Social Media Listening. Think you’ve heard it all before?

There are some really smart and experienced folks in this field. Many of them work for big brands, amazing consultancies, and for the monitoring tool companies. We’re a diverse and also super aligned group. There’s a ton to learn from all ‘flavors’ of social intelligence pros. Personally, I’ve learned/absorbed/borrowed more than my fair share.

But the thing is, your creative ‘research-brain’ can often do a better job without the constraints of the tool structure in the initial thinking. 

So dream about what you want to know. Imagine how to get there. It’s problem-solving 101 mixed with a little artistry.

Let’s step back. Some say (I do!) that successful strategies for marketing, content, decision-making in the business environment are built around smart analysis of data. 

First, you have to know the question you are trying to answer. Just like any strategic project we’ve all ever done, right? Some point to the 5 Whys or Root Cause Analysis as tools to start the problem solving process. What all processes have in common is to figure out what you want to learn. 

So, what’s your question? Here are some to get you started thinking!

• How can I stay ahead of potential crises in my industry?
• What are people saying about my brand?
• Who are my target audiences and what can I learn about their interests and mindsets?
• What up-and-coming topics can we identify that we can write about early in the curve?
• What are my competitors’ strategies?
• What journalists are covering the topics my audience cares about  most?
• How can we track specific trends, like flavors or colors or pretty much anything?
• Who are the most engaged influencers in specific markets?

Social listening can be a key component to collecting the dataset to start attacking these sorts of questions. You can gather data from conversations around specific topics, target audiences, keywords, phrases, brands and industries. That’s step two. (Step one was defining your question.) Next, it’s time to break it down. Take that huge pile of data and, with the proper tools and analysis, classify and categorize and dig deeply. Then, you can develop theories, insights, and trends. Leverage these insights to answer questions, discover opportunities, and create content. 

Of course, you can do so much more. I love to talk about how Social Listening can help your market research studies be more efficient, and more. Want to talk? LMK!