Five Steps to Building an Effective Social Media Listening Program

1. Set up with rigor
Identify the business questions you want to answer and build a strong foundation based on specific keywords, topics, themes, and exclusions. Also decide what your key metrics will be and the reason for your reporting. Then combine these metrics with other leading market indicators, such as net promoter score or traditional media share of voice. The most important takeaway is that teams need to stay focused on implementing strategies and not debate keywords or questioning the findings when results are delivered.

2. Launch with a baseline
Launch with an extensive baseline analysis that articulates the fundamental challenges and opportunities facing the business. Once the baseline is established, subsequent listening reports will show small shifts (new top terms, the impact of events, etc.) as programs are implemented, and over time increase overall volume and positive tonality.

3. Set goals and hold teams accountable
Set three to five goals that are dependent on the findings/results and hold teams accountable for delivering. Some examples include: develop co-branded programs with partners or prevalence of a specific hashtag in your word cloud. Set up a “run” mode that delivers updated data to teams in automated dashboards. It’s important that performance metrics arising from social listening are aligned to an overall business process to review performance results. Have teams provide updates on their goals during business reviews, including net impact to the business.

4. Train with power users in mind
Train your teams on the underlying structure of your listening post, but keep in mind that you have a range of users from light to power users. Show teams the practical applications for the data, in addition to clarifying with them the role of listening in their overall reporting toolkit. The danger in training without context is that teams will get lost in unproductive data analysis.

5. Sell the value internally
Establish social listening outcomes as key performance metrics, starting with the CMO and extending throughout your marketing ranks. Aligned with the business review process, it’s also important to deliver social media insights in the context of a business conversation. It’s critical to deliver the information in a format that is tailored to the audience, including live pulses, customized dashboards, or mentions in an executive visibility report.

Sources: Adage, SAP