The Holidays are upon us and it seems as if our time as a business owner has shrunk even more. Between sending cards to clients and buying presents for family where does social media fit in? Well, sometimes it doesn’t and it seems as if that is the first thing to go when making your priority list. However, thanks to my handy dandy Social Media Listening Dashboard I never have to go searching for information to post? Well, it is social media gold.
A Social Media Listening Dashboard is something you create and it is generally based on aggregating RSS feeds. Why this is so important to create is because it allows you to pull in a wide variety of information without having to check each individual website. You can also include your social media streams and any keywords you are keeping an eye out for. Visually this is what it can look like:
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There are a couple of free sites that you can use to create your dashboard.
Below are the steps to setting up your own Social Media Listening Dashboard to combat the Holiday season rush.
1. Register for a site to aggregate all of your content.
Choose any of the sites listed above or find another you like. Register and learn the interface such as how to add RSS feeds and how to create categories.
2. Get the RSS feeds you source your content from.
Generally you can get the site’s feed by typing in www.website.com/feed. If this doesn’t work you can try sites like:
Your content can be anything from blogs you like to industry experts you follow. The more variety you have the more information that you can repurpose, share, and create your own original content. In this you can also include keywords you are monitoring on Twitter and Google Alerts.
3. Organize your feeds into categories.
The more you organize your content the easier it will be for you to find and use it. What this may look like is having a category for breaking industry news, thought leaders, competitors, food for thought, etc. This way you can quickly check in and see what is new in a particular category.
4. Check in with your Social Media Listening Dashboard daily.
Now, that you have put all you efforts into creating your dashboard it is important to check in with it daily to see and understand developing trends. This is also a great way to find the pain points of your clients.
The whole purpose of a Social Media Listening Dashboard is to re-purpose and easily create content from the information and trends you are a seeing in your industry. A way to create your own content, for example, is when Twitter had its IPO there were a lot of blogs commenting about the advantages and what this would do for the tech industry. An interesting way participate in the conversation surrounding Twitter at this time would be to write a dissenting opinion about why Twitter’s IPO would actually harm the tech industry.
Another way to use your Social Media Listening Dashboard is to monitor what others are saying about you and your business online. One of he easiest ways to do this is the use of your name or company name as a keyword.
Social Media Listening Dashboards are a great way to simplify the use of social media in your business while staying up to date in your industry.
What kinds of sites would you add in your Social Media Listening Dashboard?
Still have questions? Contact me.