The companies we work with fall into two categories, either they are spending lots of time on social or digital media (website, paid ads) and getting disappointing returns, or they know they need to be online in some capacity but are really not sure where to start. In all cases there should be an initial listening and audit, in the long run this will reap massive rewards and save time and money. So what does a listening report look like?

The first and fundamental thing any business needs to know is why are you doing this? What are the goals you want to achieve on digital and social media? What does success look like? Once you have a clear understanding of this then you can begin.

A listening report is in fact a blend of core marketing skills and some understanding of computer science, this it could be argued is why many companies and digital agencies fail to conduct this critical first module. The report will look at a number of areas such as examining segmented markets and personas, to understand where these personas are on social media, which platforms, time of day and devices. We also want to listen to what competitors are saying and more importantly what is the consumer/client saying about them? Is is positive or negative? Are there any patterns you can take advantage of?

Next we need to get a clear understanding of what these persona pains are at each stage of the buying cycle and understand how to best engage with them at each stage of the cycle 

We then need to begin to think about what potential clients might say online on all platforms, remember some 40% of all activity on social media are people asking questions and looking for help, this may well relate to your products or services, however most business only ever push content out, they don’t listen to open networks for conversations or sentiment which might say I need your product or service. Furthermore the advent of paid advertising online has allowed us to understand what people actually search for and develop advertisements that appear when they search for the very keywords you want to be found, so the listening report needs to consider this.

We hope that having read this you feel a little more informed about what is contained in a listening report, we help lots of business to conduct listening reports with our skilled team and would welcome the opportunity to speak with you about how it could make your digital and social media more successful. We look forward to hearing from you