Most businesses or marketing agencies are so busy promoting their business on social media that they often forget/ignore listening to their audience. Although it is important to promote your business on social media and be visible among your audience, it is also equally important to respond to questions and discussion revolving around your brand and even related to your industry.
Social media listening can help you to be seen as a customer-friendly, evolving brand. If you participate in the right discussions and send across the right message you could be seen as an industry leader.
Our team has already created some social media listening guides to help you get started. In this blog, I will be specifically talking about Twitter social listening. I will explain what it is and what difference it can make to your business. I will also be briefing you on how Notifier can help you with Twitter listening.
Let’s get started!
It is the same thing as social media listening; just that Twitter listening focuses only on the micro-blogging website.
Here is our detailed guide on the importance of social media listening. It will provide you with a brief of what social listening/Twitter listening is and how you can use it to identify the opportunities of starting a conversation with people who really matter.
Don’t have time to read the whole guide? Need more details?
Don’t worry, we will shortly dive into the details here.
Twitter listening involves tracking of your brand mentions (both negative and positive) and mentions of the keywords and phrases that matter to your business. It also involves tracking of the brand mentions of your competitors, so you know how they are performing.
Twitter social listening also includes tracking mentions of keywords, people, companies, and almost anything and anyone that can benefit your business in any way, even if it is just for motivation or idea generation. Just like social listening, twitter listening also provides you with a bird’s-eye view of your brand, your competitors, and your industry in general so you can make better strategies and achieve better ROI.
With more than 500 million tweets added per day, this community-based website is one of the best social media listening platforms.
People use Facebook primarily for staying connected with their family and friends, although they do spend a significant amount of time following pages they like. Twitter users are, however, social-aware people who primarily use this micro-blogging website for voicing out their opinions.
Whether they have a question or a suggestion or are unhappy with a brand or need some recommendations, Twitter users are pretty honest and sometimes, even brutal with their opinion or feedback. If they like you, they will whole-heartedly recommend you. They will even defend you. But, if they are unhappy with you, they will go all out and gang up against you. And, that is why Twitter social listening is far more beneficial (and equally devastating) than what you may have thought. Read this article to find out why Twitter is so toxic.
If they are talking about your brand or your industry in general and you are not listening, they will assume you don’t really care about them. Your competitor will listen to them and jump in to promote its business.
You don’t always have to engage in a meaningful conversation. Anything response that makes them feel heard and valued is worth it. See the humorous replies from Real Craft Mayo for example.
Twitter is one of the most popular social media platforms across the globe, having more than 76.9 million users only from the United States. It is a rapidly growing platform and most of its users are smart people who love to voice out their opinion.
Many of your buyers and prospects are already using Twitter or may start using it any time soon. They may be asking for recommendations directly related to your business. If you are not there, you may be missing out a lot of potential leads. And, if your competitors are there and they are listening to those leads, they may be making a lot of business from those conversations. They may even be targeting you negatively, which you may not be knowing unless you have a team that is actively engaged in Twitter listening.
Other than lead generation, there are numerous benefits of Twitter social listening. I have mentioned some of the important ones below.
As I said above, Twitter users love to share their opinion. If many of them are hinting at an issue with your products or services, listen to them, talk to them, assure them that you are working on fixing those or explain to them why they are happening, and at the end, fix the issue if possible. For example; your yoga pants may be too transparent or your running shoes may not be having proper cushioning.
I understand that it is not always possible to fix all the issues that buyers identify. But, remaining silent will only make your audience feel that you don’t care. Listening and communicating with them will make you sound like a sincere, customer-friendly brand.
Twitter listening can help you identify the issues that your audience is having with your competitors.
You can join those conversations and subtly promote yourself. But, please note that this could be risky as your competitors will also start targeting you. Also,if you talk too much, your audience may start muting you. Here is how you can find out if you have been muted on Twitter and how to see if people have blocked you on Twitter.
If your audience is appreciating a specific feature or service of your competitors, Twitter social listening can help you identify those conversations, so you can make necessary improvements.
Twitter, by default, shows trending topics as soon as you log in. If you are an active user with a good following and followers, it will show you topics that are very specific to your interests.
Many users, however, do not clearly understand how to use these Twitter trending topics for their personal/professional benefit.
They not only help you stay updated with the current happenings around the world and in your industry but also help you figure out what people in your region are talking about. They can help you figure out what your direct users want. Is there a local event coming up in your city, which you should be a part of? Are there any specific hashtags that your potential buyers are using frequently? If so, you need to start using them too, so you can get more visibility.
Going local is really important because that’s what will help you reach out to people who matter the most and Twitter listening will help you with that.
Here is an interesting blog that you can read to learn how you can identify global trends.
Evaluate your Twitter analytics report thoroughly to identify the keywords that gain maximum engagement; both by you and by your competitors. These are the keywords that you must target the most while creating your upcoming social media campaign.
Find out the type of posts that your audience likes the most and make sure your content calendar caters to their liking. You don’t always have to be serious and helpful. Humor works too!
Check out for those posts where your competitors’ dominated the conversation and learn how they did it. Next time, be prepared and, as soon as you get an opportunity, jump in quickly and be the star performer or maybe start a similar but better conversation.
How to start Twitter listening?
Thankfully, Twitter, just like any other social media website, doesn’t need to be tracked manually. There are proper social media listening tools and even specific Twitter listening tools that can make your life much easier. Tools like Notifier are so easy that even your interns can use them without needing much assistance or training.
I will brief you about these Twitter social listening tools shortly. First, let me brief you about what you need to figure out before you get started with these tools.
Define your Twitter listening goals
Unless you know what you want to achieve, there is no point investing in a tool. If you randomly search keywords and your competitors, the overwhelming amount of search results will make you feel lost and confused. So, before you begin, you must know what you want to do with a Twitter social listening tool.
Do you want to find out your brand mentions and engage with your audience? Do you want to participate in industry-related discussions? Do you want to find brand advocates? Do you want to obtain feedback regarding a specific product or service of yours? Do you want to get expert advice? Do you want to improve your customer services? Do you want to check what your competitors are doing and you aren’t?
Once you set specific goals, it will be easier for you to use the Twitter listening tool for filtering out the irrelevant data and get only the ones that make sense. After you have got the final result, it is up to you how you want to use it.
Choose a Twitter listening tool that works for you
There is no dearth of Twitter social listening tools. Some of them are so extensive that they can provide you with real-time data, so you can attend to critical leads and conversations almost immediately.
But, these tools are pretty expensive and they have so many not-so-necessary features which may overwhelm you. These tools often come with a learning curve. The kind of data they dig out is highly accurate but you may have to hire a specialist to decode the information and help you figure out how to use that.
If you are a big brand with a huge marketing budget, you may go with any of those high-end Twitter social listening tools and hire a social media expert to use it the right way. But, if you want a user-friendly, basic tool that you can use on your own without spending hours learning it, Notifier is one of the few options you have.
Notifier provides as good results as the more expensive options
Some people associate the word affordable with medium/low-quality. But, that’s not always true. You may have come across numerous products that are nearly as good as their more expensive options. Now, when I say nearly, I mean they are good in terms of what they are meant for but they may lack some fancy features; for example, aesthetic appearance and features that you don’t really need but marketers promote them heavily to make their products sound unique and in-demand.
Notifier is one such affordable Twitter listening tool. It comes with almost no learning curve. You can create your account, set your searchers, choose the social media platforms that you want to track, and bingo! There are a bunch of filters and string searches that you can use to refine the results. You can save these searchers and then, Notifier will alert you whenever there is an activity related to them. It doesn’t have any complex dashboard or graphs that can only be decoded by an expert. The results are displayed in a simple format.
Twitter advanced search and TweetDeck are some of the best free Twitter listening tools
These are Twitter’s own tools. As expected, they are as easy as they could have been. You can customize them to help you search very specific keywords, within a specific time range, and even with a very specific engagement rate.
These free Twitter listening tools, however, are not often absolutely accurate and they do not have many basic features. Please, they do not provide real time data and instant alerts. They do not have advanced filters to provide you with the most relevant search results.
If you are a really small organization that can’t afford even the most affordable Twitter social listening tools like Notifier, you may go with the free ones. They are good for those who are just getting started and need something basic to understand how Twitter listening works. You can use these free tools until you are ready to get started with the paid ones.
Twitter listening is the beginning of creating a highly impactful social media marketing strategy. If done the right way, it can help you build a solid reputation, gain more followers (who may become your brand advocates), get more leads, stay ahead of competition, handle a crisis before it significantly impacts your reputation, and much more.
If you are still now sure, you can try Notifier’s 7-day free trial. Contact me for any queries or if you face any problem.
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