Social listening experts
Social listening experts are not that common. I mean the good ones. The ones that actually say the right things and can do the right things. There are many people who can say the right things. I have met a lot of those.
You can train people to be very good at social listening and moving on to be an expert over time. However, they must have some natural required skills. Some do not realize that that have those skills. Some do know but did not use them that much. You cannot just take anyone and mentor them into a social listening expert. I guess that is true of most roles, and it certainly is with this one.
Is social listening becoming more important?
My answer to that is a big YES, but I would say that. Companies are realizing that their reputation can be blown up by the smallest crisis and worsen if not handled well. Whether that crisis is based on a real concern or fiction from a well connected detractor.
Let us first define what social listening is. Referring to the post “Social Listening – What is it?”:
Social listening is the process of monitoring social media channels for mentions of your brand, competitors, product, and more
Tony Tran March 3, 2020
Many social listening tools now embrace news sources, as well as Quora, radio and TV based sources. A.I. based alerting systems now enable tracking your brand, product families, company VIPs, segment trends and competitors.
Social listening is now key for reputation managers, marketers, communications and brand managers too.
What can you do with social listening data?
A good social listening expert combined with a good social listening tool is a vital combination. Analysis shared via the tool in all types of diagrams and tables is common. Reports can be distributed by ad-hoc and automated email. In addition, most tools enable live dashboard display via URLs as well as large screen command centers.
API feeds enable social listening combined with social media reporting data to be sent to enterprise analytics platforms. What does this enable? The possibility to make insights-driven decisions faster and easier with data. Combining social media data with marketing, sales, and eCommerce data is the way to go for any modern company. Particularly if you can access all those rich dashboards anywhere, anytime, on IT approved devices.
Recruiting a social listening expert
Maybe now you are interested in looking into adding a social listening expert to your team. Thus, adding a junior level social listening skilled person to your team with a free or moderately priced tool is a good way to start. It takes time but the role must be well scoped to expand. Link the role to all the relevant teams and departments like marketing, communications, security, brand etc. There is lots to do.
My advice is to never invest in a high level tool without having a well skilled listening expert to manage it. You might end up regretting the investment and wondering what it contributes to your bottom line. This can happen if you do not have the right level of skilled person to manage the tool. Seen a few examples of this down the years.
Ask the right questions when recruiting, or find someone who knows and ask them to do a followup expert interview. Thus, on many occasions, I have found people reaching the final stages of recruitment but on false terms. I used a few well placed questions I practiced over the years. I found that some of their knowledge was based what they saw others doing. Even worse they read about it.
Ieva is now a part of the social media team of the Social Jedi Series
We asked the right questions and have now recruited Ieva to the Social Jedi series. She is now our resident social listening expert. Karen, Sofia and Clive already have advanced skills but we felt we needed the best our staff budget could afford. We want to seek out more social listening insights from the data. Especially now that social media data integrates into our end-to-end enterprise analytics tool.
Ieva has proven to be a very different character. Above all, demanding the very best input for projects so that she can create outstanding business transformative reports. She demands the best and is easily spotted walking around the office in her Blue dyed hair.
Do you have an “Ieva” doing social media listening in your team? Social listening data is key for reputation, marketing, communications and branding. Social listening experts are vital for your digital team.
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