Social Listening

Social listening is the use of formalized monitoring and analysis of social media channels for mentions of your problem area, solution, or potential competitors. To launch a social listening campaign, you should first identify the terms that are related to your problem and proposed solution. You can start by searching brand names of existing solutions related to your venture space and then use those to identify related hashtags or common keywords. It is also important to track industry trends and thought leadership in your space to be sure you stay on top of any new or related technologies, regulations or social concerns.

When

Social Listening is helpful throughout the problem, solution and business model validation phases, but for different reasons.

Why

Social listening is about looking for trends or patterns (consumer pull into specific areas, unmet needs, hot topics, etc.) related to your area of interest. At early stage it can help your team to find users and early adopters as well as providing insights into pain points. During Solution Validation it can help with testing, feedback and market comparison. Later in the life of your venture it will also keep you in touch with your users and their questions, concerns or compliments about your business.

Supplies & Resources

Internet access, social media accounts and social listening tools like Hootsuite, Mention, Keyhole and sproutsocial. You should also set up accounts themselves to follow the thought leaders, industry groups and community groups related to your problem area.