Social Listening: Are You Doing It Right?

There’s a saying that content is king. It’s true.  If you aren’t consistently producing valuable content, no one is paying attention.  But, if content is king, I’d argue that social listening is god.  You can’t have valuable content without listening to what your audience’s needs are, what they’re talking about, or what interests them.  Yes, you can create great content with questions followers and customers ask you directly, but you can find more ideas by listening.  How can you make social listening work for your business?

Above all, know who you’re listening to.  You are listening to your target market – and you need to know who that is.  Make your target audience a person:  what are their demographics?  What are their interests?  What’s important to them?  What drives their buying decisions?  And so on.  THEN you can find people like the avatar you’ve created and listen to them.

Know where to listen.  This ties in with on which social channels you should be.  It’s a missed opportunity if you’re listening on Instagram, but your audience is mostly interacting on YouTube, for example. 

Follow hashtags that are relevant to your content and business/industry.  This takes some time in the beginning, but once you find the right hashtags, you can follow them and listen to conversations.  Consider the hashtags you already use as a good starting point.  You can also search for “hashtag finder” which will bring up different websites that will generate hashtag ideas. 

Listen with your curiosity and problem-solving ears, not your sales ears.  Yes, your product or service can likely solve a lot of your target market’s problems, but you want to create value and trust with your content. 

As you’re listening, interact and offer help.  Of course, good listening will provide you with great content to share on your own channels and website, but it will also be a good opportunity to interact with people right then.  If they like what you have to say, they’ll check out the other content – and eventually products and services – that you offer. This is how you get more followers, fans, then customers. 

Listening to your audience will help with content, customer service, advertising – all of your marketing.