5 Simple Steps to Social Listening (and ‘what is social listening’ anyway?)
Social listening is one of the best ways of staying competitive within your industry. A good and effective social listening plan allows you to:
- Make a competitor analysis; see what others in your industry are doing, and decide you need to make any changes.
- Identify any upcoming opportunities or leads.
- Keep up with what’s happening in your industry.
- See what others are saying about your brand or product. The importance of this one cannot be overstressed, particularly if your business is in the hospitality industry. Approximately 82% of people will decide whether to go ahead with a purchase based on online reviews. If people are not saying super-positive things about you, you need to know!
Here are some tips on getting your own social listening strategy in place:
- Set aside some time each week for this. I usually spend a couple of hours. You may not be able to commit to this amount of time but try and aim for at least 45 minutes.
- Make yourself a cup of tea and on your notepad or screen mark out four columns: Date / Platform / Items/ Notes.
- Start with the main social platforms where your target audience is likely to be. Think about their demographics (age, location, interests). If you’re a recruiter then Linkedin is a good starting point. If you’re a hotel then Trip Advisor makes sense. If you’re a hairdresser then maybe Instagram.
- Keywords and #s. Most of us are familiar with keywords i.e. specific words or terms which your target audience will search for (‘hotel in York’ or ‘organic dog food’). For social listening purposes, you could try searching for all or some of these:
Your own brand name — and any misspellings or versions of it e.g. ‘Maria’s Cakes’ ‘Marya’s Cakes’ ‘Marie’s Cakes’ ‘Mary’s Cakes’;
Your competitors’ brand names (and misspellings); Your product e.g. ‘bed and breakfast in York’, ‘Italian food in Doncaster’.
The names of key people in your particular field.
Your competitors’ names.
Slogans or sayings e.g. ‘never knowingly undersold’.
Industry terminology.
- You could do the same with hashtags. These work in the similar way to keywords, and in fact are often keywords grouped together. They are used to sort content and create campaigns. Not every social channel uses them e.g. they’re not used much on Facebook, but they are used very heavily on Instagram and Twitter. (You can read a full discussion of them and learn how to use them yourself here).
- To search for relevant hashtags, hop on Instagram and type in your industry in the search bar. You will see that beneath the search bar there will be a little # icon which will bring up industry specific hashtags for you to search under. Keep a note of these for future searches. They can change quite quickly so perhaps do a fresh search once a month or so. And don’t just stick to the massive popular #s with millions of uses! The less used quirkier ones can be a goldmine of information too.
To get the most out of your searching, think about the following questions:
- What is my competitor saying to their audience? What’s the message in their post?
- Why have they chosen to say this?
- Are there any particular trends or themes in the posts I am reading?
- When I read reviews, what are main things people are happy or unhappy about?
- Are there any events coming up that I should be doing something for (if your competitors are, then you probably should!)
- What are my industry leaders or figureheads talking about this week? How might this affect me?
At the end of your session, the columns on your page should be populated. Under ‘Items’ you could just write a summary of what the relevant articles or posts were saying.
Under ‘Notes’ you might have written some action steps or things to follow up on if you decide you want to.
At the end of your session, you should have a useful snapshot of what’s going on in your industry right now — and, more importantly, how it might directly affect your business.
I hope you find social listening fun and productive! As ever, please do let me know if you have any questions.
