Sep 14 2023
Building a TikTok Social Listening Strategy: What to Consider
Discover essential steps, metrics, and insights for crafting a winning TikTok Social Listening strategy and start harnessing the power of social insights.
Madhuparna Chaudhuri
Growth Marketer @Exolyt

TikTok has emerged as a captivating stage for both creators and businesses alike. However, harnessing its potential isn't just about content creation; it's about understanding the intricate rhythms of its community.

In order to do this, one must craft a tailored Social Listening approach to understand and analyze TikTok's language, audiences, and industry niches, tap into trends, and dive into unlocking deeper connections and impactful engagement.

If you want to know how to start building this strategy for TikTok, you are in the right place!

If not, we bet you will once you have familiarized yourself with the Importance of TikTok Social Listening to decode business, marketing, content, and product development strategies.

What metrics to consider as part of your Social Listening strategy?

Now you know what TikTok listening is and why you need to leverage it. There are a few crucial metrics that you need to consider when running a robust TikTok listening and TikTok monitoring strategy. Let's find out what you ought to consider.

These metrics stand out as critical indicators of success and encapsulate the pulse of your online presence, offering invaluable insights into the effectiveness of your efforts.

Let's explore the key metrics that should take center stage in your strategy, providing you with a comprehensive understanding of your brand's online impact.

  • Consumer Insights
  • Real-Time Trends
  • Industry Insights
  • Brand Mentions
  • Competitive Standing
  • Influencer Marketing

Consumer Insights

Consumer intelligence metrics from TikTok help understand the audience better, offering valuable insights into their behaviors, preferences, pain points, and opinions. These insights include:

  • Audience interaction
  • Engagement patterns
  • Sentiments
  • Demographics

Here are some of the benefits of capturing consumer insights from TikTok

  • It helps brands understand which content users find relevant and prefer to engage with.
  • It provides insights into what might not be resonating, offering the opportunity to make strategic adjustments.
  • Data-driven consumer insights also help to make informed decisions about product development.
  • Discover possible brand ambassadors to establish influencer partnerships
  • Avert crisis through proactive social monitoring and listening

How to capture Customer Insights with Exolyt?

Audience Interactions

Capture the essence of brand visibility and awareness on socials with Exolyt's comment-monitoring features. This helps you to keep tabs on audience interactions effortlessly.

Get a comprehensive overview of all comments on your videos -

You can also listen to all the comments mentioning your brand or a competitor across any other publicity available content published on TikTok.

Engagement

Tap into your share of voice for insights into engagement patterns from user-generated videos (UGC) mentioning your brand or any account of your interest. This feature also lets you compare your brand share against a competitor or any other account.

Sentiments

Capturing audience sentiments across TikTok is easier than ever. Search for the account of your interest and check out the Accounts Mentioned feature to monitor video sentiments mentioning your brand to manage its reputation.

Demographics

Start unveiling the truth about your audience demographics on TikTok and get the most extensive insights to supercharge your strategy. Currently, audience demographic insights are in the beta stage on Exolyt, but soon, you'll get access to extensive demographic sets.

Real-Time Trends

Keeping track of what is trending on social media can be challenging because trends are dynamic and rapidly evolving. Including real-time social trends as part of your TikTok social listening strategy is crucial for staying relevant, capturing your audience's attention, and staying ahead of competitors. Some of the real-time trends that you can watch out for on TikTok are:

  • Hashtags
  • Sounds
  • Effects
  • Viral Videos

Here are some of the benefits of tracking real-time TikTok trends

Monitoring real-time or emerging trends and quickly adapting to them enables brands to:

  • Identify and participate in viral challenges, potentially boosting engagement and expanding reach
  • Get a valuable source of content inspiration
  • Ensure that brand videos align with current themes and styles
  • Gain a competitive edge and demonstrate your brand's relevance within the TikTok community.
  • Foster a sense of community around your brand and boost user-generated content.

Lastly, engaging with trends helps to measure the impact of your TikTok efforts for continuous improvement.

How to capture Real-Time TikTok Trends with Exolyt?

Hashtags

TikTok is an ecosystem where hashtags are more than trends. They're powerful insights waiting to be harnessed. Check out this blog to know how you can find trending hashtags for TikTok👇

Sounds and Effects

Audio and effects are your backstage passes to captivate, entertain, and set trends like a pro! Whether syncing your moves to the coolest beats or adding that magical sparkle to your content, they're your ultimate tools to stand out.

Here's how Ryanair's TikTok account shot to fame as they leveraged Social Listening to create content with the use of native green-screen filters and trending sounds, all of which appeal to the audience they are targeting. The brand was responsive and adapted well to the theme of TikTok trends and cheeky humor, to the point that it has started its wave of green-screen trends.

Source: Exolyt

Here's how you can find these latest sound and effect trends on Exolyt:

Viral Videos

One of the most popular real-time trends to get your hands on is access to the platform's viral content. By keeping an eye on what's gone viral, you're not just staying in the loop but getting insider insights into what resonates with your audience. Here's where you can find them on Exolyt.

Industry Insights

Incorporating industry benchmarks into your TikTok Social Listening strategy is crucial for gaining valuable market insights and staying competitive in the dynamic social landscape.

Did you know TikTok officially categorizes industries into 21 different categories? Now imagine the amount of intelligence industry insights it has that are waiting to be tapped on.

Here are some of the benefits of capturing industry insights from TikTok

  • Industry benchmarks enable you to compare your brand's TikTok performance with competitors and set realistic goals aligned with market standards. 
  • By identifying best practices and successful strategies in your niche, you can refine your content and campaigns to resonate with your audience.
  • Understanding market trends helps you adapt quickly, spot growth opportunities, and allocate resources effectively.
  • Moreover, tracking social benchmarks in your industry niche ensures objective measurement of success, gains stakeholder confidence, and fosters continuous improvement in your TikTok marketing efforts, ultimately enhancing your brand's performance and relevance on the platform.

How to find industry insights from Exolyt?

It might sound like a complicated process, but capturing industry insights has never been easier! With Exolyt you can access niche or industry-relevant topics in a click. Here's how you can find them:

Brand Mentions

Tracking your mentions on TikTok is like having a direct line to your audience. It's where you discover what people say about your brand - the good, the great, and the room for improvement!

So, brand reputation management is crucial for safeguarding brand image and understanding customer perception. Here are the types of mentions you should look out for in TikTok:

  • User Generated Content/ Video Tags
  • Customer interactions and comments

Here are some of the benefits of tracking brand mentions on TikTok

  • Following customer interactions allows you to respond, engage, and build brand loyalty.
  • Mentions help to quickly identify and respond to potential crises or PR issues, minimizing the impact on their brand reputation.
  • The insights gained from monitoring brand reputation also encompasses sentiment analysis, which allows you to gauge customer satisfaction, identify loyal brand advocates, and tailor your content strategy to resonate with your audience. 
  • Social listening helps track the impact of marketing campaigns, gather feedback for product development, conduct competitor analysis, and reveal market gaps.
  • Monitoring interactions can also be your radar for spotting trends and gathering feedback.

By proactively managing your brand's reputation and providing exceptional customer service, you can build a positive brand image and foster strong connections with your audience.

How to track brand mentions on TikTok from Exolyt?

TikTok promotes interest and discovery-based content for an audience that values authenticity, and the latter is best showcased with user-made videos. While this is great for brands to get valuable social proof and increase visibility, it can be damaging if content is not monitored timely and proactively as opinions can escalate faster than expected on social.

So, brands must be kept tabs on for both online reputation management and gathering consumer insights. Here's how you can find them on Exolyt:

User-Generated Content

Short-form videos make it easy to point, shoot, and post any content, and then the video is live for the world to watch, especially on TikTok, where UGC is becoming increasingly popular with the growth of the influencer marketing economy.

Here's how you can track any publicly available video mentioning your/or a competitor's account/hashtags on TikTok under the Account Mentions feature.

You can also compare the performance metrics of the UGC videos VS a brand's organic or promoted videos, in order to understand the impact of each and allocate budget and resources accordingly.

Interactions & Comments

Keeping track of user conversations shows that you are listening and you care! It's the secret sauce to boosting loyalty, measuring sentiment, and staying on top of emerging trends. Plus, it's where you can learn to turn feedback into action.

As mentioned, you can monitor all the comments across multiple brand videos with one click on Exolyt. Additionally, you can keep an eye on all the comments mentioning your brand across any publicly available content on TikTok.

Take a glimpse of all the comments you can monitor with an example from @adidas. 👇

Competitive Standing

Are you struggling to evaluate your position in the digital market? Incorporating competitor analysis into your TikTok social listening strategy will help you understand your market position and be better enabled to increase visibility and influence.

Monitoring your competitors' performance and strategies on TikTok involves:

  • Tracking successful competitors' content, posting frequency, and time
  • Analyzing growth and content performance over time - both paid and organic
  • Digging deeper into conversations they appear in, how they are received by the audience, who is talking about them, and what they say
  • Studying their social tactics and influencer collaborations to revise your steps if needed
  • Measuring your social share of voice compared to competitors

Here are some of the benefits of measuring competitive standing on TikTok

  • Competitor analysis inspires innovation, tracks industry shifts, and guides your choice of success metrics, all of which contribute to an effective and successful TikTok presence for your brand
  • Gain insights about shared audience preferences and unmet needs and capitalize on market gaps or differentiate to stay ahead of the game
  • Observing how competitors handle crises and collaborate with influencers prepares you for effective crisis management and informed influencer partnerships to grow your reach and influence effectively.

How to gain competitive insights from TikTok with Exolyt?

Competitor Comparison

A quick overview of competitor accounts also helps to compare and benchmark against competitors. With Exolyt's competitor comparison, you can understand individual account growth and top-performing content at a glance.

Additionally, you can check the Exo Scores of respective accounts on closer monitoring. This specialized metric offers a high-level summary of key account information and evaluates the account’s performance relative to all other accounts.

Holistic Monitoring

Spy on your competitors without limitations with Exolyt's account monitoring features. It helps you track their holistic performance - Including content, video stats, posting frequency, campaigns, and other social tactics.

Social Listening (Coming Soon)

Explore industry themes, comments, tags, and sentiments to understand what makes your shared audiences tick and discover winning strategies for innovation and differentiation.

Exolyt's upcoming update will enable you to conduct in-depth Social Listening, assess the industry trends, and measure your share of voice against your competitor effortlessly.

Here's a sneak peek into the new social listening interface!

Influencer Marketing

With the growth of User-Generated Content, the Influencer Marketing Economy is booming fast, especially on TikTok, where it's a blazing phenomenon, providing a creative playground for influencers to whip up captivating content that strikes a chord.

The latter are trendsetters, conversation starters, and viral content creators, fueling TikTok's DNA that is built on virality and catalyzes trends. So, here's the hot scoop on why you should be all ears and explore the best social monitoring and listening solutions to track, analyze, understand, and collaborate with the right influencers to generate more UGC and get valuable social proof. 

Here are some of the benefits of social listening in influencer marketing

Social listening is an indispensable aspect of influencer marketing for several compelling reasons.

  • It aids in identifying the most suitable influencers who are already ambassadors talking about the brand or industry, ensuring genuine connections with the target audience.
  • It enables brands to evaluate an influencer's relevance and message alignment through content and engagement with followers. 
  • Social listening also provides insights into the audience's sentiment towards the influencer, helping brands gauge the reception of potential collaborations.
  • Monitoring influencer impact post-collaboration allows brands to assess campaign success and its effects on brand awareness and engagement.
  • As mentioned before, social listening is essential for crisis management so brands can promptly address negative sentiment surrounding influencers. 

Overall, it empowers brands to uncover organic brand advocates, foster authentic relationships, stay informed about competitor influencer marketing efforts, refine strategies, and drive successful influencer marketing campaigns that resonate with their audience.

How to get started with Influencer Marketing using Exolyt?

Influencer Finder

With Exolyt's Influencer Finder feature, you can start your influencer marketing journey by searching for and identifying influencers whose style, content, and vibe align with your brand's personality.

This will enable you to initiate relevant collaborations to help you set trends, shape conversations, and put your brand at the forefront.

Here's how you can find relevant influencers on Exolyt.

Track and Measure

If your brand engages in influencer marketing, it is important to keep track of all influencer-run campaigns to analyze the best return on investment. Especially if your brand is engaging with multiple influencers for a singular campaign, comparing the results is crucial.

It helps allocate your budget wisely, putting it where it generates the most impact, and you gain insights into what works and what doesn't, enhancing future campaign strategies.

Here's how you can track and measure multiple influencer campaigns with Exolyt:

  • Select Influencer Campaigns Tool
  • Add the campaign videos to the same folder and keep tabs on the progress and response it garners
  • Add the campaign hashtags to the same folder for thorough monitoring and checking other user-generated videos (UGC), if any

Starting a TikTok Social Listening Campaign

Set your goals:

Defining clear goals provides a direction and ensures your efforts are aligned with achieving specific results. These goals must be quantifiable, enabling seamless tracking for progress. 

Goals for a TikTok listening campaign could involve amplifying brand visibility or engagement, measuring competition or industry benchmarks, gathering insights on products or services, and understanding the sentiment of customers towards the brand.

Exolyt’s Social Listening and Industry Trends features can help you quantify some of these objectives into actionable insights.

Define Topics:

Defining hashtags, accounts, keywords, and other terms will help you track relevant conversations, related to your brand or topic of interest. 

Exolyt’s monitoring features like insights on Relevant Hashtags, Trending Topics, and Content Opportunities, can help to determine these topics too.

After pinpointing relevant keywords, you can employ them to construct searches and filter the data ensuring that your analysis encompasses only the most pertinent information. This approach streamlines your focus on crucial aspects and simplifies the interpretation of outcomes. 

Google's autocomplete feature proves invaluable for accessing a wealth of keywords, especially now when Google has improved their search with Generative AI, bringing short videos at the front and centre of Google search.

Listen:

The third and most essential step is to initiate active listening. This entails vigilant monitoring of discussions and engagements linked to your brand, offerings, or services. 

Employing Exolyt’s listening features like Comments Monitoring, Sentiment Analysis, Share of voice, and UGC can facilitate swift and efficient oversight of conversations, enabling you to stay well-informed. 

However, one must remember that listening encompasses user sentiments about your entity and broader subjects relevant to your industry. 

For example, companies took notice when a TikTok user randomly asked brands to comment on his TikTok video. They started responding with creative yet original taglines representing their brand or service. Engaging in such conversations improves brand awareness and social media presence, which is highly appreciated by audiences today.

Analyze:

The final step to this strategy is analysis which involves interpreting data to understand trends and patterns. 

This includes reviewing metrics over time to identify shifts and potential opportunities for improvement. Moreover, it encompasses evaluating conversations related to your brand or products, extracting valuable insights into customer sentiment and feedback on specific issues. 

Through data analysis, invaluable insights emerge, playing a pivotal role in honing strategies and enhancing performance to achieve objectives more efficiently.

In Conclusion

In conclusion, crafting a TikTok Social Listening strategy is the key to understanding and thriving on this dynamic platform. By capturing crucial metrics, staying attuned to real-time trends, and embracing industry insights, you can enhance your brand's impact. Don't forget the power of influencer marketing and the importance of monitoring brand mentions and competitive standing.

With the right approach and tools, TikTok can be a game-changer for your business, enabling you to connect, engage, and succeed in the ever-evolving world of social media. So, dive in, listen closely, and let TikTok's unique rhythm guide your path to success.

Madhuparna Chaudhuri
Growth Marketer @Exolyt
Want to start building your TikTok listening strategy today?
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