12 Social Media Experts Offer Their Predictions For 2024 via @sejournal, @theshelleywalsh

Social media has seen interesting changes recently.

The dramatic changes at Twitter – now rebranded as ‘X’ – saw many SEO professionals looking for new social media platforms to maintain their community connections.

We saw the rise of BlueSky, Mastodon, and Threads, and renewed interest in LinkedIn and Reddit as marketing channels for brands.

As big shifts happen in SEO and search following the introduction of generative AI, this could be a time when social media evolves.

As marketers experiment with AI, it’s going to be important to understand how to leverage these tools whilst maintaining authenticity and trust.

With exciting times to come this year during this evolution of online marketing, there is much anticipation for how this will impact social media.

The overriding sentiments in the industry appear to be building relationships and meaningful connections alongside leveraging AI tools for better analytics and understanding how to create a social media strategy with impact.

Where Should Social Media Marketers Focus Their Attention In 2024?

We reached out to a variety of social media experts and thought leaders to get their input on what might happen in the coming year, and to ask where social media marketers should focus in 2024.

Build More Sustainable Relationships

Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer, MarketingProfs

If you haven’t shifted your social strategy lately, you’re doing it wrong. For most of us, it’s not a traffic accelerator; it’s a relationship builder.

Walk with me back to the dawn of social… Then, we were using it to amass massive audiences quickly and easily, then using it to boost traffic or conversions (however we defined “conversion”).

Those days are over. Done. Cooked. Toast.

Instead, in 2024, it’s all about recognizing that social media’s superpower is its ability to help us build more sustainable relationships more slowly.

Social in 2024 and beyond requires a shift in strategy. But also (importantly) an evolution of your mindset.

Executive Thought Leadership Social Strategy

Purna Virji, Principal Consultant, Content Solutions, LinkedIn

One core area I’d encourage social media marketers to focus their attention on in 2024 is to supplement their regular demand generation activities with an executive thought leadership social strategy.

As a result of the continuing economic worries, businesses increasingly cut budgets throughout 2023.

According to Edelman’s research, “44% of decision-makers also claim they will be less receptive to sales calls or marketing outreach, making it harder for businesses to attract new clients.”

Marketers have realized, often the hard way, that nurture- and bottom-funnel campaigns alone aren’t sufficient. After all, it’s increasingly futile to promote, say, a free demo when people might not have the budget to buy what you’re demo-ing.

How, then, to stand out? That’s where thought leadership comes in.

Thought leadership campaigns (both paid and organic) help increase market consideration and build trust with prospects to support demand generation efforts that drive ROI and can attract talent.

According to the Edelman study, “More than half of decision-makers say that during an economic downturn, it’s essential that non-critical suppliers produce high-quality thought leadership if they want to earn business.”

Five top tips:

1. Thought leadership content doesn’t need to be long; in fact, snackable content can often work best.
2. It doesn’t all need to come from the C-Suite. If they’re busy/unable to lean in to help, start with your sales representatives or other subject matter experts. People respond best to their peers, so if your end audience tends to be very technical, for example, then starting with the more technical subject matter experts in your organization can be helpful.
3. You don’t need a separate strategy for thought leadership. Rather, weave it in as part of your existing strategy for effectiveness and efficiency.
4. You don’t need a massive budget for it, either. Start with organic posts, try different approaches and formats, and then amplify what’s working with paid promotion.
5. Thought leadership content does best when it’s authentic to the creator, on a topic they’re passionate about and have expertise in. Focus on offering value and building trust and rapport.

A Fun Year For AI-Powered Social Media Marketing Data Analysis

Andy Crestodina, Co-Founder/Chief Marketing Officer, Orbit Media Studios

Social media is a data-rich environment. This is a huge advantage for marketers who analyze this data and then iterate their social strategies – which is more fun than ever if you use AI.

So, in the new year, smart social media marketers will focus on getting data out of social media and getting it into an AI-friendly structure.

Give ChatGPT nicely organized CSV files, and it will give you charts that may cause you to immediately rethink what you post.

Here’s a chart that AI made for me based on one year of top posts on LinkedIn, categorized manually before uploading. Interesting, right? 2024 will be a fun year for AI-powered social media marketing data analysis.

Image from Andy Crestorina, December 2023

Short Form Video

Larry Kim, CEO, Customers.ai

The entire world’s social media has converged on short-form video. If you still haven’t mastered the art of producing content in short-form videos, it’s hard to see how you’ll be successful in social media in 2024!

Personalization And User-Generated Content

Katie Lance, CEO/Founder, Katie Lance Consulting

Firstly, embracing emerging platforms and technologies is crucial. While it’s important to maintain a strong presence on established platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, keeping an eye on rising stars in the social media world can offer fresh opportunities.

For instance, platforms that leverage augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are becoming increasingly popular, providing new, immersive ways to engage audiences.

Also, considering the growing interest in decentralized platforms and blockchain technology, exploring these areas could position brands at the forefront of digital innovation.

Secondly, video content continues to dominate across social media channels, and this trend is likely to persist and evolve.

Short-form video content, popularized by platforms like TikTok, has shown significant engagement rates and offers a creative way to showcase products, share stories, and connect with younger audiences.

Additionally, live streaming is gaining traction, offering real-time engagement and fostering a sense of community among viewers. Investing in quality video production and exploring diverse content formats can greatly enhance a brand’s online presence.

Lastly, personalization and user-generated content (UGC) are becoming increasingly important. Social media users are looking for authentic, relatable content that resonates with their individual experiences and interests.

Encouraging UGC not only fosters a sense of community but also provides marketers with valuable, authentic content that can enhance brand credibility.

Pairing this with data-driven personalization strategies ensures that content reaches the right audience at the right time, increasing engagement and conversion rates.

Create An Exit Plan For X

Greg Jarboe, President And Co-founder, SEO-PR

If social media marketers haven’t already created an exit plan for X, formerly Twitter, then they need to prepare their bug-out bags now.

Where should they go? According to SEJ’s list of The Top 10 Social Media Sites & Platforms, social media marketers should focus their attention on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, Pinterest, Reddit, and LinkedIn.

And marketers shouldn’t forget that blogs were one of the original social media platforms. So, if you still have a small team tweeting, then it’s time to get them some upskilling and reskilling ASAP.

In addition, social media marketers should focus more attention on creating videos worth watching and content worth sharing.

Why? According to the Content Marketing Institute’s latest research, 67% of marketers say video has become more important to their business over the last year. Why? Video’s ability to tell stories and resonate emotionally with audiences makes it an ideal format for making human connections.

Finally, run, don’t walk, to learn which AI tools – including AI image generators and AI video generators – will help them in 2024 and beyond.

As Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang told 10,000 graduates during a commencement address back in May, “While some worry that AI may take their jobs, someone who’s expert with AI will.”

Audience Building And Analytics

Jeff Riddall, Senior Product Manager, OneLocal

In 2024, as in previous years and likely in years to come, I believe social media marketers should focus their attention on two primary areas: audience building and analytics.

Far too many who look to leverage social media to build their brand spend an inordinate time trying to create and distribute killer content but forget or simply fail to ensure there is a receptive audience waiting, or even available, to consume it.

More time should be spent “socializing” and “community building” in the channels your desired audience favors. Build your following by following and sharing content from like-minded brands and influencers in the hopes they will reciprocate and/or their audience will take notice.

And this is where analytics comes in. Social marketers should be leveraging native social media analytics or web analytics to effectively understand what is working or not working and where.

We all know social media is not just about likes and shares, but actual clicks and conversions, so every effort should be made to use branded and/or tracked URLs to see if and where real engagement is happening.

In social media marketing, along with digital marketing in general, there are so many things that can be done, so it’s critically important to use analytics to determine the things that should be done.

Meaningful Connections And Responsible Branding

Ashley Segura, Co-Founder and CMO, I’ll Tell You Soon!

In 2024, social media marketing will be all about meaningful connections and responsible branding. Here’s how to make the most of it:

Influencer Collaborations

Tap into the power of micro-influencers. These are individuals with smaller but highly engaged followings. Brands can collaborate with them for more authentic and targeted outreach.

Start by identifying influencers whose followers align with your target demographic. Then, craft campaigns that resonate with their audience’s interests, ensuring a more personalized and impactful connection.

Sustainability and Social Responsibility

Embrace and communicate your brand’s commitment to sustainability and social responsibility. Consumers increasingly value brands that are environmentally conscious and ethically sound.

To do this, integrate sustainable practices into your business model and share these stories on social media – and share them often. Use your platforms to educate and engage with your audience on these issues, especially the issues that matter most to your demographic.

This creates a brand image that’s not only about products but also about positive impact on issues that matter most to their customers.

Community Building

Focus on creating and nurturing online communities around your brand. This involves more than just selling products; it’s about fostering a space for shared interests and discussions and can look like Facebook groups, Slack channels, email lists, and more.

Engage with your audience through regular, meaningful interactions in these unique groups. Host Q&A sessions, create discussion forums, and encourage user-generated content to build a community that feels valued and connected to your brand.

By concentrating on these three strategies, brands can create a more impactful and resonant presence on social media in 2024.

Understanding And Leveraging Data Analytics And AI Tools

Jason Hennessey, Founder, Jason Hennessey Consulting

In 2024, social media marketers should focus on several key areas to stay ahead in the ever-evolving digital landscape.

Firstly, they should prioritize video content, as it continues to dominate user engagement on platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube.

Additionally, marketers should pay attention to emerging platforms and trends, adapting their strategies accordingly. Building authentic and meaningful connections with their audience through personalized and interactive content will also be crucial.

Lastly, understanding and leveraging data analytics and AI tools to optimize campaigns and track ROI will remain essential for successful social media marketing in 2024.

Focus On Capturing First-Party Data

Casie Gillette, Senior Director, Demand Generation, Customers.ai

As we head into 2024, we have to really look at how privacy changes by Google and Apple are impacting our social media remarketing campaigns.

When it comes to social, organic reach has already become minimal, and with iOS 14 and now iOS 17, we are seeing our paid audiences shrink as well. Businesses need to focus on capturing first-party data.

Whether it’s on-site methods like promotions, pop-ups, or visitor identification tools, without this first-party data, the social reach will be limited, and remarketing campaigns will continue to underperform.

Meta Will Unveil Developments With Generative AI

Mari Smith, CEO, Mari Smith International, Inc.

Meta will roll out significant AI-powered updates throughout 2024. Along with more refined use of its AI-powered discovery engine to recommend content, especially reels and ads, Meta will unveil impressive developments with generative AI to rival ChatGPT and DALL･E, among other platforms.

As Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, stated in February 2023, the company has a turbocharged focus on generative AI, in particular. We saw the launch of simple AI-generated stickers in Instagram and Facebook Stories.

But much more impressive, with real utility, will be when the company bakes generative AI into Meta Business Suite. This will offer businesses the ability to create unique text, image, and video content and then schedule, publish, and track performance, all without having to use any other third-party AI app or tool.

Meta will also integrate more AI-powered tools inside Messenger, Instagram Direct, and WhatsApp, including new custom AI personas. Possibly into Threads as well.

These are conversational chatbot assistants. This will allow businesses to create custom avatars and build their own effective use cases such as FAQs, customer service, a unique knowledgebase of their own, and likely much more.

Approach AI Integration With Caution

Brent Csutoras, Managing Partner, Search Engine Journal

As AI transforms social media in 2024, approach its integration with caution, especially regarding branding and upcoming regulations.

Authenticity becomes crucial as AI content proliferates, so it’s essential to use AI as a supportive tool, not a substitute.

While short-form video storytelling remains a key to success on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, platforms like BlueSky and Threads are gaining traction for their content updates, reminiscent of Twitter’s style.

Remember, in 2024, a blend of authentic messaging and engaging short videos will be the cornerstone of successful social media marketing.

More resources: 

Featured Image: Dilok Klaisataporn/Shutterstock

The Key to Successful Advertising

The emotional pull of an advertisement can make or break performance, much more than budget alone. Once its messaging resonates with a target audience, a brand typically sees lower acquisition costs and elevated return on ad spend.

Emotions

“How Customers Think: Essential Insights into the Mind of the Market” is a groundbreaking 2003 book by Harvard Business School professor Gerald Zaltman. According to Zaltman, “… 95% of our purchase decision-making takes place in the subconscious mind.”

Emotions are what drive purchasing behavior. Impactful brands tap into these latent sentiments, often superseding features or price. Top creative doesn’t just show what a product does but also the feelings it elicits. It sparks desire and stirs action through viewers’ subconscious needs.

Consider True Classic, a direct-to-consumer men’s apparel brand. It has reportedly earned $250 million in revenue since its founding in 2019. The company’s secret is crafting creatives that transcend physical products to evoke compelling identity and lifestyle aspirations. True Classic’s marketing strategy is “down-to-earth, humorous, relatable, authentic.”

Co-founder Ryan Bartlett stated in a LinkedIn post that “creativity is massively underrated,” adding, “…we create humorous ads for paid media because it adds value to people’s lives when you can brighten their day and make them smile, even for a moment. People don’t forget that.”

True Classic’s marketing strategy is “down-to-earth, humorous, relatable, authentic.”

Future Pacing

Future pacing is the craft of painting a picture in prospects’ minds. It helps consumers visualize how their life could be, to dream and aspire. For example, Nike’s “Find Your Greatness” campaign encourages the audience to imagine taking action and achieving their goals — a dream career, car, body, girl, status, lifestyle.

That is why True Classic focuses on helping men look good so they feel good, with ad copy such as “Girls will find you more attractive if you dress better” and “fits you tight around the chest and arms and loose in the front.”

Ultimately, people are driven by emotions more than logic. Focus on the result your customer wants and the feelings attached to the outcome. Then make the case that your product is the answer.

Authenticity

Combining future pacing with creative authenticity is a proven winner. Cassey Ho, the founder of PopEx, a female activewear brand, does that on her YouTube channel. It has 9 million subscribers, contributing to PopEx’s $5 million in annual revenue.

In a YouTube Short titled “This legging is designed to fit you perfectly,” Ho quickly attracts viewers’ attention by stating, “80% of women are wearing leggings that don’t fit.” It captures the audience’s needs, desires, and emotions in the first three seconds.

Then she dives into the product, demonstrating real-world body types and her leggings’ solutions.

Getting Started

Launch advertising campaigns with static creative to test messaging and visuals. Use simple images, copy, and graphics to experiment across variations rapidly. It’s a quick, affordable way to gauge response.

Sarah Levinger, a creative consultant, suggests running three static ads, each with an emotional message, and keeping track of the ones that resonate best. It’s not until you’ve nailed the messaging that she recommends going full-fledged into “producing UGC, pro video, founder videos, and other ad categories to match.”

Potential content includes:

• Product testimonials,
• Unboxing,
• Comparing your product to others,
• Ad hooks (1 to 3-second clips).

AI Tools to Create Reels, TikToks, Shorts

Creating mini videos such as Instagram Reels, TikToks, and YouTube Shorts can be time-consuming. Luckily, new AI-driven apps produce engaging videos in seconds.

Cut Long Videos

The following tools can repurpose interviews, webinars, or other extended videos.

Klap quickly creates multiple clips from a single YouTube video. Paste the URL of your YouTube video and in seconds receive Reels, TikToks, or Shorts. Each clip includes a title, transcript, and virality score of 10 to 100.

I pasted the URL of a video interview with me. One clip was a 60-second recap of my career, which I addressed in the discussion. Klap gave it a virality score of 70 with an explanation:

This video has a moderate virality potential. While the topic of Ann Smarty’s journey in the SEO industry may be interesting to some viewers, it lacks visual elements and action that typically drive high engagement on TikTok. However, for those interested in SEO and personal branding, this video could still generate decent attention.

Edit any clip’s caption style and position and crop it as needed. My clip required no edits. The tool even added relevant emojis to most captions. For example, when I explained how I learned search engine optimization, Klap added a books emoji to the caption.

Generating clips on Klap is free but not downloadable without a Pro version, which costs $29 per month for 10 videos.

Klap quickly creates multiple clips from a single YouTube video, even adding relevant emojis. Click image to enlarge.

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Munch is another new web-based app that uses AI to repurpose long videos into Reels, TikToks, or Shorts.

To start, choose the platform(s) you want to create clips for. Then (i) paste the URL of the YouTube video or upload a file, and (ii) pick your style of subtitles

The tool will:

• Cut the video into meaningful clips,
• Generate subtitles (which load when spoken),
• Create social-media captions, including hashtags.

If no clips appeal, Munch allows easy re-generating for new versions, although in my test the re-do was unnecessary.

As with Klap, Munch provides the key topic of every clip and discloses its searchable or trending keywords on the chosen platform. Munch also scores the “coherence” of each clip — the ability to be easily understood.

Potential edits for each clip include the style of titles, cropping, and altering the template. The app optionally syncs directly to Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube for seamless posting.

Munch permits one free project with downloadable watermarked clips. Unlimited projects and no watermarks require a paid account, starting at $49 per month.

Munch uses AI to repurpose long videos into Reels, TikToks, or Shorts. Click image to enlarge.

Text to Video

The following tools will repurpose text into videos.

Vidiofy generates Reels or Shorts in seconds. Paste an article URL into the platform and download the video. The clip automatically includes topic highlights, image backgrounds and music, video effects, and an AI-generated voiceover.

My test required about 10 minutes of editing to replace some images and help Vidiofy understand the article and topic. Still, it’s a big timesaver, as it would have required hours of work.

Vidiofy creates five downloadable videos for free without a watermark. The paid version with enhanced features costs $29 per month.

Vidiofy generates Reels or Shorts from text. Paste an article URL into the platform and download the video. Click image to enlarge.

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Fliki generates short videos from any text, tweet, or prompt. It will auto-find background images and music, create subtitles, produce an AI-driven voiceover, and even pull images from the linked source. Fliki allows edits in every scene in a clip — replacing images or music, adjusting speed or volume, and changing fonts.

Fliki created better clip quality than Vidiofy in my testing, but was harder to edit. Single projects in Fliki are free with a watermark. Paid plans start at $28 per month for 180 minutes of video and 75 translated languages, among other features.

Fliki generates short videos from any text, tweet, or prompt. Click image to enlarge.

AI Tools for Better Social Media Profiles

An engaging profile is crucial for standing out on social platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Here are three tools to help.

Ahrefs’ AI Social Media Bio Creator

A social media profile should be detailed, concise, and engaging enough to entice followers. Accomplishing all three of those goals is not easy.

Ahrefs’ free AI-powered social media bio writer can assist. Paste your URL, select the social platform, and choose a tone — e.g., “Professional,” “Friendly,” “Confident,” more. Then enable optional emojis and hashtags.

The tool will analyze your page’s content and create three variations of a bio for each platform.

Ahrefs’ social media bio writer produces three profile variations for each platform. Click image to enlarge.

The bio details were impressive in my testing. I linked to my personal social media profile, where I share family outings. The tool didn’t focus on a single trip but addressed multiple adventures:

Join me on my journey as I discover hidden gems and breathtaking landscapes 🌄 From hiking trails to city streets, I’m always looking for new experiences. Let’s explore together! 🗺️ #wanderlust #naturelover #citylife

Beacons.ai Landing Page Creator

Most business use their home page as a link in the bio. But that’s not ideal. People clicking a social media bio link do not typically have purchase intent. They click out of curiosity to learn more about the company.

That’s the purpose of a dedicated link-in-bio landing page generator from Beacons.ai. It uses content on your social profiles to generate a single page for all channels. The page drives engagement and informs users of all of the company’s social channels, encouraging followers across all platforms.

Beacons.ai produces a single landing page for all social channels. Click image to enlarge.

LinkedIn Profile Optimizers

LinkedIn provides AI tools to improve your profile, but external tools can add details to raise visibility.

I’ve used two such tools, Taplio and Resume Worded.

• Taplio is free and quick, requiring no registration. Insert your LinkedIn profile URL or username. Taplio will then provide instant suggestions, including a title and description.

• Resume Worded requires a registration and offers limited free tools. Its Pro version ($49 per month) suggests keywords and includes grammar checks, among other features. Download your LinkedIn profile as a PDF and then upload it to Resume Worded. It will grade the profile based on detail and visibility.

Resume Worded grades a LinkedIn profile, offering an “Overall Score” of 0 to 100 for detail and visibility. Click image to enlarge.

Both tools helpfully stated I am not sufficiently describing my “hard skills” in the profile’s title, description, and experience sections.

Here are suggestions from Resume Worded:

Including hard skills in your job title can significantly improve your profile’s visibility on LinkedIn. Your job title, particularly your most recent ones, seriously influences how frequently you appear on LinkedIn. By incorporating keywords related to your hard skills, you’ll appear more frequently in searches. For example, instead of “Social Media Manager,” you can write “Social Media Manager | Facebook Ads, Branding, and Automation.”

What Is Social Listening And How To Get Started via @sejournal, @annabellenyst

Most marketers now understand the value of social media as a marketing tool – and countless companies have now established their own presence across a variety of social platforms.

But while the importance of creating content and building an audience is well understood, many organizations are lacking when it comes to another key strength of social media: social listening.

Social listening is a strategic approach that can help your brand tap into the incredible breadth and depth of social media to hone in on what your target audience is saying and feeling – and why.

By investing in social listening, you can gain a deeper understanding of conversations happening around not just your brand but your broader industry, and extract meaningful insights to inform multiple areas of your business.

In this article, we’ll explore what social listening is, why it’s crucial for businesses today, and the tools that exist to help you do it before diving into tips for getting started with your social listening strategy.

Let’s get started.

What Is Social Listening?

Social listening is the practice of tracking conversations on social media that are related to your brand, analyzing them, and extracting insights to help inform your future marketing efforts.

These conversations can include anything from direct mentions of your brand or product to discussions around your industry, competitors, relevant keywords, or other topics that might be tangential to your business.

The idea of social listening is that you’re really getting to know your audience by sitting back and listening in to what they talk about – what their gripes are, what they’re interested in, what’s getting them excited right now, and much more.

Gathering this data and then examining it can help you in a number of ways, from uncovering useful product development insights to inspiring new content ideas or better ways to serve your customers.

Here are some of the things you can achieve through social listening:

• Tracking mentions of your brand, products, or services across social platforms.
• Evaluating public perception and sentiment towards your brand by assessing whether mentions are positive, negative, or neutral.
• Spotting trends that are emerging among your target market by noting common themes, topics, or keywords in conversations.
• Gaining a better understanding of your audience, including who they are, where they spend time online, what they want, and how your brand can connect with them.

As such, social listening isn’t just a powerful tool for marketing, but can also be leveraged to improve customer engagement and service, product development, and other areas of your business.

What’s The Difference Between Social Listening And Social Monitoring?

If you’re finding yourself a little confused about the difference between social listening and social monitoring, you’re not alone! The terms are often used interchangeably – when, in reality, they have different scopes and objectives.

Generally speaking, social monitoring is narrower and more focused on your brand specifically, while social listening takes more of a big-picture approach to gaining insights.

If social monitoring is about seeking out brand mentions and conversations to hear what people are saying, social listening is diving even deeper to understand why they’re saying those things.

Social monitoring typically involves tracking social activity directly related to your brand so that you can stay abreast of what’s happening at the moment and tackle any pressing issues.

In this regard, it’s often leveraged as a component of a company’s customer support program to help respond to queries, answer questions, and remedy complaints in a timely manner.

It can also help to identify trending topics or industry moments that might apply to your brand. Basically, social monitoring is all about being aware of what’s happening around your brand on social media so you can respond quickly.

Social listening does all of this, but also takes things a few steps further, expanding the scope of what you’re tracking and focusing on obtaining insights to help with brand strategy, content planning, and decision-making.

Where social monitoring might focus on mentions of your brand, social listening goes beyond that to explore broader consumer behavior and emerging industry trends, and make qualitative analyses of the conversations that are happening in those areas.

One analogy I’ve encountered that I find helpful for understanding the difference between the two: If social monitoring is akin to tending your own backyard, social listening is like taking a walk through your neighborhood and eavesdropping on conversations to better understand what your neighbors are interested in and concerned about.

While we are focused on social listening in this particular article, both social monitoring and social listening are important parts of an effective marketing strategy.

Why Is Social Listening Important?

As we’ve touched on, successful social listening can benefit many areas of your business – from your marketing to your product and your customer support. And all of this means it can have a big impact on your bottom line.

Let’s look closer at just some of the reasons why social listening is an important tool in your business’s arsenal.

Reputation Management

Social listening can help you get a sense of how your audience – and the general public – feels about your brand, products, messaging, or services.

By understanding both the positive and negative sentiments around your brand and where they come from, you can work to fill the gaps and improve perceptions of your company.

Understanding Your Audience

On that note, social listening is a great way to learn more about your audience – from your current customers to your prospects and beyond.

It offers a looking glass into what your target consumer is thinking about, their opinions, pain points, desires, etc. With this information, you have the power to customize your content, message, and products to serve their needs better.

Market Analysis

Social listening is a powerful tool for unearthing insights into your industry – trends, consumer behaviors, opportunities, etc. This is the kind of information that you can use to get ahead of your competitors and deliver the ultimate customer experience.

Competitive Insights

Speaking of competitors, social listening enables you to keep a watchful eye on your competitors and learn from their successes and failures.

You can use active listening to determine how your target market perceives your competitors and apply your findings to differentiate yourself from the pack.

Crisis Management

Let’s face it: Crises happen, no matter what your business or industry. But social listening can help you identify crises before they hit a boiling point, and address them in a timely manner.

Content Strategy

Want to know what content types and formats resonate best with your audience? Try social listening! Once you have the necessary insights, you’ll be able to create more engaging content.

Lead Generation

Social listening can drive lead generation in a number of ways.

You can use it as a tool to discover prospects who are interested in your industry, product niche, or topics related to your business.

Beyond this, by improving your content strategy, reputation, products, customer experience, and more using your social listening insights, you will ultimately boost more leads to your business.

Social Listening Tools

Given that social listening requires pulling data from millions of posts across social media and analyzing it, we would recommend using a tool to help with your efforts.

Here are a few popular social listening tools.

Hootsuite

Known for its social management features, Hootsuite also offers a comprehensive suite of capabilities to help with your social listening efforts.

The platform allows you to create custom streams to track hashtags, keywords, or mentions across a range of social platforms. You can use these to spot conversations in real-time and engage with them.

Using some of Hootsuite’s tools and integrations, you can also do things like track brand sentiment, listen into Reddit conversations, access consumer research, and more.

Pricing:

• 30-day free trial.
• Paid plans start at $99/month for the Professional tier and 249/month for the Team tier (billed annually).
• Hootsuite offers an Enterprise tier with custom pricing.

Sprout Social

Sprout Social is another leader in the social media management space that is super useful for social listening.

With Sprout Social’s Smart Inbox, you can pull all your mentions, comments, and DMs from across your social platforms into one single feed – helping you keep on top of what’s happening.

Other key features include audience analysis, campaign analysis, crisis management, competitor comparison, influencer recognition, sentiment research, and much more.

Pricing:

• 30-day free trial.
• Paid plans start at $249/month for the Standard tier, $399/month for the Professional tier, and $499/month for the Advanced tier (billed annually).
• Sprout Social offers an Enterprise tier with custom pricing.

Brandwatch

Brandwatch is a strong social listening and analytics platform that can help you track and analyze conversations online. It pulls data from 100 million sources, ensuring you’re not missing anything.

The Brandwatch tool will sift through brand mentions in real-time to analyze sentiment and perception, saving you a ton of time and manual effort.

Other key features include AI alerts for unusual mentions activity, conversation translation across multiple languages, tons of historical data, and more.

Pricing:

• Book a meeting with the Brandwatch team to learn more about pricing.

Meltwater

Meltwater’s social listening tool monitors data from a ton of different feeds, from Facebook to Instagram, Twitch, Reddit, YouTube, and many more. It can even recognize when your brand is talked about in a podcast!

Key features include topic and conversation trends analysis, custom dashboard and report building, consumer segmentation and behavior analysis, crisis management, and more.

Pricing:

• Contact the Meltwater team for pricing details.

Talkwalker

Another top name in the social listening space, Talkwalker monitors 150 million websites and 10+ social networks to power your real-time listening experience.

It offers AI-powered sentiment analysis in over 127 languages, notifications for any atypical activity, issue detection, conversation clustering, and much more.

Pricing:

• Contact the Talkwalker team for pricing.

6 Tips For Building A Social Listening Strategy

Now that you understand what social listening is and why it’s important – as well as a few of the tools you can use to power your social listening program – it’s time to start considering your strategy.

Here are six steps we recommend when building out your social listening strategy.

1. Define Your Goals & Objectives

As with any big project, your first step before starting should be to set clear goals for what you want to achieve.

Why are you doing this, and what is the desired result? Sit down with your team and talk through these points in order to align with your objectives.

You might have one key objective or several. Some potential options could be:

• Improve your company’s customer service and support.
• Gain insights to help inform product development and enhance product offerings.
• Track brand sentiment across current and potential customers.
• Develop a deeper understanding of the competitive landscape in your industry, and how your competitors are performing with social audiences.
• Stay on top of industry events and trends so you can spot content gaps and opportunities ahead of time.

Whatever your goals are, make sure you have them set from the beginning so you have clarity as you move forward.

2. Pick Your Tool Of Choice

While social listening can technically be done manually, it will never be as comprehensive as what you can get from leveraging a tool or platform.

Social media listening tools, like the ones we highlighted above, are able to synthesize data from millions of sources at once – not to mention their abilities to analyze sentiment, identify trends, spot activity, and more.

So, while they typically come with a price tag, the good ones are worth their weight in gold.

Do your research and choose a tool that aligns with your objectives and your team’s budget.

Look for something that monitors many different touchpoints, offers comprehensive analytics, is customizable, and integrates with your existing tech stack (if necessary).

3. Identify Target Keywords And Topics

This step is crucial: Take the time to define the keywords, topics, and hashtags that you want to “listen in” to – as these will provide the basis for your listening efforts.

Be sure to include keywords and themes that are relevant to your brand but also your industry, so that you get information that’s most useful to you. You could also discuss any keywords or topics you might want to exclude and why.

These might evolve or change over time, and that’s okay – this is about setting up a well-considered and focused foundation based on what matters most right now, and what will help you achieve your goals.

4. Decide On Your Workflow

Who will be responsible for monitoring your social listening data? Who should be responding to relevant mentions? Whose job is it to analyze the data and report on learnings and progress?

These are all things you should consider early on so that you can develop a clear workflow that outlines responsibilities.

By establishing the process early on, you’ll make sure that your efforts are not in vain and that you’re able to really put your data to use.

One recommendation: Make sure that somebody is regularly monitoring conversations and engaging where necessary. You should be keeping a keen eye on your listening activity – and automated alerts can be very helpful here.

5. Adapt As Needed

As part of the workflow we just discussed, somebody (or several people) should be responsible for routinely analyzing the data you’re collecting – as, unfortunately, it won’t analyze itself.

Set up a consistent process for diving into your data, extracting insights, and then acting on them.

There’s no point in allocating resources to a social listening program if you’re not using the learnings to benefit your business.

So, be sure to adapt your content strategy, marketing efforts, customer service, and so on based on what the insights are telling you.

6. Don’t Forget Measurement

We all know the importance of social media measurement – and this extends to your social listening efforts.

As time goes on, continue to measure the success of your efforts against the goals and objectives you set out for yourself.

This will help you evaluate the impact of your social listening, and whether there are areas you should pivot or refine based on the data you’re seeing.

You can also track social engagement metrics over time to see if your learnings have provided a boost in your social performance as a whole.

In Conclusion

With millions of conversations happening all around us on social media, any brand that isn’t engaging in social listening is missing a major opportunity.

By taking the time to proactively (and attentively) listen to your audience and target consumers, understand them better, and put their feedback to use, you can drive considerable success for your business.

So, take some of the advice we’ve shared here and start building out your social listening strategy today!

More resources: 

Featured Image: batjaket/Shutterstock

20 Popular Pinterest Accounts for Marketing Inspiration

At its September 2023 Investor Day, Pinterest stated more than half of its users view the platform as a place to shop, and buyable items saved to its boards increased 50% year-over-year.

Pinterest continues its efforts to make the platform more shoppable. The company recently introduced mobile deep links for Pinterest-managed advertisers and added direct links as new ways to help shoppers go from discovery to purchase. Mobile deep links send users to a specific page in a retailer’s mobile app. Direct links take people from a Pinterest ad to a retailer’s website with one click.

Additionally, Pinterest has expanded its ecommerce ecosystem with new integrations for Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Adobe Commerce, building on existing integrations with Shopify and WooCommerce. The new integrations allow merchants to manage their Pinterest product catalogs directly within the Salesforce or Adobe applications they already use.

Merchants interested in Pinterest’s ecommerce efforts can learn from top brands and influencers.

Here is a list of the most popular accounts on Pinterest. There are inspirational style boards, brand collections, product tags to shop, and more.

Oh Joy

Oh Joy

Oh Joy, the most followed account on Pinterest, is from the L.A.-based lifestyle brand and design company by Joy Cho. Oh Joy creates licensed product lines for Target, Petco, Band-Aid, and more. Popular Pinterest boards include Clothing, Recipes, and For the Home. 15.1 million followers.

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Poppytalk

Poppytalk

Poppytalk is a creative studio and lifestyle brand based in Vancouver and founded by Jan Halvarson. Launched to catalog inspiration from typography to interior design, Poppytalk now covers design elements, do-it-yourself projects, entertaining and recipe creations, art and photography, interior design, architecture, and more. Its Entertaining + Fun board has 6 million followers alone. 10.4 million followers.

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Tasty

Tasty

Tasty, from BuzzFeed, is a network for quick food videos and recipes. Tasty was originally a BuzzFeed Facebook page that featured short, comfort-food videos. Its Pinterest boards include food genres and meal hacks, such as Chicken Dinners, Pastas, and Desserts. Tasty attracts more than 10 million monthly views. 10.3 million followers.

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Maryann Rizzo

Maryann Rizzo

Maryann Rizzo is an interior designer with boards of inspirational images to design, decorate, craft, cook, garden, entertain, dress, and travel in style. Her popular board Everything has 4.5 million followers. 9 million followers.

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Mamas Uncut

Mamas Uncut

Mamas Uncut is a parenting site by Bekka Palmer. It features boards on mom Q&A, parenting news, home hacks, baby names, and lifestyle-related content (e.g., tattoos and humor). Popular boards include Baby, Lifestyle and Inspiration, and Mamasuncut Inspiration. Mamas Uncut attracts more than 10 million monthly views. 8.5 million followers.

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Cathie Hong Interiors

Cathie Hong Interiors

Cathie Hong Interiors is an interior design firm based in San Francisco. Its inspirational boards pin content on interior and outdoor design, tile and materials, stores and displays, packaging and branding, general inspiration, as well as the studio’s own work. The Dining Inspiration board has over 3 million followers. 7.9 million followers.

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Jane Wang

Jane Wang

Jane Wang is the mother of Pinterest co-founder Ben Silbermann. Jane Wang’s boards contain inspirational content across a range of topics, including DIY, Octopus, and Small things that work very well. Her food-focused Delicious board has over 6 million followers. 7.7 million followers.

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HonestlyWTF

HonestlyWTF

HonestlyWTF, curated by Erica Chan Coffman, features anything extraordinary. It has boards on walls, art, shoes, lighting, spaces, jewelry, shoes, beauty, typography, and more. Popular boards include DIY and Home Sweet Home. HonestlyWTF attracts more than 10 million monthly views. 7.2 million followers.

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Bonnie Tsang​​

Bonnie Tsang

Bonnie Tsang is a visual artist and a mom of two girls. Her boards feature inspirational and stylish images of architecture, fashion, color, stripes, places to go, and food design. Popular boards include Living Spaces and Workspace. 7 million followers.

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Pejper

Pejper

Pejper is a Swedish lifestyle blog focusing on interior design and the environment. Pejper’s Pinterest boards include Work Rooms and Green Living – Garden. Its Lovely Living board has over 3.3 million followers. 6.8 million followers.

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Evelyn

Evelyn

Evelyn has a range of topics across nearly 200 boards, including Passport to Western Europe, Nature’s WIndows, and America the Beautiful, Traveling the USA. 6.8 million followers.

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Style Me Pretty

Style Me Pretty

Style Me Pretty focuses on weddings with inspirational images and featured products. Popular boards include Bridal Hair & Hairstyles and Wedding Cakes. Style Me Pretty attracts more than 10 million monthly views. 6.4 million followers.

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Harper’s Bazaar

Harper’s Bazaar

Harper’s Bazaar pins items from its magazine, including tagged content to shop at its online store, and attracts more than 10 million monthly views. Popular boards include Street Style and Beauty & Hair. 6.4 million followers.

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Trey Ratcliff

Trey Ratcliff

Trey Ratcliff is the creator, writer, and photographer behind the daily travel blog StuckInCustoms.com. His Pinterest boards feature travel images. The My Favorite Travel Photos board has over 6.2 million followers. 6.4 million followers.

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Nordstrom

Nordstrom

Nordstrom pins and curates images on women’s fashion, men’s style, handbags, shoes, home decor, and more. Followers can also shop tagged images. Nordstrom attracts more than 10 million monthly views. Popular boards include Women’s Style, Home, and Skincare & Beauty. 5.4 million followers.

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Veanad

Veanad

Veanad is curated by a Seattle-based architect with boards focusing on space, jewelry, wardrobe, and weekend images. Its popular board Beauty has over 5 million followers.
5.2 million followers.

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L.L.Bean

L.L.Bean

L.L.Bean pins its product images on boards such as L.L.Bean Style, L.L.Bean Footwear, and Be an Outsider. L.L.Bean attracts more than 10 million monthly views. 5 million followers.

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Christine Martinez Loya

Christine Martinez Loya

Christine Martinez Loya pins inspirational images across various subjects, including Looks I Love, Interiors I Dream Of, and DIY Projects I’ll actually make time for. Her popular board Words to Live By has over 4.4 million followers. 5 million followers.

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Wedding Chicks

Wedding Chicks

Wedding Checks curates inspirational wedding images and fashion with boards such as Wedding Dresses and Venues. It also covers wedding planning, such as Guestbooks Ideas, Gift Ideas & Wedding Apps, and DIY Projects. Wedding Chicks attracts more than 10 million monthly views. 4.9 million followers.

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Stephanie Brinkerhoff

Stephanie Brinkerhoff

Stephanie Brinkerhoff is an event hair and makeup artist, as well as a hairstyling educator. Her account includes boards on Hair Accessories, Lifestyle, Fashion, and Pretty Hair. 4.9 million followers.