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Social Listening Is Key To Engagement, Long-Term Business Growth

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ALT="Soulati Media blog post image on social listening with 2 toddlers talking on a string phone"

Social listening has risen to the top of the ladder as a critical component in program strategy for every business affected by COVID-19. Where before, you surfed social media and merely brushed against key conversations in your stream. Now, deeper dives into conversation provide the pulse of the conversation that not only builds awareness but also opportunity.

What Is Social Listening

What does social listening mean to you?

As social media engagement tightens up into niche groups and smaller streams, these “virtual dinner chats” provide meaningful conversation with a lot of emotion and feelings bared in more comfortable channels.

Perhaps you invite 10 people to join you in a video conference on Zoom, Skype, Whereby, Calendly, or other really cool app. You ask two questions, “So, how is everyone coping?” And “What are you putting in place to ensure you don’t collapse from stress?”

And, the floodgates open widely as people isolated in their self-quarantine want to share with others and feel the strength of community. During these conversations, your job as host is to find the pulse of the conversation. To help, you don your PR strategist hat, you determine how to address the problems with solutions.

Solving the issues surrounding COVID-19 seems particularly impossible. Therefore, building relationship and community solve the immediate issue of isolation. Within that relationship building, you invite everyone to chat about their business. What do they do on a normal business day? Ask about products and services they offer others on a normal business day? What tips can everyone offer that others can adopt?

Social Media Does Offer A Solution During Isolation

Social media, in my book, has always, always been about engagement and NEVER a one-way street. Frequently, many peeps lazily post on channels and rarely respond or share one-to-one. Connectivity with true humans softens the chaos and jagged edges of our own psyche.

And, if you don’t mind me asking, how is yours? Psychologically, COVID-19 wreaks great havoc on the psyche. Mine is suffering greatly with enormous stress as a self-employed business owner. I worry for my daughter working in a grocery store as a cashier. My thoughts go daily to my 80-year-old mother hoping she copes well through quarantine. Even more, shuttered businesses I used to frequent for my livelihood and clients with closed doors due to the pandemic contribute to my stress. That means I worry for the health of my business and ability to pay my bills and mortgage.

In conclusion, I am turning to social listening to see that I’m not alone in this global crisis. I am reaching out to connect with old friends and business peers. I am blogging more frequently and having fun designing Instagram posts on Canva for the first time. Will this help me bring in money to my dying business? Perhaps or perhaps not, but, no one said Rome was built in a day, right?

The Return of Social Media Engagement

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ALT="Soulati Media, Future and Past"We’ve come full circle. We’re returning to social media engagement. As I daily peruse the social media sphere and the lists of bloggers who still write daily, good for you, I am conscious of one thing in this chaos of disruption.

Human engagement with connectivity remains the number one most important metric of social media.

Says Social Media Explorer today (exact quotes) by Peter Friedman: [Read more…]

Anatomy of 20 Minutes on Twitter

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There are a couple of things I’d like to share about this post. For starters, it’s too good not to use as an example of inspiration from Twitter. In 20 minutes, I posed a question, and Neicole Crepeau (with whom I had never tweeted) chimed in. In the flick of a wrist, we had:

  • Debated the definition of “guru” in social media
  • Shared data on latecomers to the party
  • Established our respective credibility
  • Agreed on our consensus
  • Became inspired by the chat to ask others to join us
  • RT’ed a bunch of times to show appreciation and respect
  • Retained the tweet stream to repurpose into a blog post WITH permission from both parties.

The true purpose of this stream is to debate the definition of “guru.” That’s not happening today, but it will happen tomorrow in part two of this post.  Ever the educator, I feel the need to share this powerful chat to showcase Twitter’s hidden gifts. And, if you don’t get this type of engagement on Twitter every so often, you’re not engaged! Simple.

Twitter Chat with Jayme Soulati and Neicole Crepeau:

@Soulati How would you define a #SM guru? Someone just said “it’s too early to define a true guru.”

@neicolec Good question! RT @Soulati: How would you define a #SM guru? Someone just said “it’s too early to define a true guru.”

@neicolec: Guru implies a long time doing something. It implies, to me, that you have developed solid, repeatable processes.

@Soualti: RT @neicolec Guru implies a long time doing something. It implies, to me, that you have developed solid, repeatable processes.

@neicolec: Social networks have only become mainstream (in terms of volume and user demographics) in the last couple of years. #SM

@Soulati: I’ve been presenting 5 times this year on #SM; fascinating to see YouTube born 2005. Not a long time!

@Neicolec: To date, most social media marketing has been experimental. Tried and true best practices (beyond basic use) aren’t there. #SM

@Soulati: I find #PR measurement easier with #SM. Best practices come with dedicated companies open to change, flexibiilty.

@Neicolec: While there have been successes in social media and there are big names, I don’t think that equals a guru. #SM

@Neicolec: A guru should be able to teach others those best practices so they can repeat them. Not seeing that much, yet. #SM

@Soulati: There are always leaders. In the case of #SM, perhaps good to delineate “leader” “mentor” “guru.” Good convo; let’s do blog post.

@Soulati: Hope you’re following Neicole and me right now. She’s got some good insight on how we define guru in #SM. We’re not there yet.

@Neicolec: I agree with you re: best practices. A post the other day said social media is now moving from revolution to evolution stage. #SM

@Soulati: Did you catch that nuance — to “evolution?” Hoping it becomes part of the channel, and slow adopters get on board.

@Neicolec: I agree with that. Best practices will be built during this stage. I also agree that there are leaders in social. Not gurus.

@Soulati: OK, you’re on. This is definitely a blog post; I will capture our discussion from this afternoon. OK to include your tweets?

@Neicolec: If you do a blog post, please DM me with the link. I’d love to see your thoughts on the topic.

@Neicolec: Did you see the latest stats on marketing spend. https://ow.ly/2wPFm I think those late adopters are coming on board.

@Neicolec: Absolutely! Enjoyed the tweet talk. A great example of the joys of social media!

@Soulati: Fully agree; thanks Neicole!

First Social Media, Then a Buy

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There are companies not engaging in social media. There are consumers not engaging in social media. There are marketing public relations practitioners not engaging in social media. But that window is closing fast. For those who believe social media and networking are not our future, just look around you.

According to Website Magazine in its Feb. 2010 issue, it says your “social graph” is the most important asset in business. A social graph is a collection of online connections.

In the magazine’s article, 50 Top Social Media Resources, they provided some data (from February):

  • Facebook is the most popular social networking site for business owners.
  • Of B2C organizations, 83 percent have Facebook profiles.
  • Only 45 percent of B2C organizations have a Twitter account
  • B2B companies have profiles on both sites in more or less equal proportion — 77 percent on Facebook and 73 percent on Twitter.
  • Participants using social media day-to-day visit company or brand profiles on social sites 62 percent of the time and 55 percent of them search for business information on the social sites.

Before many a consumer makes a buy decision, they comb the search engines for buyer reviews, perhaps on Yelp or Complaints.com, and make an informed decision whether or not to make a purchase.  In addition, consumers seek a company’s Facebook profile to see how they engage, what news is available, how fans are responding, and how the company is replying. Perhaps there is a select group of people using these tools to inform a buy decision; and, this will be common practice as the months go by.

Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are for sure the most well known and used by a plethora of people world-wide; however, they’re not the only players. Ever heard of Revver.com, diigo.com, blackplanet.com, hi5.com, or yuku.com? (Me, neither!) I don’t believe any company is solidly engaging with a majority of the top 50 social media resources listed by Website magazine. 

I’m going to make it my mission to share in my sleuthing. What’s your mission in the six months remaining in 2010? (Tick-tock…time’s up!

 ENGAGE!