Social media is no longer just a broadcast platform. It has evolved into an important place for brands and consumers to have conversations. To successfully engage with users, brands need a solid social media strategy.

We, at media update, have been working on our social media strategy to reach more readers with the help of social media tracking service amaSocial. In the process, we’re also learning about social media tracking and its various elements, like social media monitoring and social listening.

We take a look at these two concepts and how services like amaSocial provide brands with the tools to master social media monitoring and social listening.

Measure success with social media monitoring

Social media monitoring services and tools gather data about your brand, business, or organisation. They provide information about your campaigns, marketing initiatives, or even data about your industry on social media.

A service like amaSocial delivers this data through an online platform and reports. media update uses amaSocial’s Listing Reports to see in which posts we were mentioned on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. These reports show us exactly which posts have been shared and retweeted and whether it was directly from our social pages (Earned) or via someone else’s post (Chatter).

We use the service’s online platform to stay on top of comments and questions from readers about the articles we’ve written. The platform draws this information from the three social networks we use into one convenient location. With this feature, we constantly have our finger on the pulse of our readers’ engagement with us and can respond from our social platforms instantly.  

How can brands use social media monitoring services? To stay in touch with your audience the way we do, and closely follow the social media feed on your monitoring tool so you can:
  • respond to users from your social platforms when they mention you and
  • keep an eye on larger public conversations to recognise windows of opportunity to reach audiences in the moment. 

Explore social listening

The data you gather during the social media monitoring process can be used to test the success of campaigns or to monitor ROI. Once you start analysing your social media monitoring data and use it to make informed decisions and strategies, you have moved into the social listening phase.

During our journey with amaSocial, we’ve learnt that ‘social listening’ goes deeper than just hearing what people have to say on social media platforms. It involves the tracking of conversations around specific keywords, phrases, or brands, and then using these insights to identify opportunities or create content for your audience.

We found that the key to social listening is its actionability. It’s about using the information that social media monitoring delivers to refine your social strategies. Long-term, social listening helps you to better understand your audience, tailor your strategies to make them more effective, and improve the ROI of your social media initiatives.

"We found that the key to social listening is its actionability."
The media update team has been using amaSocial’s social listening tools, from the Brand Overview Report to the Owned, Earned, Chatter Report, to identify which stories our readers prefer, which articles receive the most engagement, and which platforms deliver the best results.

By using this information, we have been able to tailor our social media schedule to our readers and post our content on a platform that our readers like best. We’re also able to write more stories that resonate with our audience. Look out for our next post to learn how to use social media tracking to identify topics for your blog.

Wondering whether you should be using a social media tracking service or tool? Find out in our article, BLOG: What social media monitoring tools are useful for.