Social media monitoring requires listening to the community

Social media monitoring requires listening to the community
By Laurel Papworth laurelpapworth.com AND Gary Hayes personalizemedia.com
Anthony Carranza
1/7/2015
Updated:
4/23/2016

There are many things to learn in the busy world of social media marketing nowadays. However, there are some social media etiquettes, standards or basics learn pretty quickly. As an entrepreneur, business, enterprise or any other entity you are subject to learn to listen to your targeted audience before shifting gears towards promoting your efforts.

In the world that exists today is all about data been generated and needs to be collected to gain a greater insight about user perceptions of your brand. Why should you start monitoring? The answer is simply to see how others view the products and services you provide.

A guest post by Cendrine Marrouat on Everypost.me thoroughly and comprehensively explains the fundamental principle of listening to your audience. In addition, applying this advice will not just enhance your brands authenticity, but companies will gain a healthy following from users. What the analysis goes on to emphasize that checking regularly social media profiles and comments on the blog can arm you with plenty of data to further improve your services.

What also comes into play when social media monitoring or social listening is concerned it really is about making use of the information gathered. A post by Social Media Examiner titled “How Social Listening Can Improve Your Marketing“ is another great example of listening to the audience for any given social channel. The process goes beyond analyzing metrics and becoming increasingly aware of what others have to say about your brand. One of the perils of using these public platforms is that negative publicity can be the kind of buzz you do not want for yourself or the company associated with.

To start in the right direction you need to be clear what your mission is and what sort of message you want to relay to the masses. As a business you do not have the luxury to ignore social media.

It is necessary to start managing, planning, mapping out and targeting your social media efforts. For example, Oktopost, a leading social media management platform can simplify your B2B social media management and bridge the difficult gaps that exist between using social media and lead generation.

Once all these processes are executed to perfection over time you will increase your productivity, exposure and engagement with fans of the company’s brand.

Impact of social media channels

The internet did bring forth an amazing revolution and transforming communications in a very big way. The countless number of inventions were unleashed not to mention an infinite number of the revolutionary computing capabilities developed to date including the thousands of innovative gadgets. What was perhaps initially expected from the World Wide Web would be that somehow it would socialize the interactions, but that took a considerable amount of time until social networking platforms started to arrive and leave their footprint.

The early days of the web still had this tendency of mistakenly utilizing and organizing one-way marketing approach by businesses. At the present time, you have to do more than just sell online and in reality learn plenty about visitor’s online behavior. No point in moving forward with the sales pitch without first listening and learning what people are looking for.

“In the early days of the Web, the authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto introduced the idea that the Web would transform marketing into an authentic conversation between newly-empowered buyers and humbled, re-humanized sellers.3 The concept didn’t take hold at the time; and for about ten years, businesses continued to use the Web primarily for traditional, one-way marketing, in the form of search engine optimization (SEO) and paid Internet advertising,” according to a PR Newswire on social media monitoring.

Social media marketing (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google Plus and others) has transformed the way to organize online campaigns and requires more than just sending out press releases. It is really about cementing an identity that is crystal clear in the eyes of followers and your immediate competitors. It is not enough to constantly promote, but getting to know and empathizing with people online in humanistic way.

Remember social networks have different set of tools and different standards that are now established for different industries. If you are getting started look at your competition to see what they are doing right and wrong. You can bank enormously on the mistakes and really make an impact with user’s right out of the gate.

Takeaways of listening and learning in the social sphere

The arrival of social medial has forever transform the business environment, changed the selling techniques and revamped online marketing campaigns. Generating profitable financial results are an important part of the business, but if you are searching for new sources of revenues social media is a very viable option.

Of course you have your hands full from the daily operations, yet if you are relying on generating a good return on investment (ROI) you must understand the expectations and requirements social media brings to the table. You must familiarize yourself what social networking channels work for you and start your scavenger hunt. Furthermore, getting the right social media monitoring tools will not only organize your social media campaigns, but use the data in a meaningful way.

You must be able to create content that really drives catches the attention of readers and increases engagement for the niche sector or industry you currently operate in. Each blog post or article that you produce needs to include the latest findings, research, advice and suggestions in order to position your company’s services well within the marketplace. When you are able to provide insightful content from the data you collected, compiled and analyzed from monitoring you will be better equipped to tailor your products or services to the real needs of your targeted customers.  

The simple application of social listening will open the business to a world of opportunities. Learning what people have to say about your brand through identifying what is being said you will be better equipped to design and manage social media marketing campaigns.

Digital Media Journalist! Existing contributor for Examiner and Social Media Today with a track record for web news. A former freelance writer for CBS Local Minnesota. Writing and reporting on the latest social media happenings.
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