Status update: Who are my online donors?
Over the past ten years, social media has proved itself to be an incredibly innovative tool. While your Grandma may use Facebook to watch funny videos of cats, charities and other organizations have been able to leverage tools such as SocialMention, Tweetchup, and Google Alerts to better understand their audience. And as an organization, there’s nothing more important. Regardless of what most people may think, social media is a tool that can improve brand loyalty, foster higher conversion rates, and stimulate richer customer experiences.
Tweetchup is an analytical tool for Twitter. It allows a user to view their potential reach, mentions, retweets and more.
Social listening is defined as “the process of monitoring digital media channels to devise a strategy that will better influence consumers.” This is crucial, as you do not want to isolate potential donors or new constituents with a message that doesn’t resonate. With the ever-evolving media landscape today, not only do you need to make sure your organization’s message gets out, but you also need to respond correctly when you receive feedback. Don’t believe me? #AskSeaWorld was a social media campaign created to repair SeaWorld’s image after a damning 2013 documentary put focus on the mistreatment of captive killer whales. But the theme park failed to listen to its audience during this Q&A-style campaign and even tweeted negative responses to users who asked about the controversy. This resulted in a social media disaster.
To avoid situations like this and to better know your followers, you should be using various social tools such as SocialMention, Tweetchup, and Google Alerts once a week to stay on top of your organization's social presence. And for your more active social platforms, be sure to monitor daily. Listening requires quite a bit of this type of tracking, but once you can create a succinct process, you will find that social monitoring goes hand in hand with social posting.
In the end, social listening enables you to do three things: create and market the types of messages that your audience longs for, routinely analyze the effects of your messaging, and present the best face of your organization on the fastest media platforms in the world. So what are you waiting for? Get out there and meet your social media audience!
