Promotions are a large part of any social media strategy, and rightly so. They help engage your audience and increase your reach on social media channels. One way to spice up your promotions if they are feeling a little run down or tired is to incorporate your social listening data!
The first step is to make sure your social listening tools are set up and part of your marketing strategy. Social listening consists of monitoring your social media channels for brand mentions, products, competitors, and any other relevant information. It also depends on you as a business taking actionable steps to engage with your audience and potential audience. With social listening, you are able to see the general sentiment of your business among your audience and track trends of sentiment over time. This type of monitoring can inform the types of content and campaigns that you create in the future, because you are able to see what types of response people had to previous content.
Many businesses only look to find themselves on social media. They will monitor only brand mentions, likes, and engagement. However, it is important to look into all related content online because many consumers aren’t talking directly to you. In a study done by Brandwatch, 96% of people talking about your brand do not follow you, and 96% of conversations online are not branded. If you are not looking outside of your brand on your social media, you are missing out on a large percentage of conversation, opportunities to engage with your audience, and making their experience of your brand more enjoyable.
Here are a few awesome tools that can help you get started in social listening:
Hootsuite (we use Hootsuite at Get Community!)
ReviewTrackers
Once your social listening strategy is set up, you can use it to your full advantage when creating social media promotions. We recently published a blog on how to execute the perfect promotion: just D.A.T.E.! A social listening based promotion does not only reward loyal followers, but works to expand your loyal follower base and introduce new people to the brand. By incorporating social listening data, you can tailor promotions to fit larger trends in the market, differentiate yourself from competitors, connect directly to your audience, and freshen up your promotions strategy!
For example, through your social listening tools you can look for people in your area that are on the hunt for their perfect new home. Your promotion can include offering them a private tour around the model homes, or, a VIP invite to the next sales event or grand opening! Reaching out to those people could turn them into future buyers! You give them an experience or a gift for free, and they take away a positive experience with your brand.
Newly engaged audience members are also more likely to share their positive experiences of your brand with friends and family. You can grow your audience on social media by creating an inexpensive promotional campaign based on data gathered through social listening.
* Check out this podcast episode that Hootsuite published on how one promotion using social listening is helping a restaurant brand gain a loyal following. *
Another more specific example is creating a campaign that is focused on growing families within your community. Hypothetically, here’s what you could do:
- Check your preferred social listening tool for people that recently had a baby. You can create streams for social channels that include hashtags such as #newborn, #newbaby, etc.
- Crosscheck step number one with the geolocation for your community and any other areas of interest.
- As part of your growing families promotion, you could reach out to new parents and congratulate them with a $25 Amazon gift card or a fun family-friendly experience.
This type of social listening based promotion associates your brand with a positive message and an unexpected surprise! People are much more likely to talk about your brand positively and pass on information to their friends.
Incorporating social listening into promotion campaigns is a great way to create loyal social media followers and real life customers. By bringing in all the people talking about your brand, but not necessarily tagging or mentioning you, you are creating and engaging with a much larger community.
So, be creative with it and get LISTENING!