Pierry Blog

The holidays are the time of year when people open up and share their joy and appreciation for each other with celebrations and, of course, gifts. With so much of our social lives now online, and e-Commerce steadily growing as the preferred form of purchase among consumers, the holidays provide an incredible opportunity for digital marketers to learn more about their customers. All it takes is a little bit of listening—social listening, that is.

Social listening involves monitoring mentions of your brand, your products, or your services across social media platforms, and using those conversations to learn more about your customers and how to connect with them. Good social listening is essential for a marketer, mainly because your customers tell you exactly what they like and dislike about your brand.

BEST PRACTICES FOR SOCIAL LISTENING

With the right social listening program in place, brands can harness the power of social listening to guide their marketing and sales efforts through the holidays and beyond. But it is essential to follow a few best practices:

• Know where to look – While most discussion of brands happens on the major outlets like Facebook and Twitter, customers can mention your brand anywhere on the web. It’s important to do some legwork and find out where and how your customer base communicates. Something as simple as setting up a Google Alert for your brand keywords, or other terms that would be related to your products or services can help uncover mentions of your brand by up-and-coming bloggers, resellers, third-party review sites and more.

• Stay organized – Your brand’s relationship with your customers will not always be straightforward. People can interact positively or negatively with your product, and it’s important to create categories to keep track of what kind of reactions your brand inspires.

• Analyze – This is where your social listening efforts pay off. By pooling and analyzing mentions on social media you will get a clear picture of the impression you’ve made on your audience. Use this data to fine-tune your future social media efforts.

GETTING YOUR SOCIAL LISTENING PROGRAM READY FOR THE HOLIDAYS

Having a social listening program in place year round is great. But even the most established programs have to make adjustments during the building holiday season, particular in November and December when shopping is expected to increase by 3.6% this year. Here are a few key practices to keep in mind particularly during this busy retail season:

• Ride the holiday schedule – You really need to ramp up your social listening efforts right at the peak of the holiday season, which is generally the last week of November to the first week of December. In other words, if you start hearing “Jingle Bells” on the radio, it’s time to start listening.

• Monitor individual products – Social listening tools such as Social Studio from Salesforce Marketing Cloud can help you set up keywords and phrases around each of your products, allowing you to compare the frequency and type of mentions, as well as the sentiments behind them. Many people use social media to find recommendations for gifts or special deals, so pay attention to what products are being suggested.

Pay close attention to the language consumers are using to talk about your products as well, as it can give you insights into how you could better communicate the features and benefits of your offerings.

• Follow up – Social listening isn’t just about listening. Sometimes when customers mention your brand online it’s because they’re often interested and trying to learn more. Capitalize on frequent product mentions by engaging them online and replying to their posts. And of course, any direct questions posed to your brand online should always be addressed, as social listening provides incredible customer service opportunities, allowing your representatives to directly interact with customers and create a relationship between customer and brand.

THINKING BEYOND THE HOLIDAY SEASON

The holiday season will be over before you know it, but that doesn’t mean you can tune out on what consumers are saying about you online. Keep your social listening program on high alert well into the new year as consumers are using, returning, or looking to exchange products they received from your brand.

And remember, the opportunity to learn more about how your brand is being perceived online never ends. You’ll gain valuable insights when you monitor how the conversation shifts month over month, year over year, and season over season.

Earlier this year the world was introduced to a small stuffed llama with a charming smile who had one mission—to provide its followers with a reprieve from the day-to-day stresses of the world. Over the past few months I’ve watch the Llama with No Drama Instagram his way through Central Park, Palm Beach, Miami, Los Angeles, Columbia and more. Always with a smile and always with a beautiful backdrop.

Created by Eylul Savas, who in a May 2016 interview with Mashable said she “wanted to start something with the purpose of putting smiles on people’s faces”, the Llama with No Drama Instagram account has over 17k followers (as of this posting); followers that were all attained with just 172 posts over 20 weeks. And many of the Llama with No Drama’s recent posts earn more than 2000 likes a piece, as well as numerous comments and replies.

Okay, so your brand doesn’t have the cute, cuddly face that Llama with No Drama has. But that doesn’t mean your brand needs to run their Instagram account any differently.

What’s this llama doing so right?

1. It Has a Genuine Tone and Mission.

If the name wasn’t enough to convince you that the Llama with No Drama was on a positive mission, the bio says it all: “One happy llama against the world’s drama. For a daily dose of smiles.” The mission is simple and direct. This, paired with a tone that can only be described as content and friendly, helps audiences connect to this llama. And while it may sound strange that people are connecting to a stuffed llama, it’s not that dissimilar from how consumers connect to the brands they are most loyal to.

2. It Sticks to that Tone and Mission in Every Post.

Most of the Internet is snarky, making it an easy place for people and brands to be cynical and snide. Llama with No Drama will have none of that; every post remains true to their overall mission. We feel like we know this llama and again, it creates a very specific connection. You’ll want your brand to have a similar connection—making it feel like your audience isn’t following an intangible brand, but something more like a person they’ve known for years.

3. It Follows the Golden Rule of Quality over Quantity.

Sometimes Llama with No Drama will post a few images a day. Other times, it’s a few images a week. Sometimes they take a week off. While you always want to be as consistent as possible with your brand’s Instagram posting schedule, take a note from this llama and always choose quality over quantity. Make sure your posts are interesting, eye-catching, and most of all, follow your purpose, tone and mission.

4. It Has its Own Hashtag.

Brands really underestimate the value of a good hashtag. And Llama with No Drama has a great (if obvious) one—#LlamawithNoDrama. It’s a no frills, easy to remember hashtag that allows others to be part of the Llama with No Drama movement. A brand-specific hashtag can create that same sense of community amongst your followers, and sometimes lead to some really great user-generated content that you can re-gram.

5. The Imagery is Beautiful and Interesting.

The Llama with No Drama doesn’t necessarily have access to any more places than you or I would. And while some posts are taken in more exotic locales such as Istanbul, many are taken at common tourist attractions such as the beach, or Madame Tussauds Wax Museum. But even the most ordinary places look unique and interesting, creating an “I want to be there too” vibe. Make your Instagram a place where audience members want to be.

6. It Isn’t Afraid to be Topical.

Llama with No Drama isn’t afraid to participate in things like #TBT (Throw Back Thursday) or Red Nose Day. Or to recognize tragic events like the recent attacks in Orlando or Istanbul. And due to the genuine nature of the tone and mission, these types of mentions don’t feel forced or obligatory. Brands in particular need to be careful about when and where they tap into major holidays, events, or tragedies. If it feels like you’re posting just to post, don’t do it. If you’re posting because the tone and mission of your brand as a whole matches a certain cause or event, then it’s more likely to feel genuine.

Today’s consumers want brands that they can connect with. They want brands that help them portray who they are and how they live their life. Much like Llama with No Drama, your Instagram account can give people something refreshing and interesting to look at, while also creating a lasting connection, no matter if you’re a major purse designer, a clothing store, or a B2B company. Just think like the Llama and see the impact it has on your engagement.

You’re tweeting, you’re pinning, you’re Instagramming. You have followers and likes galore. Your social channels are up-and-running. But what do you really know about how they’re performing? While you likely have metrics around high-level performance, you may have not taken the time to stop and think about what those metrics mean and how you can use them to your fullest advantage.

Auditing your social media channels isn’t as complex as you think. All you really need is to follow 3 simple steps:

Step 1: Be Objective

The first step in any audit is to focus on the facts. Take an objective, black and white look at each of your accounts. Don’t judge what is there or make predictions about what to do next. You’re simply getting down the information.

During this fact gathering portion of the audit, there are a few metrics you’ll want to have handy. If you regularly keep track of how your social channels are performing, or if you have a reporting tool (such as those offered by SocialStudio, Hootsuite, or SproutSocial) that will gather these metrics for you, this step will be fairly easy. If you don’t, then you’ll have to look at the analytics provided by the social channels themselves.

Social Metrics that Matter

Twitter:

• Follower Counts
• Engagement Rate
• Impressions
• Link Clicks
• Likes
• Retweets
• Mentions
• How often you post (on average)
• Top 10 Tweets

If you’re utilizing Twitter Cards (which you absolutely should be!) you’ll want to see how those different cards are performing and which type is working the best for your audience.

Facebook:

• Page Likes
• Engagement (Likes, Shares, Comments)
• Total Reach
• Top 10 Facebook Posts (over the past three-six months)

LinkedIn:

• Followers
• Impressions
• Clicks
• Interactions
• Engagement Rates
• Reach
• Top performing posts (over the past three-six months)

Pinterest:

• Followers/Following
• Re-pins
• Comments
• Clicks
• Likes
• Impressions

Instagram:

• Followers
• Likes
• Comments
• Top 10 posts (over the past three-six months)

Note: Instagram is starting to slowly roll out analytics to brands.

You’ll also want to take note of how often, on average, you’re posting on each social channel, whether that’s daily, weekly, or even monthly.

Step 2: Analyze

In the analysis step, you’ll take a look at each of your social channels and start to draw some conclusions based on the objective fact-finding information you gathered in Step 1.

For example, you may see that your top tweets have some common theme or similarity. Or you may notice that videos have higher engagement on Instagram than static photos. You may find that tweets containing certain hashtags get more retweets than those without.

You can even look cross-channel to see how the same content performed and if that performance varied base on the channel it was on. You may find that posts on a certain topic have a high rate of performance on LinkedIn, but that that those same posts received low engagement on Facebook.

The key in the Analyze step is to look at what’s working and think about why that might be the case. Things like the amount of characters in your post, topic, date, time, content, CTA, etc. can all influence engagement. Your job is to find those common themes and draw some conclusions.

Step 3: Make a Plan

Audits like this not only help you take a look at what you’ve done in the past, but give you a chance to analyze what’s working, what isn’t, and, most importantly, what you should do moving forward. It can also help you re-evaluate which metrics are most important to you and establish new goals moving forward.

Establishing goals is what Step 3 is meant to help you do.

So you have all this information. You’ve found some common threads between what’s working and what isn’t. Now, what will you do with that information?

Essentially you want to create a goal (or two) for each channel and then outline how you plan to achieve that goal, as well as what you’ll be testing along the way.

As an example, if you found that Tweets that contained less than 100 characters, one hashtag, and were phrased in the form of a question got the highest engagements, you may conclude that you should test using more of these types of tweets to see if it boosts your overall engagement rate.

Or you may see that your Facebook following is highly interactive and decide that it may be worth it to invest your time into posting 4 times a week instead of just 2, and invest less time in Pinterest, which doesn’t seem to resonate with your audience.

You may even find that Instagram posts you’ve shared via Twitter get a high number of likes and retweets. Perhaps experiment with posting more images on Twitter either from Instagram, or images created especially for Twitter, to see if this has an impact.

Or you may see that a channel is lagging behind some of the others and create a plan to test a new approach. Make the decision to post more, post less, post different content, etc.

And for some of you, you may find you’re satisfied with your engagement and instead want to focus more on building your follower base.

Whatever plans you put in place, make sure you put them down in writing. And make sure you give yourself at least 3 months to let those plans play out before evaluating the results.

A Few Other Considerations…

Audits should be a regular part of your digital marketing strategy and you should audit your channels once per quarter, or at the very least, twice a year.

After completing your initial audit, come up with short term goals and tests that you can check-in on between audits (about once a month) so you can monitor progress at a high level. This can help you identify trouble spots or tests gone wrong, allowing you to correct course before too much damage is done.

Don’t forget to look to your competitors as well. What are they doing that’s getting high engagement or low engagement? You can learn a surprising amount from your competitors just by scrolling through their feeds. We often recommend clients have us perform a competitive audit at least once a year to see what lessons we can learn. Keep in mind, your competitors are probably looking to you for a lesson or two as well.

The 3 steps listed above should provide you with a very basic audit, but you can get as granular with your data as you see fit. Even without tools, you can pretty easily manipulate the data provided by Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Twitter to draw conclusions regarding things like which time you should post each day based on highest engagement. Or estimate when you’re most likely to get the highest amount of impressions. All it takes is a few formulas in Excel, a pivot table, and some patience. You can even add Google Analytics into the mix to see which social channels are generating the most traffic back to your site.

Whatever you want to find, as long as you have access to the data, an audit can help you uncover it and use it to give your social performance a boost.