Social media marketing starts with listening
The last months we as Green Orange have been (and still are) looking into social media marketing more deeply. What is it all about, what’s the status and the latest news? And most important: what could it mean for the (digital) marketing strategy of our clients?
We’ve learned that prior to starting the online conversation and engagement it’s important to think about your objectives and social strategy first. But to decide what’s the most suitable strategy for your brand as well as your internal organization, we advice to start with listening.

What is listening
It’s defined as listening to the chatter in social media about your brand, industry and competition. For example: who is talking about your brand and industry? What are they saying? Which social media channels are they using? Who are the key influencers?

How to listen
To listen you can combine a few free tools like Google Alerts and Twitter search. But in my opinion there’s too much user generated content to monitor and analyze all the chatter within these social channels manually, especially for the bigger (multi)national brands. Fortunately a set of tools is available to help us all with this listening exercise.

Social tools research
Currently we are investigating some of the social listening tools that are on the market. Free tools as well as paid tools. In a series of 3 or 4 blog posts I will update you about our experiences and opinions. Next to these listening tools we are also looking into the engagement tools, also called social campaign management tools. I will dedicate a post to that in a few weeks too.

In meantime I’m curious about your experiences with social (listening) tools… Let us know which tools your familiar with and your opinion about these tools!