Listen Up:

The Definitive Guide

to Social Listening for
Smarter Business

1 | The Definitive Guide to Social Listening for Smarter Business

Table of Introduction

Contents Chapter 1
Drive Word-of-Mouth Marketing...
01

Otherwise You’re in the Ad Biz

Chapter 2 02
Do they Really Like You?

Chapter 3 03
Keep Tabs on the Competition

Chapter 4 04
Look Who’s Talking

Chapter 5 05
Find Conversions that Matter

Chapter 6 06
Start Your Own Meme
 Introduction

Starting a social conversation around After you read this e-book, you will
your brand is the #1 goal of a good understand how to find the conversations
social media campaign. Viral word that matter most; how to use social About The Author
of mouth is the difference between monitoring to inform efforts across the
advertising and social marketing, and as entire marketing organization; and how Leslie Nuccio is the lead Content Strategist at
such, it’s earned media: you can’t buy it, to start your own viral marketing memes. Meltwater. She’s been in digital marketing for
but it’s not free. longer than she’d care to admit, and immersed
You, fellow social media marketer, are the in the wild world of user-generated content
Inciting word-of-mouth is dependent catalyst that ignites a great social since 2003. When she’s not nerding out on marketing
upon mastering the social conversation, marketing program. Be the meme, and technology, you can generally find
and in order to do that we marketers compatriots. her entertaining her 4 year old or hiking with
must do something often counterintuitive: one of her dogs.
stop talking for a moment, and listen first. Be the meme.

3 | The Definitive Guide to Social Listening for Smarter Business

 Chapter 1

Drive Word-of-Mouth Marketing...

Otherwise You’re in the Ad Biz

Social Media
Marketing
Manifesto Social media marketing is… well, social. capture or sales conversion. Any content
Content that isn’t shared socially is long- put on your channel specifically designed
1. If content isn’t shared socially, it format advertising: the social share is the for someone to take direct action back
isn’t social marketing. key difference between the traditional at you (rather than sharing out to their
monologue broadcast advertising model people) is a direct marketing effort despite
2. As social media marketers, driving and the new social media dialogue being on a social channel, but that doesn’t
word of mouth is our primary marketing model. mean that it’s not a social media marketing
goal. effort.
Focusing on shares shouldn’t lead to the
impression that social media marketers
aren’t going to have direct marketing goals.
The social media marketer is typically
going to be running certain efforts that
are designed for business goals like lead

4 | The Definitive Guide to Social Listening for Smarter Business

 However, the social share is what gives the power to a social media
AWARENESS marketing program, for several reasons:

CONSIDERATION 1. The number of people your content is going to be exposed to is now

exponential.

PREFERENCE 2. People are more likely to pay attention to content from a person
they’re following intentionally.

PURCHASE 3. It’s very likely that a lot of the folks in your social communities are
also on your email lists.
LOYALTY
4. As much as “impressions” are a soft metric, they are a real one: an
impression is what leads to awareness, and awareness is the first
ADVOCACY step on the customer path to a purchase.

5. You have no way of knowing where your audience is on the sales

Customer Purchase

funnel What you do know is that the more people you shepherd
into the top of it (awareness), the more will make the happy trip

Funnel down to the bottom (purchase).

6. The more people see your offer, the more people are going to click
A typical sales funnel starts with awareness on it.
and ends in purchase, but an ideal customer
journey ends in advocacy. Relationship With that in mind, social media marketers need to master the art of the
marketing disciplines like social marketing social conversation - and mastering the social conversation starts and
typically touch the customer at the top and ends with listening.
bottom of this funnel.
Yes, we are asking you to be quiet. Don’t worry, fellow marketer! It only
hurts for a second.

5 | The Definitive Guide to Social Listening for Smarter Business

 Chapter 2

Do they Really
Like You?

More than half of Listening for brand sentiment is one of the most clear-cut use cases for a social
monitoring program. What are people saying? Social brand monitoring generally
Twitter’s users follow addresses three main marketing areas: general reputation, marketing programs and

6 or more brands. promotions, and products and services.

General Reputation
Keeping tabs on what your customers are saying about you is the most obvious use
case for a brand monitoring program. Many brands use Twitter and Facebook as
customer service channels for this reason: a social media customer service program is
simply monitoring taken one step further to focused, channel- specific engagement.

6 | The Definitive Guide to Social Listening for Smarter Business

 Basically, any time you want to know • What is the main message and tone of
what your customers think, social media the conversation?
Social media monitoring is a great way to find out. With • Is there something you can do to help
that in mind, there are several marketing extinguish the flames immediately?
monitoring can and business scenarios in which getting a • Is the criticism widespread, or localized

service initiatives quick read on your reputation is important. within a small group of people?
Here are a few examples: • Who are the core detractors? Do
that might have you have any core influencers? Is it

once required focus Crisis Communication worth reaching out to them?

When you hair’s on fire, it can be hard • Is your message being heard?
groups or polls, with to determine how bad it really is. Social • Is conversation volume increasing or

the advantage of monitoring during a PR crisis (or any crisis) decreasing over time?
can help you determine the scale of the
being real-time. problem, and it can give you an idea as to
your best response and positioning.

TIP Set expectations with your customers on your social channels. Something as simple
as a note in your Twitter bio that says “We respond to tweets within 24 hours, M-F” will
help you set expectations about response time.

7 | The Definitive Guide to Social Listening for Smarter Business

 Human Resources Example: A PR crisis in the form of the sudden 3 Ways to Test Your Marketing Programs &
Corporate reputation sites like Glassdoor departure of a company’s founder and CEO Promotions Before they Happen
tend to cater to the detractor and, with static not long after its IPO led to an 80% drop
content, they don’t tell the whole story. in share value over the first several months • Use Twitter to test subject lines before
of public trading. Angry employees took to you send the email
• What are your current employees saying social channels to complain and criticize • Use Facebook to test ad creative before
about you? management, leading to a second PR crisis • you do an ad buy
• What are your ex-employees saying that would further damage the company’s • Use YouTube to test video creative before
about you? valuation. By listening with a solid social a TV buy
• What are your prospects saying about monitoring product, the company was able to
you? identify how widespread the complaints were, Example: Kmart released an online video in
• Who are the main influencers or and whether the criticisms from shareholders 2013, “Ship My Pants,” in which scatological
detractors? and employees were being echoed in wordplay was the hook to let customers know
sentiment by industry analysts. The company that they will ship you any product you
Investor Relations was then able to come up with a messaging can’t find in a store, for free. This irreverent
Investors are people too – and people talk. platform and outreach action plan designed to and surprisingly funny video creative was
Frame your brand name searches with diffuse the noise and change the narrative on additionally surprising in that it was well
filters specific to investor relations: terms like both fronts. outside the realm of the usual, straightforward
“IPO” and “stock price” and “shares” and Kmart advertising. This is the sort of concept
“Q4 earnings call” will turn a general brand Marketing Programs & Promotions that, in the past, would have been rejected by
sentiment search into a social media effort Social listening is not only a great way to the client for a major ad campaign, and would
that your CFO can support. figure out whether a program or promotion be living sadly on the Wall of Rejection that
you’re running is resonating with a target nearly every creative agency has to showcase
• Are your shareholders happy? audience, but it’s also a great way to test your their favorite concepts that were summarily
• Did that Q3 earnings call go well? creative direction. rejected by their clients.
• Are your talking points being heard?
• What are the thematic trends around Social media channels are less expensive The gamble paid off: it was hugely successful,
your brand among industry analysts? than traditional media channels for both in viral word-of-mouth and with press.
• What are folks saying about your IPO? experimentation. With the right social
• Who are the main influencers or monitoring tools, reaction to your creative can
detractors? be both quantified and qualified.

8 | The Definitive Guide to Social Listening for Smarter Business

 Products & Services This sort of thematic testing would have traditionally been
Listening to your customers before you launch a new product or conducted with a focus group before a larger ad campaign was
service is a great way to find out what they think before spending a launched. These days, using social media is a great way to test
fortune on R&D. It’s also a way to spot industry trends that can lead program names, themes, messaging, discounts, and anything else
to new product ideas. that should have been traditionally serviced by a focus group.

• What sort of positioning will resonate for a new product? Example: A frozen burrito company started a social monitoring
• Is chatter around your brand and product more prevalent on one program and noticed that a lot of positive sentiment about their
channel, as opposed to another? Perhaps Twitter is better than products was coming from Twitter. They also noticed that the bulk
LinkedIn or Facebook for spreading the word. of the chatter was happening after midnight, especially on the
• Is there a target community out there that might be good for a weekends. The company realized that late night snackers were a
pilot program? great target community for sales, promotions and new products,
• Are there any key influencers you might engage? and they consequently adjusted their online marketing to engage
• Are you seeing any sort of geographical trends that might lead directly with this blearily enthusiastic crowd on Twitter. Out of this
to a new market? Good tools break down chatter geographically. engagement, the company found a few key Twitter influencers who
helped spearhead a contest to invent a new product: the late-night
As of the writing of this book it has 29 million shares overall, 3 frozen breakfast burrito.
million Facebook likes and 50,000 Twitter shares.1 The video was so
successful that a second, similarly-punchlined “Big Gas Savings”
was produced as a follow up.

1 Data source: Unruly Media

9 | The Definitive Guide to Social Listening for Smarter Business

 Now that you know how to listen for what great way to do low-fi market research: are
your customers are saying about you, it’s their customers excited about any particular
Chapter 3 time to use that knowledge to monitor your promotion or program?
competitors. Social media competitive analysis

Keep Tabs has typically been quantified by community

size: the number of Facebook fans and Twitter
Products & Services
Are their customers asking for new

on the
followers are often the first benchmark a social features, products or services? Is your
media manager examines. competitor talking about any upcoming
launches? Listening for product and service

Competition
Since driving word-of-mouth is the primary announcements and reaction is great market
goal of a social media marketing program, research for you.
the quantity of community activity and
the quality of engagement are far more Example: A small digital marketing agency
important than community size itself. By with a well-researched SEO keyword list
measuring engagement volume and listening started using the phrase “social listening,”
to the content of your competitors’ customer as it was a low competition keyword. They
conversations, you can get a much better took the lead on this keyword, and saw a
idea as to how your reputation, marketing pleasantly surprising amount of traffic from
programs and products stack up against your it. Within the next couple months, the bigger
competition. competitors in their space suddenly started
using this phrase in articles, site collateral and
Monitoring your competitors’ conversations product announcements. Consequently, the
with their own communities will help you competition’s customers began using the term
understand their positioning, and can give you when prompted with social sharing for related
insight into their marketing strategy. articles and announcements.

General Reputation The smaller agency now understood that

Are their customers happy? If so, you can (1) their larger competitors were monitoring
listen more intently to find out why. If not, them, and (2) this keyword was of increasing
you might think about ways to engage that value industry-wide. With the knowledge that
community that makes them happier with you. the big guns were doing them the favor or
socializing this term with a larger audience,
Promotions & Programs but simultaneously trying to knock them out
Listening for new promotions and programs of their Google rankings lead, the smaller
is a great way to stay informed on your agency was able to quickly formulate a
competitor’s marketing strategy. It’s also a content and SEO plan to defend their position.
 Chapter 4 Now that you’ve been listening to social monitoring will give you far
what’s being said, it’s time to take more information on what makes your

Look Who’s those insights and take a closer look

at who’s talking. Listening to what your
customers tick: social media channels
are a history of their online social

Talking customers are saying is the first step in

customer profiling.
interactions, after all, and some people
are downright chatty online.
By figuring out what sorts of people
are talking about your company, WHAT?
you can then make plans for active What format is most of the
engagement and cultivation of a communication taking? What style
strong social community. and tone are they using? Are people
sharing pictures primarily, or are they
WHO? sharing text links? Are they writing their
Get a feel for who’s talking about you. own content, or are they sharing other
Social listening for Traditional customer segmentation people’s? Getting a feel for the format

customers is the first step to includes demographics, and this and style of content being shared
is also something that Facebook will help shape your social channel
crafting a solid community provides to its advertisers in order to strategy by helping you craft channel-

management program. target ads appropriately. However, specific content that works.

TIP Twitter is a great channel for customer segmentation by interest, as

opposed to standard demographics like age and location. Search by hashtag
to find out who’s talking about your industry. Do you see commonalities among
these people?
Are they worth earmarking as an influencer? Check their Klout and Kred scores
within your areas of interest, and you can get a pretty good idea as to whether
it makes sense to engage directly.

11 | The Definitive Guide to Social Listening for Smarter Business

 TIP Earned media is earned, and
WHEN? monitoring tool doesn’t stop at listening:
in social media, this amounts to a
How often are people posting? When are they it should offer strong community features
person sharing your content with
posting? Are there events driving participation that allow you to identify and engage your their community. In order to earn
that makes sense for your brand? They say that influencers. Look beyond demographics to that sort of endorsement from your
timing is everything, so paying attention to both interests, behavior, and overlapping social social community members, you
your timing and cadence is a key component to networks. have to think about their wants
making sure that your message resonates. and needs.  When crafting your
Example: A sports-centric watchmaker started target message, remember that
your content must demonstrate
WHERE? listening around their brand name and that
three things in order to become a
Where is your target community the most of their competitors, and noticed that a lot
topic of social conversations:
active? Channel identification is critical in of people talking about them happened to
order to tailor your marketing campaign be surfing enthusiasts. They identified a few 1. Relevance - Make sure
appropriately. key influencers within that community, and that you’re considering the
engaged them in conversation to determine the interests of your community
first, not your own.  (Don’t try
WHY? best way to spread the word about their brand
among a larger surfing community. Ultimately, to sell anything.)
What’s motivating your target community to
2. Appeal - Be sure to engage
share? Take a look at the content so that you the watch company partnered with a surfboard
your community members by
can determine how to best motivate your target brand to co-sponsor a surfing tournament that
giving them something great
community to care about what you’re going to drove awareness in a new community with a to share with their overlapping
say. In social media, caring is sharing. lifestyle consistent with their brand. This led to communities.  (Don’t try to sell
the cultivation of multiple social communities anything.)
Social listening for customer insight is the rallied around outdoor sporting interests, rather 3. Consideration - Community is
than a typical target audience across standard about mutual give and take. 
first step to crafting a solid community
Give first.  (Don’t try to sell
management program. A good social media demographics like age, income level or gender.
anything.)

12 | The Definitive Guide to Social Listening for Smarter Business

 Chapter 5

Find Conversions
that Matter

As we learned in the previous 3 chapters, social listening helps you

get the insight you need to turn conversations into customers, and
customers into advocates. But first, you have to find them.

You’re Not (Entirely) Superhuman

With billions of social conversations happening out there
simultaneously, finding the ones that are relevant to your business
effort can be like finding a needle in a haystack. You are awesome,
of course, but don’t try to be superhuman: use a tool. (Yes, you’re
still allowed to wear a cape.)

There are free and freemium social listening tools out there. These
tools are free because they parse a limited number of data sources 1200 relevant conversations per day are
for results, and analytics are spotty. Nonetheless, they’re a good surfaced in an average social media
way to dip your toe in the water of social monitoring.
monitoring campaign.1

1 Stat source: Meltwater

13 | The Definitive Guide to Social Listening for Smarter Business
 Once you’re running a serious social media
marketing program and want measurable
business results, you’re best off with a social
listening tool that delivers both comprehensive
data and the insights associated with that
data. With 1200+ results surfacing on an
average social monitoring campaign (well,
that’s the number if you’re using a mighty tool
like Meltwater Insight), your job becomes a lot
easier if you have a platform that addresses
your social media workflow. Something as
simple as a word cloud will give you quick
insight into what’s going on in social chatter
around your topics of interest.

Word clouds, like the one here that measured

the social sentiment around the 2013 U.S.
Supreme Court decisions regarding Proposition
8 and DOMA, are a useful infographic. Word
clouds themselves are a great way to get a
quick idea as to what’s trending, and a good
social monitoring tool will allow you to dig into
any word that surfaces and see the context
around it.

14 | The Definitive Guide to Social Listening for Smarter Business

 Get Better Results: 3 Tips for Better Listening
Social monitoring is, at its core, a social search. As follows are some quick tips to
make sure that you find the results you need.

1. Know Why You’re Listening 3. Look at Word Clouds First

This may sound obvious, but Comprehensive tools yield comprehensive
understanding both the business and results. Once you start analysis, the word
marketing goals for a social monitoring cloud is a quick way to cut through the
program will help you craft better noise and get a high-level look at the
searches, and in turn will yield better central themes in your search results. The
results. word cloud is also a great way to find
additional narrowed searches that you
2. Narrow Your Searches may not have considered.
All social listening tools have limits on
the number of results your account can Example: We social marketing types at
return at any given price point; hey, the Meltwater knew that there would be strong
data isn’t free. Because professional tools social sentiment around the Supreme
pull in millions of data sources every hour, Court rulings over Prop 8 & DOMA, two
it’s a good idea to add filters to your seminal marriage equality cases. So we
searches - especially if your brand name figured that getting a summary read
is a commonly used word like “apple.” If of so much chatter was relevant, timely
you’re monitoring social sentiment around and interesting from a human interest
a specific brand or event, consider putting standpoint - making our data something
in modifiers. worth pitching to a reporter.

15 | The Definitive Guide to Social Listening for Smarter Business

 The word cloud from this infographic was once a section of data
in our Meltwater reporting. It gave us a good idea as to the overall
sentiment around these Supreme Court rulings, which in turn helped
inform the design style and callouts in the infographic.

This report also gave us a great read on whose social media

marketing programs led to the brass ring of word-of-mouth buzz.
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) absolutely dominated social
channels with their red equality logo avatar on Facebook, and their
#marriageequality hashtag was a clear leader. You’ll note their brand
name mentioned in the word cloud.

The infographic we did to summarize all that data was picked up by

Mashable, leading to over 1000 shares.

16 | The Definitive Guide to Social Listening for Smarter Business

 TIP Conversation is the new Target Message, and there’s one big
difference between them: conversation can go viral, but it can’t
be controlled. Think about what degree of control you need to
Chapter 6 have around your message. There are times when you want your
message going out in a static, broadcasted fashion (i.e. crisis

Start Your Own Meme communication), and other times when you’re happy to let the
crowd go back and forth with each other and you. If your need
to control your message is a greater concern than inciting word-
of-mouth buzz, you’re not running a social media marketing
campaign: you’re running a PR campaign.

Now that you know who’s saying what, the next idea as to what sort of content your community personal endorsement to their community, and
logical step is to participate. is going to enjoy and share. It’s now up to you, those people are inclined to pay attention to
social media manager, to join the conversation one of their own.
A Meme Creates Social with something engaging.
Conversations This is how word of mouth starts, and why it’s so
Creating social conversations is about creating Social Conversations Depend on powerful. Your message may not be targeted in
a meme: an idea that spreads from person to Social Networks terms of paid traditional media demographics,
person. In the magical land of the internet, cats Social media makes it easy to share content but it’s hyper-targeted in terms of attentiveness.
are the unofficial rulers of the meme kingdom with large groups of people: a click takes far People are simply more likely to pay attention
(Grumpy Cat, Keyboard Cat, fat cats, I can haz less effort than a phone call or a walk to the to something that a friend recommends than
cats?), but there are other ways to start word-of- water cooler. The power of social media lies in they are to a broadcasted ad. This is basic
mouth marketing that don’t involve a feline. the social networks of your target community human nature, and the good news is that you’re
members; the power of your content lies in its human, too.
How? Think about the considerations mentioned potential to start a social conversation among
in previous chapters while you’re listening to the the community. So, when you craft your target message to
conversation of your target communities. Once Once people become influencers or advocates spark active social conversations, remember to
you listen with purpose, you should have an on behalf of your brand, they are giving a just be yourself. Hey, people like you.

17 | The Definitive Guide to Social Listening for Smarter Business

 Example—Grumpy Cat Infographic, the meme use the same tool as our clients do), we set up
that spawned a PR-fect meme. (No groaning, multiple narrowed searches around the keynote
that door was wide open!) speaker names. We also created event-driven
searches like “SXSW party,” which pulled in
At SXSW 2013, the largest digital marketing filtered results with party-related words: “lounge,”
conference in the world, Meltwater was on the “drinking,” “party,” “parties,” and “beer” were
The power of social ground and listening to the hubbub of 25,000+ some of the filters we put into that search.
attendees. Our business goal was simple: to
media lies in the social
bring more customers to the Meltwater Insight The results of the party search told us which
networks of your social media marketing suite. To that end, we brands were succeeding in their PR spends
had a booth on the trade show floor for lead on lavish lounges, and that list was passed
target community
generation. We also set a marketing goal to raise to our sales team. The results also gave us
members; the power awareness and interest by demonstrating the an interesting comparison point in terms of
power and relevancy of our social marketing conversation volume against other SXSW hot
of your content
software to our target community: the SXSW topics, like speakers and sessions (and, as it
lies in its potential attendees and other tech-minded folks paying turned out, tacos).
attention to the conference.
to start a social
This author spent her late nights at SXSW
conversation among SXSW is an extremely noisy conference from missing the parties and analyzing the social
a brand awareness perspective, and standing data that flaunted how much fun they were, then
the community.
out among all the other tech brands is a delivering those insights and art direction to an
challenge. We agreed that press was the best incredibly talented designer who was willing to
way to grab the online limelight, and to that brave 5 days in a row of all-nighters to make our
end we decided to create compelling, press- press deadlines. (Thanks, Dan!)
friendly infographics that summarized what
brands, speakers and topics were making the After Mashable picked up our first infographic
biggest impact. to 1000+ shares, they asked for an exclusive.
Our infographics were subsequently featured
In order to prevent a social monitoring account by Mashable for 4 days in a row, leading to over
max-out (even we have a results cap; yep, we do 5,000 shares and millions of impressions.

18 | The Definitive Guide to Social Listening for Smarter Business

 Conclusion

After reading this book, you should have a good idea as to how social monitoring
can help you jump-start word-of-mouth marketing around your brand. (Bonus:
you now also have a publication that you can summarize for any manager who
pushes back on a spend for a high-caliber social media monitoring tool. Hey, did
we mention that we make one of those? Check out Meltwater,
or hit the button below for a demo.)

Viral word-of-mouth presents itself, in the world of social media, as terms like “likes”
Learn More About Data-Driven PR
and “shares” and “retweets.” These channel-specific engagement metrics are what
help you, the social media manager, measure the success of your social marketing To find out how media intelligence can shape and
programs. measure your programs, take a look at our additional resources.

Engagement varies per channel, and your metrics will necessarily be channel-
specific. Channel considerations will help you determine what sort of community Meltwater Blog Meltwater Resources
engagement is most meaningful.

The “What, When, Where” considerations, mentioned when discussing customers

in Chapter 5, are all a function of channel. Get In Touch
In our next book, we’ll take a deep dive into social channel strategy. Until then,
keep listening!

If you’d like to learn more about running smarter social media programs in today’s
dynamic marketing environment, please hop on over to some of our resources:

19 | The Definitive Guide to Social Listening for Smarter Business