If you’ve ever looked into improving your content strategy on YouTube, you’ve likely come across the same old advice: “find your niche”, “create a unique thumbnail”, or my personal favorite “just be yourself!”.
Well, what if I told you there was a lesser known method for enhancing your YouTube content strategy, one that could yield results just as good, if not better than traditional approaches?
Enter Social Listening. A lesser-known yet potent strategy that can genuinely elevate your content on YouTube.
💡 Read Social Listening Guide: Proven Hacks, Strategies, and Tools
By leveraging social listening in your YouTube content strategy, you can tap into a reservoir of public sentiment and audience insight.
In this article, we’ll take a look at how this goldmine of data is waiting for creators just like you and me to take full advantage of!
Social Listening 101: What Is Social Listening?
Social Listening is the process of monitoring digital platforms, particularly social media channels, to gauge public conversations around specific topics, trends, brands, or industries.
It goes beyond merely responding to comments and mentions, providing a deeper insight into audience sentiments, preferences, and concerns.
Social Listening is a powerful tool for content creators as it helps anticipate audience interests and emerging trends. By employing Social Listening, creators can find valuable insights to inform their content strategies.
How To Build A YouTube Content Strategy With Social Listening?
YouTube creators in particular can benefit from social listening in a number of ways by taking advantage of the ocean of data that can be found in comment sections and forums across the web.
Let’s take a closer look at the 5 ways content creators can use Social Listening to improve their content strategy on YouTube.
1. Spotting Emerging Trends
Identifying emerging trends early is key for creating relevant YouTube content and has the potential to skyrocket your channel’s growth.
Social listening provides real-time insights into rising trends by analyzing spikes in conversations, hashtag usage, and search volumes both on YouTube and across the web.
Monitor trending topics in your niche by setting up alerts and receiving real time notifications. You can also track trending search terms on Google Trends and YouTube. How about turning your doom scrolling into something productive by using it to stay on top of the latest viral memes, challenges, news events, etc.
By quickly adapting your content plan to align with what’s trending, you give yourself the best chance of catching a viral wave and exploding your channel through the use of Social Listening.
2. Understanding Viewer Sentiment
Sentiment analysis on YouTube is crucial for gauging how your audience truly feels about your YouTube content, or topics surrounding your niche.
Monitor metrics like likes, dislikes, comments, and shares to identify content that resonates or falls flat. Regularly analyze comments to detect emotional tones – are viewers expressing excitement, confusion, frustration?
Schedule monthly reviews to spot positive/negative trends. If certain videos or topics consistently receive negative feedback, adjust your approach. Likewise, double down on content receiving happy and enthusiastic responses.
Sentiment insights should directly inform your content themes and future strategy. By leaning into the content that is resonating with your audience through sentiment analysis, you can feel confident that your next video might just be your best one yet.
3. Competitive Analysis
Competitive analysis is the art of continuously analyzing your competitors’ YouTube performance to inform your own content strategy.
Read Competitive Analysis All You Need To Know
Track subscriber counts and view counts for their top videos. Identify their most effective topics, thumbnails, and titles. Set up the bell alert to stay informed when your competitor drops some new content. Compare the available metrics side-by-side and find areas for improvement as well as areas where you excel.
You can also apply sentiment analysis to your competitors’ content as well as your own for further insights.
Read How To Use Sentiment Analysis For Brand Building
Competitive research ensures you’re keeping up with your closest competition and also helps to reveal untapped topics and questions to cover.
The more you know about what works for competitors through competitive analysis, the better you can position your own content to succeed.
4. Optimizing For SEO
In essence, YouTube is just one big search engine. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is key for YouTube discovery, so optimize your titles, descriptions, and hashtags for search.
Read Media Monitoring For SEO Purposes
Use keyword research to identify high-volume search terms and questions your audience is asking on Google and YouTube. Incorporate these terms into your video titles, descriptions, and tags.
Analyze related searches and FAQ questions on Google to find more optimization opportunities. Monitor real-time search trends with tools like Google Trends. Identify new and popular search queries that are gaining volume.
Align your content with rising search demand. Continuously optimizing your titles and topics to match insights gained from Social Listening will give you an edge in content planning for YouTube.
5. Real-Time Adjustments
The real-time nature of social listening can provide much needed agility to your YouTube content strategy.
Read How To Build A Content Framework That Serves Your Marketing Goals
Set up alerts for your brand, products, or competitors to monitor conversations as they unfold. You can instantly detect and capitalize on new viral memes, news events, or product releases by tailoring timely content. Likewise, pick up on negative feedback or crises early before they spiral.
Social listening’s real-time pulse on your audience enables quick adjustments like swapping out an ineffective video or responding to questions. Your strategy will constantly evolve rather than remaining static.
The Best Social Listening Tools For YouTubers
There are a range of tools available for YouTubers looking to employ social listening in their content strategy.
- Trend Spotters: Tools like Google Trends and Exploding Topics are powerful tools for seeing what people are searching and catching early trends.
- Sentiment Analyzers: These types of tools focus on monitoring and analyzing the sentiment around your brand or topics of interest. Essential for understanding how your audience feels about your content.
- Keyword Trackers: Think of tools like Ahrefs that specialize in keyword research and tracking. Perfect for YouTubers keen on SEO optimization.
- Media Monitoring: Media monitoring tools can help you track, measure and create reports about you or your competitors media presence.
- Customized Monitoring: Create customized workflows that give instant notifications of new blog posts, announcements, and other activities by monitoring CSS feeds on relevant websites.
As people become more aware of the value of Social Listening, the range and accessibility of tools only tends to improve. Take advantage of some of them and you might just see a noticeable improvement in your YouTube content strategy!
Read 6 Best Ways To Find YouTube Influencers
Wrapping Up
YouTube is one of the largest websites in the world, and standing out from the competition in this hyper competitive space requires more than just an eye catching thumbnail.
By leveraging a data-driven Social Listening approach, you’ll be better able to spot emerging trends, understand viewer sentiment, and conduct competitive analysis and SEO optimization.
This approach empowers you to impress your audience, outpace competitors, and adapt swiftly to real-time developments.
Now is the perfect time to integrate these actionable strategies into your YouTube content planning. So don’t just sit there! Start listening to your audience and let the data guide your next big hit on YouTube.
If you’d like to listen and understand your audience better, book a demo with our experts and see how Determ can help you.
Matt Duffin is the Founder of rareconnections.io. Combining his background in Mechanical Engineering with a passion for tech, Matt utilizes his expertise to help others leverage AI technology.
