Social marketing means listening – not just talking!

Social media has transformed how we communicate but how much attention is your business giving to social channels as a source of feedback and marketing intelligence?

Using a number of platforms within the social landscape such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, it is sometimes far too easy to watch the ‘likes’ and ‘followers’ steadily increase without looking a little deeper into the analytics.

Remember social media is not just about broadcasting your news and views; conversing with, and listening to, customers and influencers should also form part of any social marketing strategy.

Tracking the direct impact on traffic and sales via your web analytics can be extremely useful, particularly if you can attribute the increase in visitors to content posted on social media. The ratio of positive messages, number of inbound messages and age or gender demographics could also fine-tune how you direct future marketing campaigns.

While social visibility is sometimes difficult to measure, there’s a host of monitoring tools which will allow you to record who is talking about your brand, how often and where. It’s also a good idea to track your competitors too – to benchmark how visible your company is by comparison.

Spending time discovering more about what influence your social media channels are having, and learning more about your audience can provide companies with usable insights.

When Barclays launched its mobile money transfer app ‘Ping It’, a surge of negative Tweets proved that it wasn’t a roaring success. However, due to the communication team’s meticulous monitoring, the information was analysed and it showed that many of the negative mentions were in relation to preventing under 18’s from using it.

Both parents and teenagers were sharing their concerns but having the information to hand in real-time, Barclays was able to make significant changes to the app. It prevented further potential negative reviews by acting quickly.

Many businesses do not have the resources internally to implement monitoring so are turning to agencies to monitor and create detailed reporting on their behalf.

With a wealth of marketing intelligence available, what are you waiting for? Learn more about how monthly social media monitoring and reporting can aid your marketing strategy by calling Freshfield today on 01772 888400 or email emma@freshfield.com.