Why is Social Media Monitoring Essential for PR?

Gone are the olden days when PR professionals would make a statement on-air or get it printed. Social media has made the field of PR fast-paced and also more fragile. Professionals now use this platform as their primary option to manage information for their client company. Though this medium makes it faster and easier to reach a larger audience, the inability to control what is being said online also makes it extremely delicate. Over the years there has been a gradual increase in the number of companies using social media monitoring to keep an eye on what the audience has to say and ensuring every comment is dealt with appropriately.

Due to the fact that attention and visibility gained online can be both positive and negative, it is essential that PR practitioners are alerted to any discussion occurring online that might malign their brand’s or client’s fame. Here we discuss the benefits of social media monitoring for PR practitioners.

Benefits of Social Media Monitoring for PR

PR Crisis

To begin with, PR is about anticipating, and interpreting the public’s opinion and formulating an appropriate response to maintain the brand’s image. Social media monitoring plays a key role here in preventing a PR crisis. It helps the management to track any issues or complaints the public may be facing and address them before it can blow up into a crisis. Numerous examples can be found where the company had turned a blind eye to the feedback, only to face negative buzz from criticism in social mentions and posts that were shared onward. A very recent example involves the hospitality giant Marriott in Chandigarh and actor Rahul Bose. The actor was charged an exorbitant amount for two bananas and the star slammed the brand on Twitter thus starting a series of negative comments and trolling.

Market Research for PR Campaigns

When companies plan PR campaigns, social media monitoring needs to be a crucial part of them. It is essential that the company conducts an appropriate amount of market research to know the overall sentiment of the target audience. An insight into the minds of your audience is necessary to be able to predict the success of your campaign (and make the tweaks needed before running with it). Social media monitoring makes the process of market research easier providing you an entire snapshot of competitive analysis, sentiment analysis and a sense of your audience’s preferences.

Turning Negative Feedback to Positive Publicity

It is true that companies cannot really control what is being said online. But being vigilant and responding with tact isn’t difficult. And with social media monitoring, this could also be turned into a solid PR move. Brands can track negative reviews, respond to them promptly and offer support. This shows their deep concern for customer issues and their ability to deal with crises. This can prove to be a step towards solid branding for the company. A popular brand to have tried this is Domino’s pizza. Domino’s tapped into social media, gathered evidence of how a number of customers complained that their pizza crust tasted like cardboard and re-invented their pizza.

Social media monitoring may sound like an enormous amount of work yet it really is not. This investment practically helps you save time while also keeping you alert to situations that could harm your brand’s image.

Social Listening, Artificial Intelligence, and Chatbots

The digital world is creating enormous amounts of data on a daily basis. Social listening and social media analytics have made it significantly easy for us to analyze and understand this data. Marketers have been using this data to gain insights into the minds of potential customers to inform their audience targeting efforts and their marketing strategy.

There’s nothing more effective than social listening to support these efforts to delve deep into the oceans of data on social media. Big companies are slowly coming to rely upon chatbots, backed by artificial intelligence and machine learning, to help them respond in real-time to the grouses voiced online taking their brand’s name. These chatbots are primarily programmed to engage with such messages based on the presence of certain keywords. They can be programmed to respond the same way each time or respond differently too. Respondents to a survey by Drift have said they would find chatbots to be of good use:

When seeking a quick answer in an emergency
To resolve a compliant
To get detailed answers and explanations to specific questions etc.

Can Chatbots function without Human Intervention?

The answer, for now, is just ‘maybe’. This insight has been recently illustrated by a funny conversation that unfolded on Twitter recently. Not only did Amazon’s chatbot get confused over a sarcastic comment meant to mock the political crisis occurring in Maharashtra, India, it actually apologized to the person who made the comment and offered reparations. The incident involved four regional political parties in the state of Maharashtra in India namely, the BJP, the Shiv Sena, the NCP, and the Congress party. The parties were looking for alliances to build a sufficient majority to prove their eligibility to form the government, with a lot of party-hopping and horse-trading being involved.

As one Twitter user questions the need for the BJP to buy time to prove that it has the strength needed to prove its majority on the floor, another user offered a sarcastically phrased explanation, comparing the situation to how one needs to wait for orders placed on Amazon to be delivered.

Any (human) employee of Amazon would have laughed and moved on when the social listening tool pulled it up from the data ocean for review. But the bot, probably reading the mentions of ‘Amazon’ and ‘Delivery’ in the same sentence – even without any other negative expression – promptly responded with “Apologies for any unpleasant experience you had with regard to the delivery of your orders. Could you please elaborate on your concern? We would be glad to assist you.” Oh, really!?

Credit goes to Amazon’s team to review and delete the tweet quickly, but they weren’t quick enough to stop the Twitterati from saving the screenshot and sharing it onwards.

Social Listening for Customer Engagement

Social listening tools track brand mentions to draw relevant insights and help a brand engage with its audience base. Chatbots fulfill the need to provide instant, real-time responses which are so important when they want to make an unhappy customer happy.

Like all good things, it comes with a caveat. Using chatbots to provide automated responses could work but not without some amount of human intervention. At least, not until machine learning helps these bots evolve, making them really adept at sensing more from the words used and their context and tone better. For now, let’s just say that marketers and consultants should continue using social listening and chatbots to save precious time and wow their customer-base, but let’em also be hands-on when doing so.

How is Social Media Influencing your Customer?

It shouldn’t come as news to anyone that social media is continually growing in the number of its users and in terms of how much it influences people. People continue to shop online, and the e-commerce sales figure last year made up almost 12% of all retail sales as per Statista. With the continued expansion of online sales, marketers are doing everything to ensure the presence of their products and services at the top of the list.

One way to attract an audience is to adopt traditional advertising methods of print ads and billboards. But times have changed and those are no more really effective options to gain you visibility. Social media network is on its way to becoming the biggest marketplace of all.

How Influential is Social Media?

To put things in perspective we found some statistics. Hubspot says that 71% of customers are more likely to buy a product/service based on social media referrals. Another survey report by PwC says 45% of global respondents said that online reviews, comments, and feedback effectively influence their decision-making and shopping behavior.

How the Big Three Social Media Platforms can Influence your Audience

The three best social media platforms that can help you capture your audience’s attention are Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. These social media platforms are essential for your marketing toolbox based on your requirements.

Facebook

Facebook has the world’s largest active user base. With nearly 2.41 million monthly active users it also has the largest diverse audience. And despite the numerous controversies, Facebook has held its ground in terms of popularity. The company has had to rewrite some of its regulations and policies yet has seen a growth in its advertising revenue. Some experts have pointed out that the growth is slowing but Facebook still drives 50% of total social referrals.

Twitter

Twitter is quite popular with over 330 million active users worldwide. Twitter is one of the USA’s top 10 websites and hence is the go-to place for influencers and decision-makers for the latest news and trends. According to Hubspot, “42% of Twitter users rely on this channel to learn about new products/services, and 41% of them share opinions about products/services via Twitter.” The audience on Twitter also tends to be younger with over 36% of users within the age group of 18-29.

Instagram

Instagram has been growing slowly but steadily. The platform has now come to boast more than 500 million monthly active users. Its audience engagement rate has been measured to be 70% higher than that of Facebook. According to Ad Espresso, 80% of the users follow at least one brand on Instagram.

Social Media as an Influence

You may have known that these platforms are the most productive in helping you to impress your customers and to get them to buy your wares. But it is also essential that you know how successful brands are using these platforms and associated tools to make the most of it.

According to a study, almost 50% of Twitter users have bought a product as a result of a direct Tweet from an influencer. 84% of millennials are swayed by user-generated content and the resultant trends. Besides influencer marketing and trending content, word-of-mouth from friends and family both offline and online can be another way social media influences your audience’s purchase decisions.

Tell your Story

How do you leverage this incredible power that social media offers you as an influence machine? Social media isn’t only an influence machine, it also helps you find the right way. You can opt to monitor the trends or use a social media listening tool to track the influencers within the industry. You can opt to collaborate with them or tell your brand’s story in your own way keeping the trends in mind.

Clearly, social media has a large impact on how people spend their money. However, the online space of influencer marketing is really getting crowded. So, you need to act fast before the trend itself goes stale.

What does the Likes Ban on Instagram mean for Marketers?

The decision to hide likes on Instagram isn’t a rumor. It is real and will be happening soon. Adam Mosseri, the CEO of Instagram, recently mentioned that the feature which hides the number of “likes” from the public eye has already been rolled out in many countries and is currently being rolled out in the US as well.

So what exactly is changing and why? At this year’s Facebook F8 conference a number of new potential Instagram changes were proposed and among them is the ban on showing likes on Instagram and the feature has already been beta-tested in a few countries.

Why ban ‘Likes’ on Instagram?

According to Instagram, this change was inspired by Instagram’s popular story feature where a post can be viewed for 24 hours only and the views are visible to no one but the account holder. Instagram feels this move will also encourage better mental health among users because some of them are developing the dangerous habit of linking the publicly visible number of likes on their post to their sense of self-worth.

Users tracking their Instagram accounts will still be able to see the number of likes on their own posts. However, users will now see reduced information, and will not be able to see the likes on other people’s posts. This trial was initially rolled out in Canada and has now successfully been rolled out in other parts of the world like Australia, Brazil, Japan et cetera.

How does this affect Influencers, Businesses, and Brands?

Instagram has been the playground of influencers for long. Some of them have even learned to monetize the engagement using brand endorsements and so, having Instagram hide their “likes” could impact them. We can assume that in the future instead of waiting for brands to request them to endorse their products, influencers would themselves have to reach out to brands to work with them.

Many influencers have seen overnight success with fake followers and likes. Instagram had previously taken steps regarding this and removed fake likes and followers leaving these profiles depleted. Furthermore, the death of Instagram’s likes will prevent brands from falling for fake influencers.

Social media platforms often change their algorithms, they too want to serve their customers better. It isn’t fair to keep worrying about the ban on Instagram’s likes, you know it is only a vanity metrics. There are better ways for you to check your brand’s performance like sales lift data. What’s more, it hasn’t even been confirmed whether or not this change is going to be a permanent one.

For brands and businesses trying to use Instagram for social media marketing, there isn’t much to worry about. A company’s own analytics wouldn’t be affected because they will still be visible to the admin. Moreover, measuring brand performance on social media goes beyond measuring vanity metrics like the number of likes. One area which could somewhat be affected however is competitor analysis. Although follower count and the comments will be visible to third parties, the number of likes on their posts will not be visible. This is not the end of competitor analysis though, however, a quick glance on the number of likes earned will stop being one of the quickest ways to compare performance.

There’s no need to lose hope, as social listening tools are still around and active social listening can still help you pull out comparisons from the comments. So you can always know the pain points your rivals are facing if you wish to.

Assess your Performance on Social Media

Social media is a great space where you can interact and engage with your audience and get to know them better. So if you are using social media to reach out to your target audience, you should use it to track your performance online as well, to learn what is successful and what needs improvement?

Tracking your brand’s performance on social media goes beyond tracking the number of likes and comments. The right way to get started is by tracking the right social media KPIs. You can measure ongoing activities over time or opt for measuring the success of a campaign or even an event that has a definite start and end date.

Steps to track your Performance on Social Media

Like we mentioned earlier, the proper way to get started is to track the right set of social media KPIs. To determine which metrics to track you’ll need to strategize.

State your Social Goals

There are many social media platforms and the number of active users on each of them is in the millions. Mindlessly tracking every Facebook post or every Twitter comment and trying to decipher the implication will only make you confused. Therefore, It is essential to define and know your goals first. What are you trying to achieve through these social media platforms? There are various platforms that cater to varying needs. If you want a platform that answers your questions, you’ll find that Quora is suitable for you. But, if you want to display vibrant photos of the merchandise available at your store Instagram is the place to go. Knowing what you need will help you choose the right platform suited to your needs like improving your brand’s performance on social media and also tells you which metrics you need to track.

Metrics to Measure

Once you know your goals, match them to see which metrics help you measure your performance. Here are a few suggestions:

If you wish to measure the increase in brand awareness and how far your message’s reaching, you should use track metrics like reach volume and exposure of your posts. Social analytics reports generally help you measure this data.

If you wish to figure out the psychographics of your target audience, gauging the social sentiment or tracking trends online can help. Social listening tools are a great help with this.

To find influencers and advocates, track contributors online. You could also make use of social listening tools to track people with influence scores. This will help you find a wider list of influential people – both hyper-influential and micro-influencers.

Monitoring and Reporting your Findings

You now know your goals and you are also tracking the required metrics. Use the initial findings to set a baseline for you to rate your performance in the future. Keep a regular check on these numbers. Use social analytics tools to run reports, compare the data with the baseline or measure them against what your competitors are achieving.

Social listening tools help you rate your performance as compared to your competitors. Just add your competitors’ profiles to the dashboard and you can run reports to get comparative data.

Once the entire process is set, you are ready to take your social media marketing to a whole new level. With these insights at your disposal, you can monitor the pain points of your brand and address them immediately, without delay. Your brand’s performance on social media will perhaps not show a drastic improvement in one day, but learning from the data, adjusting and improvising over time will definitely ensure that you reach your goals.

Common Social Media Monitoring Mistakes of most Brands

The Internet is a powerful space. You can’t afford to lose focus on the social media marketing front if you wish your brand to be a frontrunner. And while managing a social media presence is not the easiest of tasks, thanks to social listening tools, we can say that social media monitoring is practically the easiest of them all. You aren’t much likely to make many mistakes. All you need to do is set up the tool and engage with the mentions. Having said that, I want to discuss some very common social media monitoring mistakes which still tend to creep in. This could be because this is the first time you are using a social listening tool or because you switched to a new tool and the interface is different. Whatever might be the reason, we are here to alert you to some general issues you might face and help you to avoid them.

Not paying attention to Competitors

Competitor analysis is a vital part of your marketing strategy. Social listening tools are designed to meet this purpose yet many brands fail to take advantage of this feature. We understand if you want to avoid competitive analysis and focus only on your personal brand mentions. However, tracking your competition and your share of the market when compared to them is important to ensure your growth. It helps you find out their influencers, their pain points et cetera. There is a chance you could gain more customers by resolving the competition’s customer pain points with your offer.

Not Setting up Search Filters

The aim of any social listening tool is to gather all the data relevant to you, off the Internet and present it to you. Yet sometimes it is difficult to do so. Imagine if a company has a common name. Let’s say Apple Inc. is trying to listen to the social chatter to evaluate their social presence. If they use “apple” as a keyword, they are likely to receive alerts for thousands of irrelevant mentions.

To reduce the huge number of irrelevant alerts, the company can spell its name in capital letters “APPLE” and also add the website URL. To filter the mentions further, it is possible to add negative keywords. So the company can perhaps add words like “pie”, “cider”, “sauce” and so on as negative keywords helping them avoid common posts mentioning food items using apples, like apple cider or apple pie!

Not including all Brand Names

In the previous example, we saw how troublesome it can get for a company with a generic name to track mentions. Most times managers forget to mention all the relevant keywords. The addition of such keywords helps the tool to understand the premise better and narrow down the data furthermore.

Like in the case of the previous example, it would help to add keywords like “Apple iPhone”, “Apple Inc.”, “iPhone”, “iPad” et cetera.

Another very common mistake that occurs is a typo or two while putting in the brand name. It is essential that you be careful with this and add all possible keywords. First of all, you also need to choose a tool that allows you to add and track an unlimited number of mentions.

Not Tracking Industry News

It goes without saying that the health of your business depends somewhat on the external environment too. What is happening in your industry could easily affect your business prospects. A little preparedness can never hurt. And as we mentioned earlier, sometimes marketers fail to track their competitors, similarly, they fail to track the industry trends.

Keeping an eye on industry keywords, the niche market and the influencers within can be of help in many ways. Finding influencers for your next marketing campaign gets easier, tracking trends helps you advertise judiciously and to boost your brand’s image.

This list might not be comprehensive as we have tried to discuss only the most common social media monitoring mistakes made by a majority of marketers. If you are facing any other issues, you can always reach out to us.

Marketing to a Niche Audience

Gone are the days when social media conversations were open to everyone on the Internet. The trend today is to form closed communities, which are based on common interests and to interact withing such a niche community about specific things. Imagine having a group of DIY enthusiasts or a group of new moms who compare notes and share insights on the latest DIY project or on the ways to soothe and feed the new (wailing) addition to the family. What if you are trying to market a product suited to just such a group’s specific requirements? It could be a massive opportunity especially as such groups keep on adding new members. It could also prove daunting to a marketer to compose and deliver brand messages right to such a small subset of their audience. This challenge is called niche marketing.

Social media is a great place for businesses trying to reach specific social communities because, with the advent of closed groups on these platforms, more people are looking for a sense of belonging where they can collaborate and express. These specific social communities are more valuable than the general public feed if you are trying to reach a smaller group with a specific interest. Social listening to a niche audience fine-tunes your ability to gauge the minutest details of your customer’s preferences and to tailor your messages suitably.

Niche Audience

“Niche Audience” literally translates into “specialized section of the population”. Niche marketing has been helping the growth of many industries to a large extent. For example, we have seen spectacular growth in the gluten-free, vegan brands selling organic food products to specific audiences. Niche marketing also contributes in a big way to better customer relationships as the network is more closely knit than in other models. It caters to customers on a personal level, which in the end increases word-of-mouth references, the most effective yet inexpensive promotion available out there.

It is needless to say, however, that taking care of a niche audience can be tricky as it requires the seller to have honed experience in the area of the business or else one bad review can shatter the entire effort to build the brand and gain brand recognition. Similarly, good reviews, whether online or offline, help increase the brand’s visibility and recognition and grow the business.

How can Social Listening help with Niche Marketing?

From the thousands of posts that go online every day, the opportunities to become sensational or go wrong are a legion. But how do you steer your brand clear of such controversies especially as you serve to a handful of connoisseurs? Even a slight mistake can make them shy away and change their minds. How do you anticipate and respond to the needs and wants of these customers whose collective knowledge about your product/service is very high?

Your brand health challenges and customer insight management issues can be resolved together with social listening skills. The actual volume of conversation in niche markets may be low but every single word will prove highly meaningful, which makes it all the more important to listen to each remark.

When you are marketing to a niche segment, research is key. These members may or may not discuss the issue in public on each other’s Facebook feeds. Listening in to group conversations thus becomes vital in importance. These members offer unfiltered reviews/accolades/complaints online and sometimes anonymously. As you monitor the issues and address them, it is essential that you advertise the fact that you are listening and you are putting in the effort to make the necessary changes. Note how the perception changes. A social listening tool comes handy with its ability to track sentiment over a period of time. One great use of social listening tools within this division is tracking micro-influencers within the subset of your micro-audience.

Social media platforms have millions of users naturally providing massive opportunities for marketing. But brands that can zero in on the needs of a niche segment are more likely to succeed in identifying their target audience and building a loyal customer base faster.

Use Social Listening to go beyond Basic Customer Care

The scope of social media for business research purposes is vast, but most brands usually fail to look beyond its basic utility or leverage its potential. Social listening tools can offer services beyond customer care insights and reputation management. Leading brands have moved beyond just listening in – they are using the data derived in their favor to lead the market. Let’s see how they are doing this.

Social Listening to Drive Innovation

Public sentiments expressed on social media help brands learn about customer needs and pain points. Customers actively express their needs and opinions on social media, mentioning a particular brand or an industry as a whole. These comments help to shape industry/market trends. Social listening to these comments or mentions can help brands come up with and offer innovative solutions to their customers. Any brand which can offer a unique/innovative solution is naturally a winner in any industry, gaining a larger market share and maximizing their profits.

It is always good to know what is affecting your customers’ satisfaction negatively. Knowing about their needs and acting on them helps to increase their trust in your brand. Giving your brand a competitive edge over the competition using innovative means to gain a loyal customer base and build a positive brand image. An inspiring example of a brand that used social listening to cater innovatively to the needs of their customers is Netflix. We are talking about the Netflix socks which were an instant hit, for all the right reasons.

Listening to Interests across Channels

Social media does not work in isolation. People actively posting and sharing content on Facebook are also present on other sites, engaging with TV commercials, billboards and commenting on them. Hence social listening goes beyond tracking the activity around a specific hashtag or keyword. Monitoring overall social sentiment across channels may give you the little pieces needed to put the jigsaw puzzle together to form the big picture, which helps you derive actionable insights into improving your CX.

Become more Customer-Centric

Customers expect brands to be more customer-centric. Forbes reported that companies that offer superior customer experience bring in 5.7 times more revenue than others. Savvy customers of the day know what they want. They would switch over easily to another brand if they don’t feel your brand is integrating their needs into your offerings.

Brands that want to succeed need to adapt to the individual preferences of their customers. Social listening makes it easier for brands to be receptive to the needs of their customers and to react in time. Tracking trends and sentiments online can help a brand gauge the general interest before investing in full-blown research about the psychographics of its customer base.
Social listening is about tracking all the key conversations happening on social media. When a comment or conversation concerns you, your brand, a keyword/trend you are interested in or even an industry; your social listening tool can zero in on it – in the vast sea of what happens every day on the Internet. The tool then organizes and presents the relevant data and insights to you. Act on them to derive an array of benefits from this real-time feedback and gain an enormous advantage by going beyond customer care to ensure true customer satisfaction. Keep following this space for more such insights.

How to Anticipate and Track Trends Online

The growth of social media has been explosive in the last decade and with all this flux of digital networking, it has become a way of life to have these sites set, if not dictate trends. You must have noticed savvy brands keeping up with the trends in their posts and wished you knew a way of anticipating trends that would take off. It is crucial that you understand your customers and their whims before others get the clue and move in. Well, trend monitoring is possible and is easy enough. Paying close attention to the world of social media and the social sentiment online makes trend monitoring possible for everyone.

Social listening for Trend monitoring

Most people are connected to their phones throughout the day. They spend more time with the phone than what they spend seeing billboards and TV commercials. Hence it is only natural that social media platforms have become the new face of sales and marketing. To compete within the social media sphere you have to stay ahead in terms of knowing what people prefer, what is trending and thereby invest time in trend monitoring and in analyzing it further. Trend monitoring opens up a lot many avenues in social media marketing.

Track Trends and Investigate

An easy way would be to log in to Twitter and to simply browse through their trending list. But know that not all trends are important for you. Some trends may seem an amazing fit for your upcoming campaign but before you dive in, think through it. Was it started by a fluke? Who all are talking about it? Will it last long enough for your campaign to completely capitalize on it?

How to separate Useful Trends from the Data Ocean?

With millions of users active on social media round the clock, data is an ocean of uncleaned collection and so it is difficult to browse through everything to pick up the relevant bits. Yet with the help of social listening tools, trend monitoring gets easier.

Sentiment Analysis and Trending Topic Cloud

Extracting the relevant trending topics from within the data ocean can be done using a social listening tool providing the required sentiment analysis and trending topic cloud. The social sentiment is one of the best available metrics for gauging the true popularity of a trending event/topic. This exercise is particularly important because a topic might be trending for all the wrong reasons and you need to steer clear of using such topics in your campaigns or promotional messages et cetera.

Keep watching for Trend Spikes

Not all trends are suitable for your brand all the time but keeping a check on spikes in trends can never hurt. A trend that might not be relevant to your brand message may become so later on. For instance, #tealpumpkinproject has been trending during Halloween for the past couple of years. This was started to offer a solution to families with children having food allergies. The teal pumpkin indicates non-food treats so kids are not offered any candies. In general, not all food brands would likely be tracking #tealpumpkinproject. But candy companies need to explore this trend if they need to keep the sales up in a world where candies with possible allergens aren’t allowed.

Keeping up with trends isn’t a competition but it is good to stay aware when you are managing the social media side of marketing for a brand. We do hope that you possess an arsenal of social analytics tools, which can help you with your quest in trend monitoring.

Grow your Business in the Holiday Season with Social Listening

The holiday season is fast approaching which means people will shop. Are you prepared? Are you worried about all the offline preparation, online promotions and the handling of social media required? This is the time your customers are glued to their monitor screens, ready to spend their dollars on gifts for themselves and others. They are looking online for unique products, reading reviews, browsing online catalogs all the time and making purchase decisions. How are you going to grab their attention amidst all the noise? Social media can be of great help as social listening tools come to your aid in the holiday season. With the right planning and the right tools, you can be more than prepared.

Setting up Holiday Season Marketing with Social Listening Tools

With Hannukah, Christmas and the New Year around the corner, gift shopping becomes the obvious focus of most people. It is necessary to pay close attention to what your audience is looking for because preferences keep changing and so do trends. Social listening tools can easily turn into the mirror on the wall which tells you what the public is most excited about, their deepest wishes and needs.

Planning and scheduling posts

At this time of the year, you’ve got your hands full and you tend to slack a little on your social media marketing efforts. However, that is practically the last thing you should be doing in today’s wired world which has many people baring their souls online. The holiday season, shopping and social media are like the Trinity. The more you post and engage, the more you are visible and more the sales for you.

To make things easier, we suggest you create a social media calendar, work on the posts beforehand and keep them scheduled so you don’t have to manually do it all the time. Also, keep the theme of your posts coherent and uniform. Your stories and posts can display similar products in varying setups and so on.

Online promotions and ads

The marketplace will get busier the more you wait. If you wish to put out promotional posts and advertisements it is advisable that you start working on them and get them submitted for approval. It is advisable to schedule the start and end dates for your ads, there’s no risk of launching early in case you schedule the dates but submit them for approval. Waiting until the last moment may get the post delayed because some sites might take longer to approve.

Don’t miss out on the trends

People never fail to express their excitement over social media and use a lot of hashtags and keywords in doing so. Social listening during the holiday season becomes more important because of this. Monitoring will help you stay updated and understand what new trends are gathering steam and why. A detailed analysis can even help you use the insights for future marketing efforts or campaigns. Some hashtags that run very popular every holiday season include:

#Holidays

#Christmas

#HomeDecor

#Halloween

#Fall

#ShopLocal

Top trending hashtag -holidays, during the holiday season — Picture Courtesy: Instagram

Social Engagement

Like we mentioned earlier, people are shopping online these days and the holiday season is when the marketplace is bustling. Hence, people are bound to browse through and ask questions if they are intrigued by your products. If you are not around to answer their queries they will not wait for long and you could miss out on prospective customers. Social listening tools help you keep tabs on all mentions and can alert you across your mobile devices the moment you receive a mention. This way you don’t have to be always on your toes and yet can engage with your audience immediately.

The holiday season gets really exciting on all fronts, doesn’t it? With all the tips here, we hope you will have a great social media marketing strategy in place this year. We wish you a great holiday season ahead.