Now that we’ve figured out what social listening is and why it matters in our earlier blog article, learned about tried-and-tested strategies, and saw how social media listening looks in action, it’s time to talk about the importance of data in this endeavor.
Now, gathering data to be used to gain insights in the light of social media listening could be done by relying on things like Google Alerts or free versions of various specifically-designed platforms. However, doing it yourself or relying on demos will only scratch the surface, and although it might seem that you’ve gathered enough insight to create a response, it will never be enough to uncover deeper insights into your industry and audience. So, better choose a paid platform of your preference, just like Agenic Control, and start your journey from there.
Once this first decision is made, you’ll need to answer some important questions for yourself.
What Is It That You’re Trying To Measure?
As with anything, the first thing you’ll have to do is to write down your goals. Since there are tons of things that could be achieved with social listening, it’s easy to get lost in the sea of opportunities. So, staying focused here is the key. From listening to what people are talking about your brand on social media to setting up a crisis alert system, you need to know your goal right from the beginning.
For some specialists, social listening might become a part of an ongoing strategy, while for others, it will serve to answer only one question. The choice here is entirely yours, and here are the examples of things you could achieve by employing social listening:
- Crisis management
- Customer service
- Brand health and reputation
- Content creation
- Image recognition
- Campaign performance tracking
- Trend and demographic insights
- Agency pitch research
What Data Will You Need?
Once the goals are crystal clear, you can begin working out what data you will be looking for. Our advice here is this – talk to the people directly involved in this area.
Your customer service team will know about the most prominent topics your customers talk about; campaign managers will know about important metrics, while the business development department will know what your potential clients would like to hear.
Tryst your team, work together with them, and build a checklist of data points they would find useful to reach the determined goals. Then, use said checklist to set the parameters for your data collection. For example, it could be monitoring all brand mentions or checking into conversations around a specific subject.
P.S.: WE HAVE WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING FOR
How Much Data Will You Need?
Once the aforementioned steps are completed, you’ll also need to know how much data you will need. Or, in other words, how long you’ll be socially listening for.
In some cases, like customer service, social listening will be an ongoing and continuous process. In other cases, though, you’ll need to get a bit more specific than that. Do you need a month’s, six month’s, a year’s, or maybe more worth of data? Should it come from your country or set on more global grounds? Is your goal to collect data from just one social media channel or all of them at once?
So, based on what you’re trying to find out will determine the answers to all of these and similar questions. That said, covering a useful amount of time is very important in all of this. No one could identify trends in the space of a week, so make sure you’re covering enough time to gather data that’s actually useful.
How To Use Social Listening Data?
As we’ve already said, there are plenty of ways social listening could be used and the same amount of ways to treat the gathered data afterward. And although we won’t be able to dig deeper into each individual case in this article, here is some general advice when it comes to dealing with data.
Also, if you’re in it for the long haul and data isn’t your forte at the moment, we’d suggest you take a look into free online courses about data science. Trust us when we say that they are real-life savers!
But, back to our advice on dealing with data.
Data Cleanup
The data that comes from social media listening can sometimes get a bit messy and noisy since you’re always going to pick up things that are not relevant to your search criteria. You’ll often be able to tell that it isn’t relevant right away, but sometimes it might throw you off.
Cue manual work. Yup, manual checking of the collected data is ever important, but there is good news, too – usually, you don’t have to check each individual data point, but if something’s not right, you’ll be able to spot it without loads of deeper digging.
Here’s an example – you’ve decided to collect Facebook mentions around a brand that shares its name with a location, a person, and, perhaps, even a TV series or a movie. However, you only wanted to get the brand mentions and not posts on all the rest of the stuff.
Of course, picking up tons of irrelevant data together with the actually useful is not ideal. However, you’ll only need to redefine what data you pick up to sort this mess. So, instead of all the noise, you can only pick up mentions where the word ‘brand’ is mentioned within five words of the brand’s name. Think about including hashtags related to the brand as well!
Once you redefine, your data will become more focused and easier to read. It’s always a good idea not to take your first batch of results too seriously! After all, nothing is perfect right from the first try, and getting the right data will always be a process of constant refinement. Checking and double-checking are vital here.
STRUGGLING TO CREATE ENGAGING SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT?
TRY
Data Analysis
While acquiring a large dataset from your project is a good thing, it might be daunting to try and figure out where are the beginning and the end of it. But just remember your initial goals and let them guide you through this process!
Advising on how to approach the analysis of the data that you’ve gathered might need its own separate blog article, but here are some common things to look out for that offer some insights:
- Sudden fluctuations in the mention volume
- Seasonal trends
- Changes in sentiment
- Demographic differences
- Related topics
- Specific product conversation differences
- Conclusions that go against assumed knowledge
Continuous Monitoring
If you’re planning to collect your data indefinitely, like in the case of customer service, it’s important to sort it all out right from the beginning because nobody would want to gather data for half a year only to see that it’s all wrong or missing key areas.
So, as we’ve mentioned before, it’s really important to get your team’s input from the beginning and continuously. Listen to their feedback to spot problems right away – new words, conversations, or even viral memes can affect your data quite suddenly, so prepare to always be on top of things.
You’ll also want to update the things that you’re constantly tracking. Think about new competitors or the launch of your new product – you’ll need to make sure your data is tracking the relevant data with each new factor coming in.
Takeaway Note
Social listening is a very powerful tool if used correctly. And yeah, it might get a bit confusing until you get the hang of it! However, with Agenic Control, the data that you’re looking for is served to you in an understandable language to be used the instance you get it. Basically, by using Agenic Control, you can forget half of what you’ve read in this article!
That said if you still have any questions or need help starting your social listening journey – drop us a message.
SOCIAL LISTENING ISN’T ROCKET SCIENCE
