Healthcare Branding: Content may be King, but Listening is the Key to Your Social Marketing Success

Only 10 years ago, MySpace was the king of the social network hill, and Facebook was still primarily for students. Back then brands were still trying to reach their target audiences in the traditional ways, and we had no concept of forging the dialogs and close connections with our target audiences that we can develop today. Responding in real-time to those audiences was just a pipe dream.
Fast forward to 2015 – having a social media presence is no longer a “nice to have,” but is now a definite “must have.” And in order to make the most of our presence on social networks, build a strong brand and effectively manage our social media accounts, we’ll need to do more than just create great content, we have to do some social listening and have a dialog as well.

Top 5 reasons to monitor brands on social media

1.     Powerful marketing analytics
Social media listening helps uncover a myriad of powerful statistics. By tracking social media metrics, brands can determine what is being said about them, and who is saying what.  Marketers can also track when their followers are most active online, what content is most popular, and which posts are resulting in the highest number of click-throughs.  Keeping track of all of this activity can help a brand optimize its content, and drive more effective search engine marketing campaigns.
2.     Building a community
Listening enables brands to track conversations and detect leads and key influencers in their industry. The insight gained from listening helps brands to interact with consumers in a way that builds a positive image and better relationships, leading to a community of loyal followers or even brand evangelists. Interaction with your consumers also affects the visibility of your future posts in their news feeds. The more you engage with a follower, the more likely they are to see your posts, and the more likely others will see it as well.
3.     Improved agility
It has been said that when it comes to social media, timing is everything. According to a recent article by Lithium Technologies, consumers will punish brands that fail to respond to complaints on social media quickly. However, brands that do react quickly, and provide timely responses build a more loyal following.
4.     Developing a better product
Social media listening can highlight various problems that consumers experience when using your services (way finding in hospitals, ER wait times) Monitoring the reviews and mentions on social media can help brands gain insight into the preferences and expectations of their target audiences, and then help address them when making operational improvements, adding new products and services, or even highlighting what they’re doing well.
5.     Social recruiting
The best hires come from referrals.  When people share favorable experiences about their careers online, their friends and followers take notice. Brands that monitor the pulse of their employees can address problems, and highlight wins in their workforce.  Using social media listening to gain insight into what employees say about working for you, or what they say about working for a competitor can help make improvements moving forward.
Profiles on social media can also offer insight about a potential candidate. Hiring managers can evaluate the consistency of a candidate’s application with what they have posted on their Linkedin profile, among others.
Conclusion
Social listening is an essential activity that will yield insights that can affect every aspect of your brand. Monitoring what’s being said about your brand can help you provide more relevant content to your target audiences, proactively improve your interactions, react and respond more efficiently to a crisis, and build a community of loyal followers and brand evangelists.

For more information, contact Springboard Brand & Creative Strategy 847.398.4920 www.springboardbrand.com

Comments

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