What is Social Listening? (and Welcome Liz!) | Ep. 35

Ty Smith0:08

Welcome to another episo de of the Crypto Marke ting Sho w. I am Ty Smith. Today we are discu ssing so cial lis tening. We're go ing to g o into w hat soci al liste ning is and why it's im portant for cryp to compa nies, as well as some to p tools and tips to invo lve soci al liste ning in your mar keting s tack.

Ty Smith0:26

Before we go in to what social l istening is, we have a f irst-tim e guest on the s how. Li z just j oined Co inbound as our h ead of s ocial me dia. Sh e is a s ocial me dia roc kstar, w hich mak es her t he perfe ct perso n for th is episo de. So, Liz, be fore we get star ted with everyth ing, ca n you gi ve us ju st a qui ck kind of 30-s econd to a minut e rundow n of jus t who yo u are an d what y our back ground i s?

Liz0:49

Yeah, h ey, than ks for h aving me on. I'm really e xcited t o join t he team. My name is Liz, and I'm really happy to be here. I have about 10 years in various marketing background, especially digital. I have had my own clients back in DC that I did work for, from restaurant groups to hair salons and event companies. Then I joined Daily High Club full-time for the last almost five years and led all of their marketing efforts. We were a online headshop and subscription box company for smoking supplies. We did a lot of different work with celebrities, content marketing. Marketing in cannabis and cannabis-adjacent brands is pretty difficult, so it was an absolute challenge, but one that I think we met with a lot of success. I've been in crypto since around 2015, 2016 and have stuck around. I've really loved the space and watching it grow, and I am here to help it build out even more, especially into the mainstream.

Ty Smith1:58

Awesome. Yeah, we did a couple episodes on the overlap between crypto marketing and cannabis marketing because both of them kind of are these like fringe industries that don't really have a marketing playbook written out for them. So, you joining and being involved in both those spaces just, I mean, it seems like a perfect match.

Liz2:14

Yeah, it's definitely a build the plane while you fly kind of approach, but one that's worked well over time. So, I'm going to keep, I'm going to stick with it.

Ty Smith2:27

All right, so let's go into social listening. So, social listening is definitely a component of social media, which really is your domain of expertise. So, can you kind of break down for us in basic terms what is social listening?

Liz2:41

Absolutely. Social listening is a way to engage particularly with new audiences. There's also social monitoring, which is a little bit different than social listening. If you're in advertising, you know that there's retargeting and prospecting. When you're retargeting, you're talking to people who have already visited your website, they may know your brand. You're working to pick those people up from either past page views or looking at your Instagram. It depends where that pixel is. But when you're prospecting, you're reaching out to new people who may align with your audience, and you do that through strategic keywords, different locations. Your data can get really granular depending what tools that you're using. And this allows, especially newer accounts, to really establish themselves in the community, insert themselves in conversations that are going to be relevant, and help people further define the audience that they want to help build a community with. It also helps more established brands reach out to new audiences if they're looking to bring in fresher eyes or are looking to launch a product that may have a different market fit. It can be really, really helpful in those ways, but I do definitely want to make sure that the difference is kind of that retargeting, prospecting segment where you're using social listening to find newer audiences and really insert yourself in that conversation, where monitoring is people who already know your brand and are already talking about you so that you can engage with them there, too.

Ty Smith4:19

Yeah, exactly. My kind of layman's version of explaining what social listening is in a sentence or two has always been like, it's really the process of keeping your ear to the ground as far as what people are saying about you, your company, your product, your competitors on social media. So, it's basically just kind of keeping your finger on the pulse of what's being said about you online. There's obviously a lot of benefits to knowing that, whether it's being able to respond to things, just kind of understanding where your product or brand sits in the market as compared to others.

Ty Smith4:54

As far as specific to crypto, do you feel social listening is an especially important component of crypto marketing?

Liz5:04

Absolutely. Crypto moves so quickly, and Twitter is a hotspot for crypto conversation. And if you've been on Twitter, you see how fast it moves. People can get out content, it goes in your feed. Unless people interact with it, that's it. That's your shining moment, and then it's gone. It's really fleeting. And so with social listening, you can start to really target that messaging and insert yourself in conversations with people that may have alignment to your project or brand that you're working on, and you can really organically build because you're literally finding people that align with what you are selling or the project that you're building out or the component to your suite that you're putting out there for that audience. I think that it is really crucial to be able to keep a pulse on these trending topics because, as you know, crypto never sleeps, and neither does Twitter. And a lot of first-time updates are happening either in Telegram or Twitter, and people are going to Twitter to talk about that. And so you want to know when those things are starting to trend first so that you can also create your page and make it more of an authority in the space. Instead of them engaging, you can also be one of the first people to hop on a trend or topic, and people will start to look at you as a profile of authority in that space.

Ty Smith6:34

Yeah, exactly. I mean, one of the things we always discuss as far as we have a ton of social media clients is that engaging with, I mean, social media is social. It's designed to be, it's designed in a way that you benefit significantly by engaging with people that are talking about similar topics to you. So, social listening, especially the tools that we can go into in a minute, make it just so much easier to kind of take an account from zero to one, just kind of insert yourself in conversations that are around either, because in the beginning, we kind of discussed it's specific to like your name or your brand or your product or competitors, but really with most tools these days, you can listen specifically to topics. So, topics that are just much like part of a larger conversation that you want to be part of, whether it's maybe decentralized finance or NFTs, you can build out kind of subsections of keywords and get yourself involved in conversations with influencers and news there a lot easier using some of these tools.

Ty Smith7:35

So, Liz, tools as far as social listening. I know we discussed Sprout Social quite a bit in the past few days. Can you kind of give us a rundown on what Sprout Social does as far as social listening and if there's any other tools that you like for social listening?

Liz7:49

Yeah, there's tons of suites for social listening and even DIY methods you can take on if you don't have a huge budget. Sprout Social is a platform I just really like using. They have great social listening tools. You can monitor different keywords, create groupings. You can even get as granular as targeting certain locations, listening in on conversations. Say, a lot of things in crypto are restricted in certain areas, and so if you want to listen in on areas that might be more restricted and see if there's people still having that conversation there, or maybe you want to actually do the opposite and eliminate those areas and listen in on people in others. It really depends on what your goals are, but I love the tools that they have to explore that, create topic groupings and keyword searches. I think that something it does really well is also shows you heavy-hitting users. And so instead of manually looking for influencers and people with large followings, they have little bubbles in their feed that show, okay, this user has over 2k or over 100k. And so when you're sourcing other people who already have authority in the space and want to potentially align with that, it's much, much more streamlined to look for. So, they have a lot of great data and great ways to show that data. And especially if you're working with clients or a large marketing team in-house, it really helps show your team what you're working on and confirm those results, as well as pursue maybe more specific marketing plans and really align those plans with your goals. I do everything in a very goal-oriented manner, and so I think that the reporting in Sprout Social really helps drive that home.

Liz9:38

But there's also a lot of DIY ways to do it. Twitter itself is an amazing search tool, and a lot of people don't know how to use it correctly. There's certain shortcuts that you can use within Twitter's search to more specifically look at things that are important to you. And Twitter has their own topics, like you mentioned, NFTs. Like, I follow the NFT topics on Twitter, and it gives me feeds that are popular in that space that talk about it a lot and have created their own authority there. There's also other areas in Twitter for you to look for those kinds of things. TweetDeck also helps you get a little bit more granular by location. I know that that again is important in crypto. But as for finding larger accounts, that is something you have to go in and do a little bit more manually. I always like to see who other people are following that are big in the space. That typically leads you down a pretty big rabbit hole of people to follow and other similar accounts. There's also other like one-off reporting websites that you can pull just like one-off reports from that can help you determine who your audience is and who you're speaking to, but that's less in real-time. I really prefer, like when you are participating in social listening, it's really important to do it in real-time and be able to participate in conversations quickly. That is the edge that some of these more expensive softwares give you.

Ty Smith11:21

Yeah, I mean, we always talk about how religiously we use HubSpot, and HubSpot does have the capability to do social listening on it. So, whenever it's possible to use HubSpot to fill a need of what we have to do as an agency, I try to get HubSpot in there. But I will say, as great of a product as HubSpot is, I do feel their social listening aspect is quite lacking or really two-dimensional. What we've gone over in the past few days regarding Sprout Social has been eye-opening, honestly, as far as what you can accomplish with social listening. You can really get yourself involved in conversations so much easily, so much more easily with the right tools.

Liz11:58

Exactly. And I think that's the most important thing because, just like we said, it's about that conversation. It's just like you're at a party and you hear someone talking about something interesting, and you go over and have something to add, and then you have a whole new group of people that you're friends with or acquaintances with. And after that conversation, maybe someone wants to get your number to talk about it further, maybe they want to hang out again. It's the exact same thing. It's like a digital, it's a digital method of that. And so I think that that is really the key factor there. And instead of walking up to a group of five people, you can walk up to a group of 5,000 people and start interacting with them. And so it's really, really powerful in that regard. And again, especially for brands that are looking for new audiences or just trying to establish themselves in the space, I think it's just so important to immediately start inserting yourself. And at first, you might not get that traction, but consistency is key in marketing. And so if you continue to be a part of that conversation, continue to show up in the community and add value, I think that that is a really simple yet effective strategy.

Ty Smith13:29

Yeah, and I'm glad you brought that up as far as, because there's definitely a lot of differences between running an account that's just starting out versus a very established brand that maybe their Twitter account is more as like customer support rather than them trying to really grow an audience on Twitter. Do you feel social listening is equally as important for small brands as it is for large brands in the crypto space? Do the processes look similar, or do they kind of serve different functions?

Liz13:35

I, you know, it really always depends on the goal. I know that's not the, not the strongest answer, but it really does always depend on the goal and what they're looking to do. I think everyone can benefit from social listening and being a part of the conversation, no matter how large your company is. It just so depends on what your goals are and how you want to present yourself in the community and making sure that you have the value to add. Even if you're a new account, you can definitely have value to add. Even if you're a smaller brand, you can have value to add. It's all about today adding value and being a source of knowledge and consistency and authority in the space. And if you can present yourself that way, it doesn't matter how big you are in the backend. On Twitter, you can really thrive.

Ty Smith14:33

Yeah, exactly. I almost feel like it's especially important for brands just starting out because it's the fastest way really to get people to engage with your account rather than just kind of tweeting things out into the abyss of an account with no following.

Liz14:45

Exactly. Because if you're, if you're just talking, if you're just shouting out into the abyss, like, who's going to hear you? You're really just kind of throwing a wide net, which at the beginning is okay because you have to establish some things, and there's always going to be trial and error. It's not like right out the gate you're going to partake in a few tweets and you're going to get a rush of thousands of new followers. But it just makes it more targeted. And when you can be more targeted on social, that's really, really crucial because it's all about defining that audience. That's the most important thing. Because also, you don't want to partake in just any conversation. You want to make sure you're partaking in the conversations that are going to be relevant to your goals.

Ty Smith15:35

Yeah, exactly. I forget which, I believe it was on the Eric Siu's podcast that Anthony Pompliano did an episode, and he was saying, they were kind of going into the topic of how did you grow your account so successfully, so quickly. And it really boiled down to the fact that he just sat on Twitter for like 10 hours a day just engaging in conversations, like just inserting himself into conversations. And I don't know if he was using any of these social listening tools that we discussed, but I imagine he probably was, and if not, would have made his life a whole lot easier.

Liz16:07

Yeah, most likely. He is really huge on Twitter now, and a lot of people who have had success on Twitter, everyone says it's the same trend. They showed up every single day and spoke to people, and that's simply what that is, just showing up and being there consistently and inserting yourself in those conversations and making yourself look like an authority in that space, which he does an amazing job at. And so I think that if brands can kind of take that on, obviously a person is going to be more personable, but when brands take that same approach, I think it can be really, really strong. There's some really big brands and projects in the space that do this really well and are a part of the conversation really well, and we're going to do that for our clients, too. So, I'm excited to see where that takes us.

Ty Smith17:01

Yeah. Absolutely. All right, anything else to add on the topic of social listening?

Liz17:16

No, I think that that, I think that that was a pretty good rundown. Do you have any other questions?

Ty Smith17:18

No, I think we did, we went pretty in-depth there, more than I had planned. All right, so with that said, that will wrap up this episode. If you guys found this episode valuable, please remember to rate, review, and recommend this podcast to others. It definitely helps us know what kind of content you guys like and we can make more of. Be sure to join our newsletter, coinbound.io/newsletter, where we send out weekly marketing tips and strategies, as well as just some just some crypto marketing specific content. And that will be it for today. Catch you guys on the next episode. Bye.