Top 5 Crucial Social Listening Metrics to Monitor

Top 5 Crucial Social Listening Metrics to Monitor

Monitoring social media activity has been a challenge for marketers for quite some time. “Social listening metrics” are here to the rescue as the wiser sibling of social media tracking, that simply knows better.

In a nutshell, social listening is a tool to understand all the social media chatter happening about your business. By extension, social listening essentially gauges the overall performance of your brand and your customers' perception. 

What does this mean?

Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and now the Metaverse are known to attract unparalleled attention to brands. However, when social media platforms become a dime a dozen, you will unavoidably need ways & means to track activity. 

Enter “social listening tools.”

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When you follow the 5 metrics mentioned in the article, understanding the complete conversation around your brand becomes easier. 

There is a solid social listening tool mentioned at the end which combines all the 5 metrics, to give you a complete picture. So keep reading until the end. 

Before diving deeper into learning about social listening, let us understand the difference between “social media monitoring” and “social listening.”

What is the difference between social media monitoring and social listening?

According to a recent study, over 4.2 billion people use social media worldwide, and by 2027, 6 billion people will have joined the bandwagon. Hence, the need for social media listening and monitoring is more imperative today than ever before.

Image source: statista.com

Social listening is all about tracking, accumulating, and analyzing the information gathered from online conversions as opposed to social media monitoring. 

On the other hand, social media monitoring compiles all the data from the social media platforms and analyzes them. 

While it may seem similar on the surface, social listening is the umbrella term that includes social monitoring, gauging customer sentiment, engagement, and other profound undertakings.

In both cases, a customer care representative or marketing executive uses lead generation software, especially in social monitoring. A tool that assimilates leads from sources like landing pages, social media, and others, lead generation software is a blessing for marketers. 

Furthermore, some lead generation tools can facilitate product marketing processes tailored to specific requirements of customers as well. 

Speaking of tools, there is a one-stop tool spoken about at the end that undertakes all the 5 social listening metrics mentioned below. 

What are the 5 social listening metrics and KPIs?

You can imagine social listening as Dr. Strange peeking into all the parallel universes to gauge information. With so many variables, the process of social listening may seem daunting but the picture gets clearer once you have your business goals sorted. 

An insight into the right metrics will help you discern the connection between your goals and social media activities. Precisely how Dr. Strange saw one outcome where the earth will survive. 

Here are the 5 crucial social listening metrics that all brands must keep an eye out for

#1 Social engagement

A term that is used rampantly in the social media space, engagement is the foundation of all social listening metrics. Businesses must keep a regular track of how many people are reacting to their social media posts. By doing so, you will gradually identify the types of content that work, drives engagement, and helps your marketing purposes.

In the same process, marketers can determine which social media platform drives more engagement, and focus on other platforms to improve engagement. 

Liking, commenting, and sharing your content is how you drive engagement, and tracking the same profusely is how you quantify engagement rate. 

Speaking of engagement rate, nothing speaks louder about interaction than the video social platform YouTube. 

Youtubers and influencers are often found repeating the terms like, share, comment, ring the bell, and subscribe to their content. Clever YouTubers also add cinematic b-rolls, and fast-paced content, and utilize state-of-the-art Youtube video editing software to increase engagement. 

Image source: Rivaliq.com

How to improve engagement rate: 

  • Compile the total number of engagements across all your posts & platforms.

  • Keep an eye on the volume and consistency

  • Work constantly on improving engagement

#2 Share of voice

A social listening metric that is ideal to keep up with your competitors and beat them, the social share of voice is essential. 

Share of Voice (SOV) is the measure of the brand’s place in the market in comparison to its competitors. It directly displays which brand is holding the roost in that particular sector and can be a great social listening metrics. 

When the intention is to dominate and stay ahead of the competition, keeping a close eye on the volumes your social posts are doing is important.

Only when you are aware of the volume and the share of voice, you can begin to conceive the conversion rate. 

Here’s how to measure the share of voice: 

  • By using a holistic analytical tool to measure the volume of mentions received. 

  • (Mentions / total volume of mentions) x 100 = gives share of voice

  • Use the same tool to measure the consistency of the volume of mentions and the peaks & troughs of this volume. 

#3 Conversion rate

You’ve maintained engagement, and kept an eye on the volumes, but none of it means anything if you’re not converting. By making your landing pages seamless, including compelling CTA, and being consistent with your branding, you can dramatically boost your conversion rate. 

For holistic brand growth, combining other marketing processes like SEO, referral marketing, and affiliate marketing, can help tremendously.

How to convert and track the said conversion rate: 

  • Discern the total traffic your social platforms are receiving

  • Discern the number of conversions that happened

  • Total rate of conversion is calculated by dividing conversion by traffic and multiplying it by 100.

#4 Customer Response Rate and Time

A study indicates that 79% of customers expect a response to their social media posts within 24 hours.

Understanding the type of content, the engagement rate, and customer interaction are great ways to build a reliable social media strategy. However, like every successful relationship, social media also requires two-way communication where the brand MUST interact with its customers on a regular basis. 

The rate at which the brand responds to a customer query on its social media handles is a  great listening metric. This metric can be used to understand its efficiency and it makes up a lion’s share of the brand’s image. 

Usually, customers and visitors visit the social media handle to ask common questions.

  • Does your customer have questions about the order?

  • They are inclined towards buying your product but need to know more?

  • Do they have specific concerns that are not addressed on the website?

If they do not receive the answer to these questions in real-time, it paints a poor picture and can directly impact the brand’s reputation.

The customer behavior of today mandates the brands’ social media handles to be the hotspot for customer experience and this is where response rate and the time come in. 

Instagram and Facebook are the two social media platforms that offer a clear avenue for customer care. In fact, Facebook also rewards brands with reliable “usually replies in <> days” tags, based on the response rate. 

Image source: Hubspot.com

#5 Customer sentiment

The human brain is naturally primed to respond to certain stimuli and it is uniform in most cases. This is usually applicable in emotions and sensory engagement, where humans are able to connect at the most basic level.

An area where every brand needs to focus, building a customer sentiment that aligns with its marketing and overall messaging. 

For instance, let’s assume that you’re a brand that simplifies social media marketing for companies. In such a case “trust” becomes an important factor for your brand tone, and it should evoke the same in your customers.

You can also deploy tools that pick up feedback, complaints, and general discussion around your brand to gauge the customer sentiment and help you tweak your branding accordingly. 

Based on these sentiments, brands can chart their campaigns, customer interaction, and much more to improve brand recall and recognition across platforms. 

At the end of the day, email is still the most personal and effective way to tap into customer sentiments. By using email list management software, marketers can achieve a one-up against the competition in the email marketing process. 

To Conclude

It is a known fact that every brand on the face of the earth needs social media presence and data helps enable that. 

A robust social listening tool can help marketers gather data and turn them into actionable insights. These insights can be further leveraged to make the most of what social media has to offer.

It pays to find a good tool that takes away all your social listening plights. So go ahead and invest in one, today.


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