social media channels to gain insights and analyzing social listening data. The results of this analysis allow you to assess how consumers feel about your brand, revealing opportunities for improvement.
Social listening tools like Hootsuite and Talkwalker Alerts help you categorize mentions or comments based on brand sentiment. This process is known as sentiment analysis (or opinion mining), and it can help you determine whether consumers perceive your brand positively, negatively, or neutrally.
For example, a company could analyze all mentions of its brand, determine what percentage of customers are dissatisfied with its products, and identify themes or similarities in the complaints. If a common complaint is that its products break easily, the company might consider releasing a more durable model or offering a warranty.
Social Listening Metrics
Companies collect social listening data using specific metrics. Here are some key metrics to track:
Reach. The number of people who see a social media post containing a tracked keyword.
Interactions. The number of likes, comments, clicks, and shares on an individual post with a tracked keyword.
Engagement Rate. The percentage of users reached who interact with that post, or engagement rate = post interactions/post reach x 100 .
Mentions. The number of times social media users mention a brand or other tracked keyword.
Social share of voice (SoSV). The percentage of conversations that mention a brand compared to those that mention competing brands, or SoSV = [number of mentions of your brand/(number of mentions of competing brands + number of mentions of your brand)] x 100 .
Social sentiment. The distribution of neutral, positive and negative opinions expressed for a particular keyword, or social sentiment = (total number of positive mentions - total number of negative mentions) / total number of mentions .
What is the difference between social listening and social monitoring?
Both social listening and social media monitoring involve tracking online conversations and tracking mentions of your brand (known as brand monitoring), but they are not the same thing. They differ in a few key ways, such as:
What they're telling you. Essentially, social monitoring tells you what people are saying about your business or industry, while social listening involves analysis of why they're saying it.
The purpose. The main goal of social monitoring is to track the performance of marketing campaigns and allow you to protect your brand reputation. Social listening allows a company to dig deeper into the context of an online conversation, analyzing aggregate data on consumer perceptions in a given market.
The impact over time. A social monitoring strategy often focuses on immediate responses to negative comments on social media. Social listening, on the other hand, seeks to provide useful information that companies can use to inform long-term strategic decisions about marketing and business strategy.
4 advantages of social listening
Improving customer service
Improve products or services
Discover industry and market trends
Optimize marketing campaigns
Here are some ways social listening can help your brand.
1. Improve customer service
Social listening can help you understand the current customer experience . You can use this information to make adjustments and improve customer satisfaction , including alerting your customer service team to potential issues.
For example, a company could monitor social media channels for comments that address customer service issues, conduct a sentiment analysis of customer service, and use the themes in customer comments to identify areas for improvement.
The company could also use a social listening tool to identify other companies with exceptional customer service programs, find out why they are so successful, and adopt those tactics for their business.