Social listening is a method for gaining valuable insights from customers and clients, via the online platforms they use every day. As well as driving product development and marketing initiatives, this could be a valuable source of information you can tap into for your content creation strategy.

What Is Social Listening?

Digital tools provide companies with the ability to collate comments and engagement information from a variety of social platforms. You may also have heard this called social intelligence or social media monitoring. Generally, keywords or phrases will prompt the social listening tool to gather data on social interactions. Sentiment tracking is another method of social listening.

There are three key steps to most social media listening plans:

•          Setting up “listening streams” for your company name, product or service brand names, or even the CEO’s name

•          Create similar streams for competitors

•          Set social listening tools to hunt for industry-related hashtags and keywords to get insights into market trends and general client needs

Social listening is important because it lets tech startups get fast insights into what potential leads think about competitors and the overall industry, plus what they’re saying about the company itself. Two-thirds of marketers state that social media listening has increased in value in the last 12 months. One way it adds value to your company is by helping you create content that increases traffic to your business website.

How Can Social Listening Help With Content Marketing?

One of the most challenging things about maintaining an effective content marketing strategy is creating content your target audience wants to read. Blogs, videos, and podcasts all take time and effort to create. How do you know they’re going to hit the spot?

Social listening can give you the confidence that your content is bang on the money when it comes to industry trends. When you see Fintech hashtags trending, for example, you can look deeper into that and pick out key topics. If these topics coincide with your tech offering, write blogs or produce videos answering the questions people are asking online.

Examples of Content You Can Create With Social Listening

Leveraging social media insights for better content is simple when you have a few ideas about the type of content it can help you create.

Blogs that address recurring client pain points

When you know what clients are complaining about across an entire industry segment, you’re ideally placed to create content that directly addresses it. You can even subtly point out how your services could be a potential solution!

Video responses to comments—negative or positive

If you’re seeing a ton of comments about your app or website, give those people a shout-out in a short video. If those comments are complaining about a mistake you made, acknowledging it publicly and stating what you’re going to do in response is a great way to improve your brand reputation.

Utilize user-generated content

Finding where people have been talking about your brand allows you to repurpose their content in many instances. Reviews, positive comments, and peer-to-peer online conversations about great experiences with your brand are all types of earned media that you can share in your own blog posts.

Final Word

Content marketing is just one aspect of a great tech startup marketing strategy. Book a 15-minute introductory call with the Arch Collective team to find out more about maximizing the tools at your disposal for sustainable growth.

Wondering how effective your marketing and content strategies really are? Book a Marketing Audit with us.