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Digital Marketing - Study Notes:

Social listening

Before setting up any social channels for your brand or business, we strongly recommend that you conduct a period of social listening. Social listening can help you identify:

  • Key usages of the individual channels, and whether your audience are currently there
  • The kind of content relevant to your industry that’s being consumed
  • What is going on in your particular industry in terms of negative and positive sentiment
  • The sentiment toward your brand and any pre-existing conversations about it

Being able to plan in advance, and being able to strategize around what is currently being discussed while you’re not even on the platform, will help you optimize your social content strategy.

Addressing concerns

Social media offers a great space for discourse, and for addressing concerns and complaints. Having a proactive and honest approach should help you handle anything that comes your way.

To address concerns:

  • Listen to and monitor your social FAQs, but also have a standard response document prepared. This will increase your team’s efficiency and agility, and means people won’t have to go back and forth on responses.
  • Make sure your responses are personalized and not just copied and pasted, as this may add a robotic element to your response that dehumanizes your brand or business on social.
  • Always try to address concerns within 24 hours.
  • Make sure to sign off your response with your name to add a human touch, and to help build credibility and trust.
  • Never delete or remove negative or critical comments on social media. This can often snowball into customers feeling as though they’re being censored or that their concerns aren’t being taken seriously.
  • Move public spats or issues into the private space.

Standard response document

Benefits

What are the benefits of developing a standard response document?

  • Helps you maintain consistent messaging across your social platforms and across members of your social team
  • Adds an efficiency to your social media communications
  • Prevents any crisis from spiraling by helping you manage it effectively and consistently
  • Helps you deal with issues in a timely and professional manner

However, a standard response document is a very fluid creation. As you progress through your social content strategy and activities, you will add to it, amend it, and it will develop and grow.

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Seán Earley

Creative Director at Teneo PSG Digital

  • Creative Director at Teneo PSG Digital with five years’ experience in Digital Marketing, Social, and PR Agencies
  • Founding member of Teneo PSG Digital
  • Former Director on the Board of the Irish Internet Association
  • Passionate about creating content that captures audience imaginations and delivers business objectives

Data protection regulations affect almost all aspects of digital marketing. Therefore, DMI has produced a short course on GDPR for all of our students. If you wish to learn more about GDPR, you can do so here:

DMI Short Course: GDPR

If you are interested in learning more about Content Marketing, the DMI has produced a short course on the subject for all of our students. You can access this content here:

DMI Short Course: Content Marketing

The following pieces of content from the Digital Marketing Institute's Membership Library have been chosen to offer additional material that you might find interesting or insightful.

You can find more information and content like this on the Digital Marketing Institute's Membership Library

You will not be assessed on this content in your final exam.

    ABOUT THIS DIGITAL MARKETING MODULE

    Content Creation
    Seán Earley
    Skills Expert

    This module introduces the concept of engaging with and acquiring customers using the creation and sharing of content. It explains how to choose the right content for your customers – and how to ensure it gets seen by them. It outlines the different content formats available on social media channels and helps you identify which platform best suits your content. It also identifies best practices for scheduling your content, and equips you with the knowledge to devise and execute your own content creation strategy.