With social listening you won’t simply be launching your content into the ether and hoping for the best; you’ll be keeping your ear to the ground.

When you keep up with your brand’s online sentiment, you’re immediately equipped with a deeper understanding and insight into best strategy. However, where social monitoring explains what people are saying on social media, social listening explains why people are saying what they are saying.

This is why social listening insights are essential to forming your long-term strategic decisions! This is helpful to you when analysing:

• Campaigns: how a particular campaign is resonating online

• Competitive insights: what’s being said of competitors online

• Events: real time responses and sentiment

• Industry trends: where does your brand fit in to the larger conversation

Once you know the benefits, social listening strategies start becoming quite obvious to you in the real world. Some South African brands you may have noticed who have great social listening strategies include:

• Nando’s SA: successful engagement with trends and viral discussions especially on Twitter

• Netflix SA: performs similar to its global page by tactically engaging with conversations surrounding certain shows as well as online talk of plans

 Digital Republic uses Brandwatch as its primary social listening platform. Brandwatch is regarded as the leading social listening platform in the work according to Forrester.