Are you struggling to get feedback on your content or product?
Do these phrases sound like you?
“Content is king but I don’t know what my audience wants.”
“I don’t care what my followers wants, I just post whatever I want”
“How do I get direct Customer Feedback?”
If it does, you should start looking into social listening tools and strategy! We’ll be talking about what social listening is, and some free tools for you try out.
What is Social Listening?
Social Listening is when you find an opportunity to improve your brand or understand your customers needs through data. Social listening helps you understand what your audience wants from your brand.
Social media listening vs social media monitoring
Social listening is not the same as monitoring. It can only happen if there is social monitoring. Monitoring happens on every social media platform out there. Social Monitoring is observing online conversations. Social listening occurs after data collection, when we turn data into action. "Action" can range from: developing a new marketing campaign, to rebranding. It's all in the realm of audience research. Examples of social listening include: Hashtag tracking or monitoring sentiment during a crisis.
5 Free social listening tools
There are many social listening tools that target specific social platforms. In this list, we will only be talking about tools that allow customization and personalization.
The free version of Mention allows users to listen to their audiences on many sites. Using Mention as a free tool, your brand can track up to three major social platforms. With the free version limited to 1,000 mentions, you can specify the social networks you’d like to track. Then there will be three different kinds of mentions you can follow:
Mentions Only
Favorites Only
Mentions & Replies
Like Mention, the free plan on Hootsuite lets you track three social media platforms. Hootsuite also lets you search for specific keywords and hashtags. Allowing a lot of room for personalization! Hootsuite is free for individual accounts. Businesses that need the full social listening experience have to buy paid subscriptions.
The real original social listening and monitoring tool. Google Alerts lets you monitor your brand across the internet. One of the most simple social monitoring tools to use out there. You can enter the key terms that you want to track for your industry. Google Alerts will send you regular emails to update your mentions across the net. You will need a Google account to begin, but that’s all you’ll need! This monitoring platform lets you view recent activities from blogs, or websites. This function is great for those who want to track mentions from the web, or a private blog post.
BuzzSumo is a content analysis tool that you can use as a social listening tool. This tool allows you to scour the web for any content that includes your search term. Engagement figures are also provided with each result on BuzzSumo. The platform’s gives you insight to impressions and engagement. Which makes it much easier for you to analyze your own, or your competitors' content. Allowing you to provide the best materials for your audiences. BuzzSumo will also tell you the best time you should post your content, and the ideal length of your posts.
A free social listening tool that can be used as a great source of inspiration. Answer the Public allows users to develop a strong social media presence. By visualizing search questions and autocomplete searches in a search cloud, you can get the full idea of what your audience wants. While using this tool, there are standard “who, what, where, when, why” questions. Additionally, phrases that start with “how, can, are, which, and will” are also included. Answer the Public lets you find the most relevant searches from your target audience.
*Image example of search cloud*
Conclusion
So those are our top 5 picks for the best free social listening tools you can use! If you’re looking for more resources related to digital marketing, or anything related to content marketing subscribe to our newsletter here.
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Visit related blog posts:
5 Reasons Why Social Listening Should Be a Priority for Your Brand
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