What do you consider social media marketing? For most businesses and brands, the answer is simple: an opportunity to publish relevant content, grow your follower base, and generate both thought leadership and engagement.
But what if we told you that in limiting yourself to this definition, you’re missing out on what might be the most important part of social media marketing?
Every day, countless members of your target audience discuss topics that relate to your brand, either directly or indirectly. They don’t care whether you hear about it or not, and they’re not taking special steps to comment and discuss their topics of interest on your social media channels.
To engage this audience, you have to know where to find these conversations, and how to engage with them. In other words, you have to engage in social listening. It sounds reasonable, but only few brands do it; in fact, only 24% of businesses engaged in social listening in 2015. Don’t be one of those people, and build you social listening strategy using these 5 steps.
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1) Prioritize Social Listening
Should you really spend a significant part of your resources browsing through social media posts rather than posting your own? While most brands understand the general value of social listening, they don’t quite get just how important it can be to business success. The answer to that question, though, is a clear yes.
Consider Twitter. Of all the Tweets about your brand, only 30% actually include your Twitter handle. Even more importantly, only 9% use the @ in addition to your handle. In other words, 91% of updates that you should know about will never show up in your notifications. If you don’t search for them yourself, you may never know about them.
[Source:-Forbes]
