Social Listening 101: The Ultimate Guide to Strategies for Success

What is Social Listening?

To put it simply, social listening is the practice of monitoring and analyzing the many conversations, interactions, and trends that occur online. Social listening is accomplished using specialized tools and software. 

Also commonly referred to as social media monitoring or social media listening, the ultimate goal of social listening is to learn what people are saying about brands, products, industries, and topics of interest online. Understanding consumer preferences, how they interact with businesses, and how they perceive certain products, brands, and industries helps companies better serve their customers, attract new customers, improve brand image, and influence sentiment favorably. 

As you can imagine, social listening produces a lot of data. This data is incredibly valuable to building any business and will influence marketing strategy, among other things. Businesses can use all this data to form insights into the state of the market and the minds of consumers, eventually acting on the opportunities they discover. Social listening can also help businesses be better prepared to react when issues or emergencies arise. 

What Do Businesses Look for?

Businesses will monitor different things depending on their goals, digital marketing strategy, and what kind of information they value the most. However, every business should be paying close attention to the following: 

1. Their brand name
2. The name of their products 
3. Their slogan
4. Their branded hashtags
5. Names of important people within their organization (i.e., CEO, spokesperson, brand ambassador) 
6. The names of competitors and competitor’s products
7. The slogans of competitors
8. Hashtags related to their industry
9. Industry buzzwords 
10. Trending topics in their industry

The Benefits of Social Listening for Businesses

Every kind of business can benefit from social listening, and it’s essential for any brand that wants to thrive in our increasingly digital world. Some of the key advantages of social listening include:

Improved Understanding of Customers 

Social listening allows businesses to understand their audience by tracking engagement on social platforms. This data-driven approach reveals preferences, pain points, and expectations, aiding tailored product and marketing enhancements for stronger relationships and brand loyalty.

Reputation Management and Crisis Mitigation

Reputation management and crisis control: Swiftly addressing positive and negative sentiments through social listening safeguards brand image. Responding promptly to feedback prevents crises, upholds credibility and trust, and proactively manages reputation.

Competitive Analysis and Market Intelligence

 Social listening extracts competitor strategies and strengths, informing market gaps and differentiation. Brands refine value propositions using consumer perceptions, shaping effective marketing strategies.

Identification of Influencers and Brand Advocates

Social listening spots impactful influencers, elevating brand awareness and messaging. Engagement fosters loyalty, turning them into valuable advocates.

Real-Time Customer Service and Support

Social listening aids real-time responses to inquiries, boosting brand perception. Proactive customer service enhances satisfaction and loyalty, paralleling reputation management.

Data-Driven Decision-Making

 Social listening furnishes ongoing data for informed decision-making. Brands rely on this insight for product innovation, marketing campaigns, and efficient strategies, reducing guesswork.

Key Aspects of Social Listening

With so many different online spaces for monitoring and hundreds, if not thousands, of forms of engagement specific to each, it’s no surprise that there are numerous aspects to social listening. Businesses need to have a good understanding of each if they want to truly get a grasp on the underlying mood or sentiment consumers have on various topics. Here are some of the things your business should know: 

1. Social media monitoring: Social listening involves monitoring Facebook, Twitter (now X), Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and many more. Companies closely follow mentions, hashtags, comments, and other forms of engagement related to specific keywords or topics on these platforms.
2. Brand perception: Businesses must use social listening to understand the perception of their brand. By monitoring online interactions, companies can gauge this attitude – positive, negative, or neutral – and identify potential issues or areas where they need to improve to get to where they want to be. Social listening can also help a brand maintain its image after they’ve improved it.
3. Competitor analysis: Social listening helps businesses keep an eye – and ear – on their competitors and their competitor’s customers. It also provides a lot of helpful data to help a company stand out and gain a competitive advantage over other brands in their industry. 
4. Trends: By engaging in social listening, businesses can stay up-to-date on trends that can be capitalized on. By monitoring trends, emerging topics, and discussions in their industry, brands gain valuable information they can use to create content, develop new products, and implement new marketing strategies. 
5. Customer insights: Understanding the customer is crucial for any business endeavor. Social listening helps businesses understand who their customers are, their wants, needs, preferences, common pain points, and much more. All this information can drive campaigns to reach customers more effectively and make products or services more readily available. 
6. Crisis management: By monitoring various social media channels and online platforms amid a crisis, businesses can quickly identify issues and their solutions. Social monitoring also allows companies to respond to customer concerns and mitigate potential damage to their image or reputation. 
7. Influencer marketing: Social listening can identify influencers across numerous social media platforms who have dedicated followings within a specific niche or among a target audience. Influencers can then help promote a business’s products or services more effectively. 
8. Market research: The data and insights gathered by monitoring the behavior and preferences of consumers online will benefit traditional market research greatly.
9. Social customer service: Social media platforms and other online spaces enable companies to address customer questions, concerns, and complaints promptly, and social listening helps them do this effectively even when they haven’t been tagged or mentioned.  
10. Campaign effectiveness: Social listening provides a wide variety of data and insights that can help measure the effectiveness of digital marketing campaigns. It also can help businesses make data-driven decisions on future campaigns. 

Building a Social Listening Strategy

A social listening strategy is the roadmap that guides brands through the noisy digital landscape to the insights that matter. Essential for understanding target audiences, it’s a dynamic process that encompasses monitoring social media conversations, analyzing the data captured, and responding strategically to improve engagement and business outcomes.

Setting Clear Business Goals and Objectives

Central to an effective social listening strategy are well-defined business goals. These objectives may range from enhancing customer service to crisis management, and they serve as a beacon to orient the social listening compass. By outlining specific aims—be it tracking brand health, gauging campaign effectiveness, or gathering content creation ideas—a brand can keep its strategy focused and effective. With clear goals in place, analyzing trends, consumer behavior, and key data drivers becomes a targeted effort rather than a shot in the dark.

Identifying Target Audience and Potential Customers

Understanding and engaging with the right audience is pivotal in any marketing strategy. Social listening enables businesses to delve into various online environments — from Twitter threads to niche forums — and discover these potential customers. 

By monitoring these spaces, brands learn about their target audience’s desires, problems, and opinions. Keywords related to the brand, products, or industry help to zoom in on these conversations. Moreover, by keeping an eye on diverse data sources like social networks and review sites, companies stay informed about evolving consumer sentiments, gaining a competitive edge.

Selecting Relevant Social Media Platforms

Choosing the right social media platforms for social listening is crucial and should be influenced by the volume and relevance of brand mentions. Priority engagement is essential to manage the brand’s reputation effectively. 

By gauging sentiment and swiftly addressing negative feedback, businesses can maintain a positive image. Concurrently, observing emerging trends helps brands stay ahead of the curve. Constant, vigilant monitoring of these platforms ensures a brand can quickly pivot in response to shifting online moods and preferences.

Social Listening Examples to Inspire Your Brand

Stanley

Stanley‘s journey in the world of thermal bottles, travel mugs, and campware has been a fascinating evolution. Initially honing in on a predominantly male demographic, appealing to the rugged workmen and outdoor enthusiasts, they’ve undergone a significant transformation in recent years. Their focus has broadened, now reaching out to a more diverse audience, with a notable emphasis on engaging women.

This strategic shift has proven immensely successful, with sales soaring to new heights.

Central to this success is their proactive approach to online engagement. They don’t just ride the waves of internet trends; they actively cultivate the Stanley community and elevate customer service through attentive listening.

@danimarielettering

Thirsty after you catch on fire? @Stanley 1913 is like no problem i gotchu #fyp #carfire #accident #stanleycup

♬ original sound – Danielle

Let’s paint a more vivid picture of why social listening matters. Here’s the one standout moment that occurred in November 2023, when a TikTok video sparked a viral sensation. 

In the aftermath of a car fire, @danimarielettering shared a remarkable discovery: her Stanley Mug, unscathed, with ice still chilling its contents.

This incident beautifully encapsulated the brand’s enduring promise of durability and reliability, captivating an astounding audience of 96.7 million viewers.

@stanleybrand

#stitch with @Danielle Stanley has your back ❤️

♬ original sound – Stanley 1913

But Stanley’s story didn’t conclude with this viral moment. They were listening, and they responded. The President of Stanley personally reached out to the TikToker, offering to replace the damaged car. 

This swift and empathetic gesture not only bolstered brand sentiment but also sparked an additional 65k comments, underscoring Stanley’s commitment to its community.

What we can learn from this: 

User-generated content holds remarkable sway in the world of branding, impacting a substantial 79% of consumer purchasing decisions. Leveraging social listening allows brands to unearth this valuable content goldmine. Once discovered, it’s all about amplifying these authentic voices to drive home impactful brand messages.

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Lyft

Lyft, a leading transportation network company, revolutionizes ridesharing with its intuitive mobile app platform. Seamlessly connecting passengers with nearby drivers, Lyft offers a variety of ride options tailored to individual needs, from standard rides to luxurious experiences like Lyft Lux and group rides with Lyft XL. Operating across numerous cities in the United States and parts of Canada, Lyft has become synonymous with convenient, reliable transportation.

Now, let’s zoom into September 2023 and see how Lyft tackles a social media challenge head-on.

@AskLyft My Lyft driver drove off with my pet cat still in the car.

I was taking my cat to a vet appointment, I was sitting behind the driver and had the cat carrier on the floor of the passenger side back seat.

— palash pandey (@palashp40616755) September 30, 2023

Lyft encountered an unexpected hurdle. After a trip to the vet, a customer’s beloved cat, Tux, went missing. The distressed owner took to social media, sharing Tux’s plight on Twitter, garnering a staggering more than 26k engagements and over 11 million views. The viral spread of Tux’s disappearance began to cast a shadow on Lyft’s reputation, leading to a surge in negative mentions.

Swift action was imperative, and Lyft’s social media monitoring proved instrumental in navigating this crisis. Responding promptly to the distressed post, Lyft extended support by mobilizing investigators to aid in the search for Tux. Fortunately, their efforts bore fruit as Tux was safely reunited with its owner.

Just got back from the vet. Tux has clean bill of health. I'm quite sure she thinks she was just playing the game stray in VR 😂 Thank you everyone for helping.
You guys have restored my faith in the community. pic.twitter.com/ehm1sTRxVV

— palash pandey (@palashp40616755) October 2, 2023

Lyft didn’t stop there. They leveraged their social channels to announce Tux’s return, alleviating the concerns of followers invested in the story. Additionally, they pledged to conduct a thorough investigation to prevent similar incidents in the future.

What we can learn from this:

The lesson here is clear. Real-time social listening empowers brands to engage with consumers proactively and effectively. By uncovering hidden complaints and swiftly addressing them, brands can not only salvage customer satisfaction but also foster loyalty and safeguard against potential PR crises.

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10 Social Listening Pro Tips

In the bustling digital age, social listening emerges as a cornerstone for savvy marketers aiming to harness the pulse of online conversations. Here are 10 Pro Tips to elevate your social listening move:

1. Choose the Right Tools: Select social listening tools such as Mandala AI that provide intelligent features and real-time data for a holistic industry perspective.
2. Monitor Effectively: Keep a keen eye on social media platforms consistently to catch every whisper about your brand.
3. Analyze Data Thoroughly: Move beyond monitoring; analyze the data for actionable insights that can propel marketing strategies.
4. Engage in Conversations: Participate in relevant discussions, showing your brand is not just watching but actively listening.
5. Track Competitors: Use social listening for competitive benchmarking, identifying opportunities through competitors’ weaknesses.
6. Respond Quickly: Be prompt in your responses to both positive feedback and negative sentiment.
7. Automate and Scale: Automating social monitoring can preempt crises and uncover new avenues for product innovation.
8. Measure Sentiment: Employ sentiment analysis to appreciate the emotional undertones in customer experiences.
9. Adapt and Evolve: Allow insights from social conversations to refine your marketing campaigns.
10. Align with Business Goals: Ensure your social listening strategy supports overall business objectives for maximum impact.

Helpful Social Listening Tools

Social media platforms like Facebook (Meta), Instagram, Twitter (now X) TikTok, YouTube, and others are essential social listening tools. Still, some platforms and applications make it easier to monitor the different conversations, interactions, and trends across them all. Some tools that all businesses should at the very least consider using include:

1. Mandala AI
2. Sprout Social
3. Brandwatch
4. Brand24
5. BuzzSumo
6. Keyhole
7. Meltwater
8. YouScan
9. Exolyt
10. Analisa

Social Listening with Mandala AI

Considering the many social media platforms that are popular today and how many regular users each has, it might be daunting for your business to monitor everything you need across all these platforms. But you still want to know what people are saying and identify trends to benefit from social listening. Mandala AI has the artificial intelligence-powered tools you need to capture and analyze more data. 

Mandala Cosmos and Mandala Ripples are social listening essentials that every business needs. Cosmos enables businesses to get creative while staying organized and Ripples takes it to the next level with detailed analytics for social listening, marketing insights, and analysis of campaigns, trends, benchmarks, and competitor tracking. We guarantee both will save your business significant time and money. Mandala AI’s platforms are designed by experienced business veterans in marketing science and digital marketing, and we’ve combined their expertise with business best practices to best serve your needs. Explore our AI social listening tools today!