When it comes to starting out in social media, many brands set up Twitter and Facebook accounts and begin engaging. Listening online before setting up a social media presence allows brands to strategise their social media approach to the greatest effect. Leena Wood, Director of Business Development, Asia Pacific at Radian6 spoke with us about the importance of listening.

Listen first

“A lot of people go right, I need to be in Twitter, I need to be in Facebook and they get busy in Twitter and Facebook and then they go, ‘I can’t handle all of this content, I need a listening platform’. Then they come to Radian6, they get their listening platform set up and they do some listening. Then they realise that a lot of their audience is somewhere else and that they’ve silo-ed themselves into a couple of platforms where they don’t have as much reach or as much community as they do in other areas,” says Wood.

Listening gives brands an overview of the kinds of conversations that are having around their brand and their industry. Often a brands’ offline metrics don’t convert online. “You might have an idea that your footprint is massive and you might have indications of offline or other areas where that you’ve found what your share of voice is or your share of conversation is, and then you come into a listening platform and you realise, ‘Ahah, I don’t have that footprint at all number one, and number two, people aren’t busy in Twitter and Facebook for the things that I’m interested, in they’re busy in forums and if I ignore forums and concentrate on twitter I’m going to miss out on that community.’”

Radian6 is one social media monitoring company which provides a platform for a listening post to be set up. “A listening post is basically a high level view of what on earth’s going on: what’s your share of voice, what’s your brand equity, what are people talking about, what are the issues, what’s the sentiment like for your brand? Then we can also pinpoint specific issues that people have had and how they’ve responded to them,” says Wood, clarifying that Radian6 isn’t an agency, but provides information and management tools for agencies and clients to use.

Surprise competitors

The online environment can be notably different in terms of competitor rankings to the offline environment. In the listening phase brands can see how their competitors are performing, and may even be introduced to competitors they hadn’t considered. “They’re often surprised by their share of voice,” says Wood. “Or they look at their other competitors and this is what often happens, they see a competitor that they had off the radar that is actually a pretty big threat in terms of being busy in social.” says Wood.

Sentiment

Listening also provides valuable insights into sentiment around brands. Reactions to particular events can also be tracked. Wood has observed that sentiment around something like a bank outage can last for up to a month after the issue has been resolved. “People still bitch and hiss about it after a month, because they wanted to do transactions and their pay might not have gone in and they’re now getting default notices about they haven’t paid this bill because they didn’t login or they logged in and it didn’t register – with banks, people get filthy for a long time even, when the issue is resolved.”

Is your social media phone ringing?

Even if a brand isn’t on Twitter or Facebook, chances are people are talking about it. “We talk about how you wouldn’t leave your desk phone ring for five days, why would you leave somebody hanging on Twitter?” says Wood. “Often people on twitter, they write twitter handles that don’t exist they, write @ a brand name.” If your competitor is smart, and you’re not answering the phone, it’s possible they’ll answer it for you.

Smart brands choosing monitoring companies have even been known to check if a potential social media monitoring company is walking the talk. “It was a trend last year of people doing #socialmonitoringareyoulistening and a couple of companies did that as a test to see which monitoring companies they would shortlist,” says Wood. Luckily, she was.

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Twitter role:

Featured: Leena Wood: @social2crm, Radian6: @Radian6

Article by: Lou Pardi: @loupardi, @smkapac