What is Social Media Listening

In conversations recently, people have been asking me what is social listening. So, I thought I would share a brief definition.

Social listening, or social media listening, is finding the public conversations that are being shared in social media so that you can better understand and engage with people.

Social listening has many uses. It can be a great tool for PR to identify emerging positive or negative conversations. It can be used to identify influential people within communities who might be interested in participating in a word of mouth marketing program. Social listening is a foundation tool for providing customer service through social media.

You might be familiar with SEO or Search Engine Optimization. In SEO, you identify keywords to put on a web site so that a search engine can find the site and include it in search results. Social Listening also depends on keywords. But, rather than trying to draw traffic to the site, you are trying to find the places where relevant conversations are happening. For any given topic, there might be many different groups in different places discussing it in different ways. Some people might be on Twitter while others may be in a specialized forum.

This type of understanding of people and conversations is sometimes referred to as micro segmentation. David Rabjohns does a great job of outlining the understanding you can obtain. He has worked with many companies to identify conversation themes relevant to the products those organizations sell. He shares stories of work with pickle makers, yogurt producers, and others. One example he shares is from his work with a pickle company. It turns out, people use pickles in all kinds of ways you might not expect. From social listening, David identified that one group of people was interested in a low-sugar replacement for sports drinks – and uses pickle juice. Another group wanted to find money saving tips and was discussing pickle making. Finding these insights can help a company better understand and engage with its customer base. There is a good description of his work  PowerPoint on Slideshare and you may want to check out his Ted Talk.

Once you have a better understanding of your audience, you can develop relevant content to share. For example, you might run a small business and have a web site. You aren’t quite sure what type of content to provide on the site. Social listening could be used to identify conversation themes and questions people have.

One type of content that seems to work well is content that helps people solve problems. Providing content that answers questions and resonates with your customers and potential customers can be a great way to start a conversation with them. Jay Baer describes this type of helpful content in his book Youtility: Why Smart Marketing is About Help not Hype and in this Youtility Video. One of the stories he shares is how the Geek Squad at Best Buy provides problem solving videos. Enabling people to solve some of their own issues makes the Geek Squad a more trusted resource for when more advanced help is needed.

I hope that definition of Social Listening is helpful. Let me know if you have questions by leaving a comment or reaching out to me on Twitter @XDstrategy

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