Digital marketing to a targeted audience with relevant messaging is a must in politics now. But how can a campaign develop the required digital audience understanding to be most effective? One answer is social media listening, per a 2017 business2community.com post by Augustus Franklin, CEO of CallHub, supplier of voice and SMS broadcast software. Franklin cites 11 social media monitoring insights to help turbocharge your digital marketing strategy. Here are just his initial five tips: First, design a social media monitoring blueprint by creating an extensive list of relevant keywords and hashtags on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc. Find the people who follow your campaign or cause (or brand), have tweeted about it, or have "liked" relevant posts. Second, expand on the existing network of people who have shown interest in a keyword or hashtag and ask them to tweet with a certain hashtag, or share a post with their network, to garner the followers of your followers. Try to capitalize on advocates with influence in online communities outside the social networks, such as blogs or forums. Third, turn general demand into specific engagement by identifying social activity that aligns with your candidate or cause and reach out to these prospects with messages configured to their expressed interests/needs. Keep track of those who subsequently like, share, post, etc., because that engagement is a step closer to conversion (to a volunteer, donor or voter). Fourth, merge your social media inflow data with your marketing outreach list, and directly contact the socially engaged to ask them to spread your message. And fifth, use social listening to learn what each target audience segment wants to hear, from their perspectives, so you can specifically address challenges and needs in messaging. To get even more targeting insights, also monitor the activity on social networks of opponents and allies to see what people are saying. These insights can help to map engagement paths from interest to advocacy and to craft testing for analysis of what marketing works best. For all 11 tips, go to http://www.business2community.com/digital-marketing/11-lessons-political-listening-supercharge-digital-strategy
