With the digital world being as widespread as it is, it is becoming increasingly important for brands to keep an eye on their social listening and social media monitoring. While the two terms may sound like substitutes for one another, you need both to work in tandem in actuality. You see, social media monitoring is the method through which we gather data about what the audience is saying, and social listening is the method through which we organize this data and respond systematically. Let us take a closer look at this.
What is social media monitoring?
Social media monitoring is a tactic that is used to find out what your audience wants and needs. By implementing a social media monitoring approach, you can gather information and understand your audience’s feedback, requirements, and desires. It is an invaluable way to gain precious information to either help you craft better stories for your customers or react more appropriately to issues. However, this step is still in the preliminary phase of the ladder and needs social listening to bring the collected information to good use.
What are the benefits of social media monitoring?
1. Amplify Customer Service
Customer service is no longer about being reactive. It is about being proactive and taking the first step in reaching out to your customers who truly matter. Because while you may be busy with a conversation, a disgruntled customer may be sending tweets complaining about your brand! That is why it is becoming increasingly important to have effective social media monitoring tools in place that keep you updated with all brand mentions and messages.
2. Crisis Control
Negative buzz can appear on social media, comment sections of blogs, forums, or other websites. When it comes to the web, bad news travels fast and farther than you think. Having an effective social media monitoring system in place will help you keep this in check.
3. Competitive Analysis
Along with the customer complaints, you can also see what experiences and content that your competitors are providing, which is making their followers interact with them. You can also find out which of your competitors can get their followers to spread their word about them – which is important for increasing brand awareness.
What is social listening?
Social listening tools allow you to effectively listen, engage with your customers, and keep up with industry trends. Social listening allows you to learn about your customers in real-time by analyzing their conversations. This allows you to understand your audience, be more transparent and develop a more personable relationship with them. As brands increase their social media presence, social listening is an excellent way of listening in on the conversations and increasing customer engagement.
What are the benefits of social listening?
1. Identify Your True Advocates
Identifying those customers who just love your brand and want to talk about it needs to be part of your overall marketing strategy, and social listening will help you do just that. To find brand advocates and influencers, you can start with the people who share your content on social media. This might be people reposting one of your blogs, retweeting you, or sharing your customer service updates.
2. Gather A Community
Your social media channels can be the hub of all your potential customers in the internet world. Using the power of social listening, you can see what people are talking about how and where they’re having those conversations. With that knowledge, you can approach those groups with confidence no matter which platform you decide to focus on marketing your business.
3. Improve Customer Engagement
When you are taking the time to look into what your audience is saying, they will notice. When you make changes based on their recommendations or give them a platform to voice out their complaints, they will appreciate it, and that will go a long way in cementing your relationship. So, keep all channels open and be there to engage with your audience effectively.
The key difference between social listening and social media monitoring
Social media monitoring and social listening are two essential tools for social media marketers. While these are often used interchangeably by marketers, they are fundamentally different from one another. The best approach to employing these strategies is using them both in tandem with one another. Let us understand why.
- Social media monitoring pertains to observing and monitoring the conversations around your brand on social media which helps in keeping a track of the brand’s popularity. On the other hand, social listening is about listening and interpreting social media mentions and even conversations across the web, which provide a deep insight into the consumer psyche over time.
- At the heart of social media monitoring are the performance metrics that put unstructured data into perspective. And social listening is how you use the gathered information to drive change by picking on customer pain points and unmet needs.
- Social media monitoring is a narrow and passive strategy that is focused on your brand but is not solution-oriented. In contrast, social listening is an active strategy with a broad focus on not just your brand, but the entire industry. It paints a broader picture of how your customers perceive your brand, as well as your competitors across the industry.
Social media monitoring is not enough. If you want your brand to be successful you will need to depend on social listening which encompasses social media monitoring. Using a trusted tool like Konnect Insights will enable you to leverage the power of data to rejuvenate your marketing and customer experience.
Tags: Listening Tool, Social Listening, Social Listening Tools, social media monitoring