Social Listening for Reputation Management

In the world of social media, people are constantly talking about brands, products, and services. Social listening is the process of actively monitoring these social media channels for mentions of your brand, your competitors, and keywords related to your industry.

It's about more than just tracking your notifications. It's a proactive strategy for understanding the wider conversation about your brand and your market. For reputation management, social listening is an essential tool. It allows you to find and to participate in conversations you might otherwise have missed, and to get ahead of any potential issues before they escalate.

Social Listening vs. Social Monitoring

These two terms are related, but different.

• Social Monitoring is about the past. It's the process of looking at what has already been said. It's about gathering data on your mentions, your hashtags, etc.
• Social Listening is about the future. It's about taking the data you've gathered from monitoring and using it to find insights and to inform your future strategy. It's about understanding the "why" behind the conversation.

Why is Social Listening So Important for Reputation Management?

• It Allows You to Be Proactive: You can find and address a negative comment or a customer complaint even if they haven't tagged your official social media handle. This allows you to resolve an issue before it gains traction.
• It Helps You to Understand Public Sentiment: Social listening tools can often analyze the "sentiment" (positive, negative, or neutral) of the conversations about your brand. This gives you a high-level view of your brand's health.
• It Helps You to Engage with Your Community: You can find opportunities to thank customers who are saying positive things about you, or to jump into a conversation to offer helpful advice.
• It Provides Competitive Insights: By monitoring the conversations about your competitors, you can understand their strengths, their weaknesses, and what their customers are complaining about. This can reveal opportunities for your own business.

How to Get Started with Social Listening

1. Define What You Want to Track

You need to create a list of the key terms you want to monitor. This should include:

• Your brand name (and any common misspellings).
• Your product names.
• Your branded hashtags.
• Your competitors' brand names.
• Industry-specific keywords and buzzwords.

2. Choose Your Social Listening Tool

While you can do some manual searching on each platform, a dedicated tool makes the process much more efficient.

• Free and Simple Options:
  • TweetDeck: A great free tool for creating custom feeds to monitor specific keywords, hashtags, and users on Twitter.
  • Google Alerts: While not just for social media, it's an essential free tool for monitoring the entire web.
• Paid, All-in-One Platforms: For a more comprehensive approach, there are many powerful paid tools.
  • Brand24: A popular and user-friendly tool that is great for small and medium-sized businesses.
  • Mention: Another excellent tool for tracking brand mentions across social media and the web.
  • Sprout Social or Hootsuite: These are full social media management platforms that include robust social listening features.

3. Set Up Your Monitoring and Act on the Insights

Once your tool is set up, you need to make a habit of regularly checking your feeds and, most importantly, acting on what you find.

• A Negative Mention: This is your opportunity to jump in, to apologize, and to offer to make things right.
• A Positive Mention: This is your chance to thank a happy customer and to amplify their positive message.
• A Question: This is your chance to be helpful and to demonstrate your expertise.
• A Competitor's Weakness: If you see people complaining about a weakness in your competitor's product, this is a valuable insight that can inform your own marketing message.

Conclusion

Social listening is the key to a proactive and intelligent online reputation management strategy. It's about moving from simply reacting to your notifications to actively seeking out and participating in the conversations that matter to your brand. By listening carefully to what your customers and your market are saying, you can protect your reputation, build stronger relationships, and uncover the valuable insights that will help you to build a better business.