How to Leverage Social Listening in Your Community
Developing relevant content and programs for your members is often a challenge. But, if you have an online community, your members are already creating relevant content and giving you insights into what they consider to be relevant. Are you listening to them? The term “social listening” is one I have just started to think about holistically. What does it look like? How can you accomplish authentic “social listening?” Is it enough to just listen if you aren’t taking action? Here are some ideas to how to improve your ability to take the pulse on your community and use it to better serve your members.
Discussions
Do you pull reports of the most popular discussions in your community? Popularity can be filtered by new threads, most replies, likes and shares. Do you track these metrics to see what the community is saying? This will give you a snapshot of what types of new discussions, events, AMAs that you can develop in your community.
Talking to your members
Metrics and surveys are great. However, old fashioned feedback from a phone call or focus groups is even better. Keep your listening ears on all the time. Ask why the topics members discuss are important and how you can develop the content to be the most relevant for them. Your members will always be happy to discuss their needs and appreciate that you take the time to ask their opinion. I never turn down a chance to schedule or take a phone call with a member or potential member to see how the community can better support their needs. Take advantage of every opportunity you are gifted to speak with your members.
Social media channels
Your members may not always be engaging in your brand community. Some people prefer to interact on social. What are they talking about on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram? Friend your members on these channels and pay attention to the type of content they post, like, and comment on. This will give you a great advantage over your competitors. It may even show you what type of content your organization is lacking that your members are engaging in with other organizations and other channels. It’s always important to be aware of your competition and how your community and organization can improve itself to support your member’s needs.
Comments
What do your members think about your products, events and content. What are they putting in the comments? Is it good, bad, or ugly? It can be painful sometimes to read honest feedback. But if you do not listen to the feedback you will not know how to improve. It is also important to acknowledge feedback and correct any situations that you can. One example would be, do you have an event page where members are commenting that they cannot find the link for the event? Reply with an apology and the appropriate link. Be aware in real-time what your members are saying so you are better equipped to assist them in a timely fashion.
Event chat
One pandemic highlight for me has been attending events at our organization that I may not have been able to attend before. I have joined technical conferences, student chapter meetings, region assembly meetings and committee meetings! What a great way to engage and interact with members by attending their events. Not only can you hear the topics and content that your volunteers are developing, you can also see what the attendees have to say in the chat box. I love reading comments and then reaching out to members offline to see if they are interested in writing or serving as a panelist on the topics they discuss in the chat box.
Tags
What are members tagging? If they are tagging something, they consider it to be its own, relevant topic. You can pull reports of tags that members are creating within your community and watch the tags they use on social to get an idea of the broader topics/content that members want to discuss.
Search terms
Google Analytics and community platforms allow you to pull reports of what types of content your members are searching. This is a valuable way to “listen” to the “lurkers” that may not be making their voices heard, but they are searching the community to find content. These reports will tell you what they are trying to find. Developing content based on the behavioral search terms is more relevant than developing content from what members only vocalize they want.
In closing
You have all the tools you need to create relevant content for your community. Those tools are the community members! Acknowledge your members and their voices! Empower them to tell you how best to support them by listening to their needs!