In recent years, more and more brands are using social media listening tools to help optimize their social media efforts. The key to offering consumers what they are looking for is central to increasing efficiency, preventing bad decision making and improving revenues.

Social media listening is often used interchangeably with social media monitoring. Over the past couple of years, innovators have created their own version of social media listening tools to help brands on social media and search.

In this article, we will look at the Top 5 Social Media Listening Tips for Brands. We will also be looking at the meaning of social media listening. Finally, we will be discussing some of the best social media listening tools on the market in 2019.

Social Media Listening: Meaning and Definition

Social media platforms are a highly dynamic and engaging medium for interacting with consumers. The ‘real-time’ nature of the platform encourages fast communications, speedy interactions, and prompt responses.

According to experts, social media listening is a form of intelligence gathering on social and search. It helps in optimizing all processes and operations right from the discovery of a new consumer to maintaining repeat consumers.

By hearing what people are saying about your brand, you can improve their experiences vis-à-vis your brand. In other words, you can use tools and listen to what people are saying or searching for on-

• Online forums
• Comments on social media
• Reaching out to prospects for new launches and offerings
• Analyzing data and insights to help create new digital campaigns

In short, social media monitoring can help brands in research, planning, execution, and follow-ups on the search and social.

Top 5 Social Media Listening Tips for Brands: The List

1. Respond to Brand Mentions in real-time

If you are using a social media monitoring tool, you need to fulfill its primary purpose. Connecting and engaging with fans as your brand mentions are happening. No matter what the nature of the mention, positive or negative, reaching out to consumers helps build trust, credibility and shows that you care.

Many big disasters can be prevented and you can win over a consumer for life. Some of the biggest brands use social media listening tools to publicize how swiftly they responded to a complaint.

2. Create an Influencer Marketing Strategy using the tools-

While not all social media listening tools offer this feature, the best ones help you find content creators in your niche. If you are planning to run an Influencer Campaign on social media with multiple influencers and a long time-frame, you would need to check on their progress.

A social media listening tool helps you not only connect with influencers, but also shows you data, analytics, and insights about the Influencer. This is an invaluable asset that helps keep track of progress, performance, and optimizations.

3. Focus on Analytics and Data

Data and analytics from social media monitoring tools are a roadmap to improve your social media activities. Whether it is for planning for future campaigns or assessing a past campaign, data becomes crucial.

I find it most helpful when I am trying to use this for a future Product Launch campaign. Doing homework and research especially at the planning stage eliminates the potential for failures at the execution stage.

4. Study your Competition’s Behaviour regularly

There is a lot that a brand can learn by analyzing what its major competitor or industry authority brand is doing. This helps you understand their progress and plans. It also helps you to better them when it comes to marketing and sales.

A brand, which is completely isolated and focusing on its own operations, does not give room for improvement. A social media listening tool helps you with not only your business but also helps you get an insight into what others are doing.

5. Narrow down on what you want to target for

Setting ten keywords is just going to help you gather that much noise. Ideally, you do not want to do that. It is always better to go for less number of keywords and target them aggressively. Your brand name should be a keyword, along with the industry of which you are apart.

For example, food brands use social media monitoring tools to go one up on their competitors. They target their competitor mentions and respond to their consumers offering solutions in real-time. This also makes for some hilarious ‘Tweet Wars’.

The Best Social Media Listening Tool of 2019

While brands like Social Sprout and Hootsuite have been around for ages, they have not been innovative enough in recent years. A good social media monitoring tool helps create a helpful ecosystem for the best performance.

For the past few months, one tool that has really captured my attention is Famm.io. In terms of providing data, mentions and sentiment analysis, the tool is right up there with industry leaders. However, what makes it great are two critical elements-

1. It helps you find and connect with Content Creators in your industry niche. You can not only connect with them but also run Influencer Marketing campaigns by tracking your mentions.
2. The tool helps integrate one of the most powerful Email Validation Software in the industry (Snov.io). This helps you further speed up the process of verification, validation, and follow-ups.

While social media listening tools offer you an incomplete deal, Famm.io helps you in a rather 360-degree kind of away. Once you start using it, you will never want to try something else. In terms of data, layouts, experience, and potency, it works great. You can even track brand mentions on platforms like Telegram with it.

Conclusion

With nearly four billion active users on social media, no brand can afford to ignore it. However, in order to stand out, it is necessary to cut through the noise of social media and connect directly with your target audience.

A powerful social media monitoring tool helps you do that effortlessly. It is no surprise then that social media marketing services have taken so strongly towards integrating a ‘listening’ dimension.

Which are some of the best social media listening tools that you are currently using? Do let me know in the comments section below.

If you want to perfect your social media marketing strategy, you might want to look at engaging the services of experts. Setting up your own social media team might be too expensive of a proposition, which might not deliver results. This is why some of the best startups and MNCs work with social media company dubai for improved performance and returns.

Read Also:

• Branding in the Age of Social Media
• A Business Owner’s Guide to Creating Successful Social Media Marketing Campaigns