We get asked  by our clients “Do you think social sharing really drives sales?” More often than not, clients ask us “How do you know social sharing drives sales”.   Now we have even more hard evidence that social sharing does in fact drive sales.  AddShoppers social commerce platform has analyzed over $5 million in transactions and they’ve uncovered some interesting insights.

• Twitter comes in second to Facebook in percentage of social share revenue yet surpasses Facebook in the Holidays and Homes categories. 
• Email has the 3rd highest percent of social shares has the higher value because it’s a 1 to 1 share with a higher conversion rate.
• Even though cameras are the least shared category, it has the highest value per social share of all products. 

The infographic below breaks down the various categories and social share values even further. 

Infographic by AddShoppers Social Commerce Platform, click for more SocialROI stats

Whether you know it or not mothers are some of the most influential users on social media.

84 percent of moms go online when looking for product and brand recommendations, and two-thirds (65 percent) say that they have learned about a product or service through social networking.

If you need more convincing numbers than that, how about these:

• Moms control $2.4 TRILLION in spending
• 74% of moms have made purchase as a result of a promotion mentioned on a blog
• 64% learn about products or services through social networking
• 64% of moms read online reviews before making a purchase. 

The infographic below from PunchTab takes a look at digitally-engaged moms and this growing phenomenon.

Social media is becoming a focus for more companies than ever before. B2B and B2C businesses are seeing the value in being active and engaging with customers on these networks. Your business can gain insight into what customers think of your brand and business while analyzing the information those in your target audience provide. If you want to make sure you’re tuned into the conversations surrounding your business, but don’t want to invest in a new social or CRM call center software program, here are three ways you can listen-in on social media effectively and across all social network, from Vine to Pinterest.

Determine Your Target Audience

Before you get started with social listening, you want to determine who your target audience is. Social listening isn’t just about your brand mentions, but also relevant conversations about competitors and your industry as a whole. Monitoring, especially if your business receives a lot of social media attention, can become too much to manage. Determine the audience you want to focus on to simplify the social listening process. Here are a few questions you’ll want to answer to make sure you are making the most of your social listening efforts.

• What key demographics are you looking at? Are you looking for regional conversations, product conversations, certain age group or groups, or influencers in your business’s sphere?
• What are the metrics our business is paying attention to? If you’re looking to engage with those who are moving to a competitor, have customer service questions, or
• What networks are your target audiences and influencers using? Wherever your audience is, your business needs to be.

Search the Right Words

Consumers want companies to engage with them on social networks. A recent NetBase and J.D. Power and Associates study found that 64% of Millenials want companies to respond when they’re talked about. Searching for your business name is one of the easiest ways to get started. However, if you have a longer company name or multiple campaigns you are looking to gain insight on, your search will be more difficult. Search the right words to make sure you’re capturing the relevant information from social discussions.

• Create a “Monitoring Map” with “Trigger Words” that includes the information you want to know about the most and the relevant words. It could be customer service questions, product feedback, or discussions about aparticular campaign or initiative. Pay attention to keywords and trends.
• Create custom tags that are easy to monitor to be included with discussions about a particular campaign. You can also create branded hashtags that spread the
  word about your business and encourage easy discussion. Just be sure to choose a custom hashtag wisely.
• If your business has a lot of conversations going on about in on social media, find specific areas and influencers where you want to focus your attention, based off the information you concluded when determining your target audience.

Form a Strategy

You shouldn’t just jump into listening and responding with customers on social networks without a strategy in place. Once you’ve found the conversations that discuss your business, make sure you’re responding to each question that requires it. The same NetBase study found that 65% of consumers expect companies to respond if spoken to directly via social media. While not everyone will want a response, you need to listen and understand what a consumer wants and determine whether you should respond or not. Here are key concepts your social listening strategy needs to include:

• Reputation Management: Have a plan in place for when negative comments come through that require a response from your business.
• Data Collection and Analysis: What data are you trying to collect by listening in on social channels and what does that information mean for your business and social strategy?
• Response Threshold: What does our business need to respond to and what is just a consumer discussing with their friends? Again, time is a resource that you need to allocate appropriately and determining when to respond, or not, can help you put your time to the best use.

Social listening is yet another part of social media marketing that requires a strategy and plan of action. Have the metrics your business hopes to gather from social listening and a plan in place before getting started, then monitor the keywords, trends and hashtags that are most relevant to those metrics. While tools are available to help, an outline of what data or engagement levels your business hopes to gain can work wonders with social listening for your business.

 

Guest Post by Erica Bell

 

Author Bio: Erica Bell is a small business writer who focuses on topics such as social call centers and social media trends. She is a web content writer for the lead generation company Business.com.

Whether you planning for your date or just looking for a date the infographic below has some great apps to help you make Valentine’s Day all the more special.

Thanks to the folks at PGI for this infographic.

Ok, so you’ve set up your social media platforms and you’ve been posting for a while now and you’re wondering what else can I be doing to enhance my social presence.  

Before you got started in social media did you;

• Create a social media strategy?
• Set up a posting schedule based on that strategy?
• Set up your social media properties with that strategy in mind?