Social media: listen to the online chat to inform YOUR strategy
We already know the significance of ‘voice’ on social media, says Tara Dulake, but did you know listening is just as important?
Considering social networking comprises endless discussion, any successful business will understand that conversation goes both ways. So, why should you listen more than you talk? Conversations are a source of intelligence; if you know how to incorporate this knowledge into your marketing strategy, several benefits will follow. Social media listening is a two-step process.
Firstly, you can monitor what people are saying about your brand, competitors, products and any relevant keywords. Secondly, new information can be analysed, so you can implement insights. For example, if your competitor is being mentioned as unhelpful by multiple users, you can use this information to promote your supportive customer service. Now that we’ve established social media listening as an essential digital activity, we can start to look at the ways it can benefit estate agents.
Audience and trend analysis
By discovering emerging trends around relevant topics such as housing, local areas and buying attitudes, you can alter your content strategy to generate more engagements and appeal. Perhaps your target audience is families and they’re interested in local amenities and schools – here you would create content to promote the local area of your properties.
Gathering insights from competitors and your target market can help generate new product, and content ideas.
By listening to your audiences’ preferences and views, their sentiment can be identified – humans are an emotional species and tend to express their feelings on social media. Whether it’s a passion or frustration towards a particular topic, a successful marketer would exploit this.
Product and content research
Gathering insights from the real estate industry, competitors and your target market can generate new product, service and content ideas. For instance, when targeting first time buyers, you might discover a particular tone of voice or vocabulary that is preferred – this can be incorporated into the content you produce to promote homes.
Competitor comparison
Listening is a great way to identify competitor gaps, track share of voice and examine consumer attitudes to competitors. Whether you find a point of sale that hasn’t been promoted, or consumers disapprove of a service, you can gain a true competitive advantage by learning what has been said.
Brand health
Social media listening allows you to monitor conversations around your brand. This is great because sentimental drivers and consumer attitudes connected to your brand can be identified to get those all-important testimonials for happy customers.
Customer experience
We know that people take to social media to express their feelings and issues, so listening allows you to uncover these issues and gain visibility into common customer wants and needs surrounding your offering. If multiple customers are complaining about your website’s usability, you can change it to make their experience simple and easy.
Campaign analysis
As real estate agents, campaigns are a certainty. However, something that we can’t determine is the response from your audience. With social media listening, you can capture audience reactions to your campaigns in real time and create concise reports to reflect your successes.
Social Media Listening tools
If you want to monitor what people are saying on social media, there are some fantastic tools to utilise. Depending on your capacity …
Sprout Social
With its Twitter listener dashboards and report features, Sprout allows you to analyse your social presence. In addition, the tool uses real-time brand monitoring to track direct messages and brand-specific keywords. What’s more, you can identify emerging trends and influencers with Sprout’s advanced listening feature. This tool offers vital insights that can help you track and improve your social strategy at any time.
Hootsuite
Similar to the above tool, you can track influencers and leads into lists that can be imported and shared among your colleagues. You can also use Hootsuite’s analytics and reports to track discussions surrounding your brand, competition and even your industry – this enables you to improve your campaigns accordingly.
HubSpot
HubSpot allows you to monitor social interactions with contacts in your database, create custom keyword monitoring streams, and trigger email alerts so your sales team knows when the audience mention you. You can also compare performance across your social channels and keep track of the number of visits and leads you receive.
Tara Dulake, Digital Marketing Director
www.theoraclegroup.co.uk