While it’s important to post on social media, it is equally important to know what is being said about your business.
Social media listening tools allow you to identify and assess what people are posting on social media about your business, gaining key insight into how your brand is perceived. Sprout Social defines it as “the process of tracking conversations around specific topics, keywords, phrases, brands or industries, and leveraging your insights to discover opportunities or create content for those audiences.”
These tools can influence your social media strategy and your marketing objectives by providing engagement analytics and a target audience. By listening to what your audience and influencers are saying or asking, you can direct your messaging or build more engagement. But how do you get started? Here are three tools that will help you listen.
#1: Hootsuite
Often associated with social media monitoring, Hootsuite can provide insight about what is being said around keywords and topics. It acts as a scraping service that pulls information based on your search keyword, hashtag, or handle, which you can then save into a stream for easy access. By having access to this information, you can address the issues, concerns, questions, or praise as soon as it comes in.
This quick response time is key for engagement, as the average social media user expects answers within 4 hours. By quickly addressing these posts, you can develop a social media strategy that uses keywords to build audiences and find new influencers.
#2: IFTTT
IFTTT (If This Then That) provides opportunities to monitor RSS feeds across platforms beyond social media. Whether it’s blogs, news stories, or other posts, IFTTT can pull information on what people are saying about your brand. As the title notes, this free service allows you to create a “cause and effect” reaction — when an alert is generated, you can create a reaction that notifies you immediately, which can be through email, tweet, text, phone call, and several other options.
#3: Mention
A paid service, Mention can pull insights from social media posts, blogs, news stories, and even images (like Instagram and Pinterest). You can even select what languages you monitor content in. This tool provides insights into social monitoring and analytics (and maybe some competitor spying). Once you’ve connected what sources you want to monitor, you can select the brand you would like information on. The service will even offer options for similar brands, and the ability to monitor them, as well. Then, once the results start pouring in, you can begin looking at those statistics to see what your demographics are like, the most used platforms by influencers and customers, and whether mentions are overall positive, negative or neutral. Mention can provide a plethora of information to help you meet marketing objectives and support your social media strategy.
Ready to get started? Contact Aliya Hammond Consulting to leverage the most of your social media platforms, as well as your monitoring and listening tools, through training sessions and social media management.
You’ve probably realized by now that Social Media is no longer an option. In fact, it is a vital and highly successful tool for building a business. Aliya Hammond Consulting is an online Digital Marketing, Training, and Consulting Company headquartered in the greater Philadelphia area. We specialize in Social Media Management and Marketing, Social Media Training, Blog Writing, and Graphic Design Services for small and large businesses, entrepreneurs, and non-profit organizations. If you are looking to improve or increase your online presence, you can rest assured you are in good hands with us. Contact Aliya Hammond Consulting today to find out how we can help your business grow!
