When social media still feels like a new and alien concept for a company, it’s difficult to know where to start. If you were overwhelmed by the amount of conversation around you at a party, how would you gauge when to join in?
You would listen. Listen to the topics of conversation being spoken about, and listen to who’s doing the speaking. This way, you’d know when and if you could add something of value.
Listening to online conversations can benefit many business departments. For the marketing department, listening is now an essential input into a marketing communications strategy. For the R&D department, listening to conversations in social media can provide a great source of learnings about current products. And for customer service employees, it’s another way to find and respond to customer questions, queries and complaints.
An initial dip into relevant conversations helps an organisation establish what people are saying, who is saying it, where they are saying it and the organisation’s current position in the overall conversation. Business departments can use this information in different ways. For example, the marketing department can use the resulting insights to:
- Inform a long-term social media activity roadmap
- Inform the development of marketing plans
- Provide insights into demographics and psychographics
- Provide insights into competitor activities
This research dip should be part of a wider audit to help develop social media insights and establish how an organisation can make best use social media.
When organisations continue to monitor online conversations on an ongoing basis, they can not only track trends in activity but also respond directly to specific comments. For this reason, listening can inform brand management, customer service, marketing and R&D. The table below provides some further detail:
The ever-changing nature of the online world and social media may lead an organisation to think it needs to jump into performing social media activities without delay. But taking some time to listen to online conversations to inform the eventual activity will reap rewards.
Image courtesy of Rosmary.
