Most of us tend to overlook the fact that listening is the key to good communication. It helps us understand the meaning beyond the words that people exchange. Of course, wouldn’t you love to be a fly on the wall for most conversations that revolve around you? Yes; most would. The same goes for brands.
So when you realize the need to listen to what’s been said about your brand on the internet, you’re next steps would be about investing in a social listening tool. Narrowing down on one from the several options out there isn’t the easiest task in the world.
Here, we aim to create a structure on how to go about selecting the best social listening tool for your brand.
1) Is It Only for Deep Pockets?
This maybe one of the first things to consider if you have a cap on your budget. You’ll have to figure out if the monthly/yearly premium is within your capacity. However, you should keep room for flexibility if you find the perfect tool for your needs; one that checks everything on your list.
2) How Social is the Listening Tool?
Does the tool monitors all the platforms you require? If you need to monitor platforms A, B, C and D and the tool monitors A, B, E and F, it obviously does a lot but doesn’t meet your needs. Yes monitoring the platforms where your brand isn’t present is a good practice, but one can always use basic tools, that are largely available free of cost, for such practices.
3) Be the Stalker (the non-creepy kind)
Knowing is winning half the battle. The better you know your audience, the better the vantage point you set up for yourself to educate them or promote yourself. A tool that can identify which platform your audience is on can do plenty.
4) Keep Your Enemies Closer
There are a lot of tools that help you tracks your competitors. You can identify the strengths and weakness of the competition. A good knowledge about your competitors could help you make better decisions for your business.
5) What’s Trending?
We said this before and we’ll say it again, listening is important. A listening tool can not only help you know what your audience is talking about you but also the trends they follow. So, if you are a food and beverages company you want to know what kind of foods are among the latest trends.
6) Influencer = Free Marketing
Your audience is a lot more potent than you think. It could have those individuals who have a large number of followers of their own. There may be internet celebrities who already love your brand. A great social media listening tool is one that helps you find key influencers in your industry.
7) Campaign Monitoring
What good is a campaign if you can’t prove it in numbers, despite it being a success? According to Ideya’s 2016 Report, the number of featured tools offering Campaign Management and Monitoring feature has grown from 68% in 2015 to 73% in 2016. You definitely want to be able to monitor a campaign.
8) Data Quality
What kind of metrics does the tool measure? What kind of data is churned by the tool? Do you get the data in a presentable format that you could present it to the bosses? Figure out how much micro-managing of tasks will you have to do with regards to the data.
9) Support for Support
You might be confident that you have the best tool available in the market, but there will be a point when you’ll require assistance from the customer support. Though this may not be as easy as it sounds but digging a little deep by asking people and reading reviews can help you figure.
10) Free Before You Agree
Getting a social listening tool could be a bigger commitment than it may seem. One would want to be absolutely sure about the tool. One good way is to do a free trial. Yes, it’s exactly like a test drive before buying a car. Get comfortable with the tool before you buy.
So that’s about the things to consider before getting a social listening tool. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the mammoth amount of content that’s out there.
But if you have the right tool it can definitely make your work easier and help you be more productive.
