Social media management is crucial for any business. However, there’s a huge misunderstanding of how to approach social media in a beneficial way. Most people seem to jump on social media only long enough to talk about their company or what they sell, and then they jump off. But that’s actually detrimental to your business. Think about it, if you’re talking to someone you’re hoping will become a customer, do you say your hellos and then jump into hard selling your company? No way! People would walk the other way. So why is that the norm for businesses on social media?
If you want successful social media platforms for your business, you need to be ready to dedicate some serious time and thought to it. If it isn’t a priority or isn’t steady, there’s no way you’ll see benefit. If you are willing to put in the work though, you’ll need to break your social media efforts into more four categories. The first and most important piece is social listening.
Listen and they will come
Social listening is exactly what it sounds like: monitoring social media channels to determine what people are saying about your industry, brand, competitors, products, or any other topic that is important to your business. Paying attention to your audience online gives the impression that you care about them and take your business seriously, which establishes trust. It also is a great way to research what your audience’s wants and needs, so you can better cater to them. On the other hand, monitoring your competitors is a great way to conduct competitor research and determine what’s lacking from your current marketing efforts. By spending time digging into all the conversations happening online about your industry and brand, you’ll be armed with information to make your company better.
Building a strategy
You don’t just practice social listening for a few minutes every day, and go about your business. Instead, you should be taking the insights you gain to build a more informed social media and marketing strategy. After you finish the monitoring part of social listening, you should use this information to:
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Track your brand’s image – even the smallest businesses have comments and engagement going on every once in a while on social media. If you see a comment, your job is answer it as quickly as possible. Negative comments should be moved to direct messages and soon as possible to negate any public damage. If you see a post got a ton of engagement, take note and do more posts like that.
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Create blog and marketing content – practicing social listening will put you entirely in tune with your industry. All this information from thought leaders, competitors, personas, and more will keep you in touch with the most up-to-date information and hot topics. To position your company as an industry leader, you need to build blog content and marketing strategy around this information you gain. You already know it’s what people are looking for – you just need to give it to them.
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Fix broken things – when customers are unhappy, they’ll let you know. Social listening will allow you to know what issues your persona has with your company or your industry. Use this information to fix the problems or concerns and build a more successful customer experience. No matter how simple the fix, it will go a long way for improving the credibility of your brand and relationship with your persona.
Put it into practice
Now, we aren’t just dishing out advice and not practicing what we preach. Social listening is part of our social media management for all marketing clients every day. It allows us to stay on top of the most important topics and comments regarding each client’s industry, and we use what we learn from social listening to build new strategies and messaging. Every day, we:
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Respond to any messages or comments on all social media platforms.
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On Twitter and Instagram, search for mentions of company name and two industry-related keywords. During the search, engage with a total of four people per platform by commenting on their posts/tweets.
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On Twitter and Instagram, search for three relevant industry-related keywords and like three posts per platform.
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On Twitter and Instagram, search for industry thought leaders and connect with three of them per platform.
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On Twitter, search for three relevant industry-related keywords and retweet one.
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Look at all social media profiles of two competitors and see what they’ve been posting about and what people have been asking them. Add popular topics as well as user questions to a document for future ideas.
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While looking at these profiles, select two examples of great posts from each platform. Add these posts to a document for future ideas.
There are other additions and variations every day to the above items, but these several tasks stay consist. That is because social listening is the foundation of a successful social media strategy. It is crucial for staying relevant among competitors and developing every other piece of marketing. Start with the above bullet points, and build your most effective social listening strategy from these.
If you put social listening into practice every day, you will become more knowledgeable in your industry, know what your audience wants and needs, track how your competitors are doing, and see more engagement on your social platforms. Do yourself a favor and make it an everyday task in your social media management. Want to know more about social media and how to build a great strategy? We’d love to chat with you! Shoot us an email at info@wespeakeasy.com, and we will get back to you as soon as possible.
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