We’re all at it, blogging, tweeting, google+-ing pinterest-ing, instagram-ing - the list goes on and by now we have all (I hope), come to the realisation that social media is an essential marketing tool for business. Not only does it help establish credibility but helps you position you/your company as an influencer and an expert in your field.
But are you sure you’re making the most of it and leveraging all that you can from social media? If you’re not listening to what’s being said about you, your business and your market then it’s time to get your ear to the ground and start listening.
Who’s winning with online listening?
Recently Thomas Cook announced that it had launched a ‘listening lab' to help the brand listen in to the ‘chatter’ about the brand in 180 different languages, whilst Mastercard has seen positive results from a year-long listening campaign which have helped the brand to gain insights and drive its business strategy.
How do we know what to use to monitor?
This in itself can be a minefield and you can easily get lost in the haze of the social media tools out there. Here at Access we’re huge fans of Radian6 and use it to help our clients get a picture of their online landscape.
Essentially Radian6 can help monitor brand mentions across the social/online channels. It offers comprehensive coverage of discussions covering, Twitter, blogs, Facebook, mainstream news and more…
Whilst there are other tools at this level, Radian6 is leading the way (in my humble opinion). And once you get your head around its capabilities you can go wild – it has a flash interface, so unfortunately you can’t monitor on your ipads and as yet, there’s no app - but don’t let this put you off.
How it works… (briefly)
Your experience is divided into a series of dashboards - I initially had 8, which has grown to 12 and these can hold a selection of graph, charts etc. data captured from your key words. All of these colourful charts and diagrams are connected which means you can easily identify a trend and open up a word cloud or river of news stream to see what’s causing a particular spike on your chart. This ability to drill down on data is just gold, you see exactly what a particular spike in activity/mentions was all about.
So, what’s next? You can go out and find a whole heap of free tools out there to help with your social listening, but these will only take you so far - having a dedicated resource and someone that understands the data coming your way, will ensure that you are more efficient and effective. But, before you start monitoring, make sure you have a strategy in place for your social media activity, set goals and KPIs, all along the backdrop of listening to your market and just take a look at what’s going on with your brand in the context of the wider market and your competitors. You may surprise yourself as to what you might find.
