Social Media Listening (also called Social Media Monitoring) is becoming a must-have marketing strategy for many businesses. According to Social Media Today, social media monitoring is defined as “the process of finding out what’s being said about your company, products, brand, and team on social media, and analyzing that data.”
When used correctly, social media listening can become one of the most effective tools to compete with your competitors, improve customer service and easily schedule and monitor your social posts. Let’s explore some of these benefits.
Compete
In today’s social media landscape, it is becoming increasingly difficult to stand out among the competition. If you want to gain an advantage over the competition on social media, turning to social listening/monitoring could be what you’re looking for.
Social media monitoring allows you to track what customers are saying about you AND your competitors. By setting up keyword tracking, you are able to monitor any content related to your company’s products and services. This means you will be able to monitor conversations surrounding your competitor’s products as well as your own. Take this opportunity to respond to customers complaining about a competitor’s services to promote your own.
With this information, you can adjust your marketing and business strategies accordingly, bring in potential new customers, and increase engagement with your audience all by monitoring the conversations surrounding your company.
Improve Customer Service
Customer service is a huge reason people unfollow a brand on social media or stop supporting them altogether. Make sure your customer service game is strong by using social media monitoring tools. Because you can monitor all your different social accounts on one platform, it is easy to see and respond to customer feedback. Social media monitoring helps you respond to your customers in a timely manner and not miss any comments or DMs coming through.
When you’re focused on listening to your customers you understand that there will be both positive and negative feedback coming through your channels. Remember to not take everything too personally as negative feedback presents a unique opportunity for improvement.
Easily Schedule Posts
Perhaps one of the greatest benefits to social media monitoring is how easy it is to manage and track all of your social media accounts. This tool is especially useful if you are on multiple platforms (like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook) or you manage multiple client’s social media accounts.
Social listening tools allow you to connect all your accounts and easily schedule posts directly through the monitoring platform. This eliminates the need to go to each individual social media platform to post the same content. You can also schedule posts weeks and months in advance so you can leverage long-term content strategies. You can set up posts to be reviewed by different employees, maintain a content calendar, and easily make edits directly on the platform. Social Media monitoring is your key to unlocking your next level of social media marketing potential.
Finding the Best Platforms to Use
Now that we’ve gone over the benefits of social listening, its only fitting that I share with you the most used and loved platforms out there. Most of these platforms come with free options, but to get the full range of services you will have to pay a price. Paid platforms are usually best for those businesses managing multiple accounts or who regularly produce a lot of content.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is one of the best social monitoring platforms on the market. It offers a great free service with many benefits as well as a premium option for even more tools and services. Hootsuite allows you to add Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and WordPress on their service and manage those accounts by scheduling posts across all platforms. It also includes a feature that allows you to delegate tasks to other employees handling the accounts as well.
Sprinklr
The advantage of using Sprinklr is that it delivers analytics on all your accounts so you can effectively manage your social media content and strategy. In 2018, it was named the world’s number one social media management platform. This platform is used by some of the world’s biggest brands to drive results. Companies like McDonald’s Nike, Allstate, and more use Sprinklr. However, with big perks comes big prices and Sprinklr does not offer a free version of their platform. However, if you’re looking for a social media management/ listening platform that offers all the tools you need in one place, Sprinklr is your one-stop-shop.
HubSpot
Hubspot is known for its marketing and social media certifications, CRM software, its popular blog and just general tips and tricks on how to navigate the world of social media. But, it also boasts a very popular social media management platform. Hubspot does a good job of catering to small and large businesses alike so no matter your company size, they’ve got you covered. Their platform allows you to see analytics and results in real-time and lets you monitor social media content, advertising, email marketing and more right from the dashboard.
There are so many more great options out there for you to use, so do some research and see which platforms work best for you and your business. Social media management tools prove extremely useful when looking to take your social media marketing to the next level. With everything in one place, it is easy to monitor your competition, improve your customer service and increase engagement with your audience all from a single platform. This could be your brand’s next step toward your social media success.
At Adams Media Group, we work with businesses to create social media marketing campaigns that drive results. If you need a marketing agency to help you take your online presence to the next level, then contact our talented team today!
