CREATIVE THINKING
Use social listening for inbound marketing
Social listening, or social monitoring, is essentially eavesdropping on the active portion of the internet all at once. It’ s probably the single greatest access businesses could ever have to their customers in terms of understanding what they want.
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It’ s a secret weapon of business that isn’ t a secret, and still there are companies not using it to potential or at all.
The internet is a big place, and trying to search that expanse manually for the data your business needs is an exercise in futility. But there’ s plenty of software out there, even free options like Google Alerts, that will collect all that data for you and bring it right to you, even analyse it for you. You should have good social media management software in your budget for this and much more, or you should hire an agency that has such software. Social listening is an invaluable tool and David Bolton, at Corsham-based Inbound Digital Marketing agency Tain Brae Digital, explains nine ways to use it for inbound marketing.
1. Listen around your keywords First things first. You should have a list of the most relevant keywords to your situation and start your search there.
2. Measure your success and amplification Likes, followers, and subscribers only tell part of the story when it comes to your reach and your reputation. Listening to social conversations and being alerted of any mention on a blog or review site gives you much more insight as to how amplified your brand is and how well it’ s received.
3. Learn about user behaviour This is one of the beautiful things about social listening. Imagine sitting in a large shopping centre for a week and noting the behaviours of the shoppers as thoroughly as possible. You would probably notice quite a few things. Using good software and social listening you can collect one hundred times more information about one thousand times more people in a matter of hours. The key to sales is knowing your customer.
4. Learn what your audience is passionate about When you’ re performing the art of social listening well, you know what the newest trends are as they happen, not after they’ re big. This gives you a competitive advantage in time to market. It’ s much easier to tailor your message to your audience when you already know what your audience thinks about things.
5. Learn what your competitors are doing Not only what they’ re doing industry-wise, but what they’ re doing on social media that’ s working and not working. Knowing your competition’ s weaknesses and strengths is strength in itself.
6. Connect with key influencers Because finding them isn’ t good enough. You need to connect with some influencers, which is more than a quick request for a favour. The connection is a relationship. Make new friends.
7. Respond quickly to positive and negative comments In real life, we can choose to ignore negative comments and attacks, but unfortunately, online you’ re forced to defend your honour. It’ s there forever once it’ s published, and lots of people are going to see it and be negatively influenced by it. Social listening alerts you of comments so you can respond quickly to mitigate or reverse any possible reputation killers.
8. Develop content around user input It’ s easier to make content that people like than to make them like your content.
9. Discover the conversations, people and trends impacting your business Drive your business results by staying ahead of the curve. Hear what’ s being discussed as it’ s being discussed, instead of 2 months later on the news. That’ s being proactive about your business success.
Finally, don’ t give up. If you are already doing all of these and still aren’ t seeing the results you’ d like, contact us to see how we can help you.
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20 THE BUSINESS EXCHANGE 2017