How to Listen to Social Media Conversations for Your Best Content

You’ve heard the term social media listening, but is your brand doing it? Does your team even really know what it means? You’re probably already listening to what your customers and prospects have to say within other marketing channels, but what about on social?

Social listening is essentially monitoring and searching within social communities to see what’s being said about your company/industry/competitors and other relevant topics of interest.

As a community manager at Ignite, monitoring social conversations is second nature, but I’ve noticed that’s not the case for many brands. Some brands may only be on one social media channel because (understandably) that’s all they have time to manage. But what they’re missing out on is the conversation that is happening about their brand, whether they are present or not.

Listening to what your fans (and potential fans) are talking about on social can help inform your content strategy. Let’s face it, the conversation is happening whether you choose to be present or not. Want to improve your content marketing?

Try these three tips to up your social listening and content game.

What are your fans’ passion points? This is learned by being in your social media communities on a daily basis and learning what types of content and topics of conversation resonate with your audience. What types of content are they most interested in? What are they passionate about? Here’s an example from our client, Altar’d State’s, social communities.

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Once you learn what types of content make your fans engage more, you can then craft your content strategy around those passion points and really take your content to the next level.

What is your community not-so-interested in? Have you tested a message that your audience isn’t so engaged with? Make note of it! It’s crucial to know what your audience will and won’t engage with on social so that you can adjust your content strategy appropriately.

How can you leverage your fans for your content marketing? Have some fans in your social channels that are generating positive reviews, sharing pictures with your brand, or just all around high engagers? Use them to your advantage. One of the easiest ways to do this is to incorporate UGC into your content strategy. See example of our Outer Banks client doing so below.

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If you notice a trend of users sharing content on your branded hashtag, implement a process to capture that content and repurpose for your social media content strategy. Not only will your fans be thrilled to be featured, but your content mix will be stronger. Win-win.

Need help getting started? Drop us a line – We’d be happy to chat.



Ignite Social Media