Dear Radian6,

As a retailer, we monitor social media conversations around our brand and engage with our customers on a regular basis. Now we’re looking to expand our efforts into the broader conversation around the retail industry, especially with the holiday season in full swing. Do you have any pointers for us?

Dear User,

With Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday behind us, we’ve already seen how retailers and consumers are using social media to discuss, influence, and determine purchasing decisions. There is valuable insight to be gained by listening to these conversations that can benefit your retail brand, including:

• Identifying points of need among consumers

• Seeing which retail brands are getting the most mentions

• Determining your industry influencers

Let’s look at the social media conversation around Small Business Saturday to illustrate the above points.

Find the Right Words

Here’s a quick peek at the keywords I chose to include in my topic profile:

Since we are looking at a very specific topic, I included “Small Business Saturday” as well as several hashtags being used around the event. However, if you are looking at more general conversations, you can use proximity to refine your results. For example, let’s say you want to narrow in on retail conversations around Christmas. While including “Christmas” on its own might pull in hundreds of thousands of mentions unrelated to the retail industry, adding additional keywords such as “shopping” and using the proximity feature will allow you to pull more relevant mentions.

Pinpoint Point of Need Conversations

Consumers are constantly turning to their social networks for opinions and recommendations when it comes time to make purchasing decisions, but they won’t always reach out to brands directly, especially if they’re not even aware of you. Stay one step ahead by proactively searching for point of need conversations to engage in.

To find these conversations around Small Business Saturday, at the widget level, let’s enter some phrases that consumers might use when looking for recommendations.

By opening up a River of News from the Topic Trends, we can identify consumers who are looking for specific items and suggestions on what stores they should shop at, or sharing their plans around Small Business Saturday. These are perfect opportunities for retail brands like yours to engage in a helpful and friendly tone. You already know that these consumers are excited about Small Business Saturday, so use that as a jumping off point. “We’re excited about Small Business Saturday too! Have fun today!” would be a great way to start a conversation.

Find Your Competitors

Monitoring industry conversation is the perfect way to see which retail brands are getting the most mentions and give you a better idea of your competitors. In the case of Small Business Saturday, where people are aiming to shop local, incorporating location keywords at the widget level, such as city names or states, will give you more relevant results. For example, let’s put in “shopping” and “Chicago” to find conversations specific to that city around consumers’ shopping plans on Small Business Saturday.

By opening up a River of News, we can see which Chicago retailers are getting mentioned.

Radian6 insights can also give you valuable information on which retail brands appear most frequently in industry conversations on Micromedia. By looking at the most mentioned usernames around Small Business Saturday, we see that Etsy received a significant number of mentions. Kramerbooks also appears as a result of President Obama’s well-publicized visit to the Washington, D.C. bookstore.

Identify Industry Influencers

Just as your retail brand has influencers, there are also people that influence the industry conversation. We already covered the Usernames Mentioned insight above, which is a great way to identify Micromedia influencers. You can also look at Retweeted Usernames to see which Twitter users have the most amplification. Here, we have the most retweeted usernames around Small Business Saturday.

Finally, you can use the Influencer Widget to identify influencers by media type. Since most of the conversation around Small Business Saturday occurred on Micromedia, let’s view the influencers for that media type specifically. Whether you want to engage with these users or just listen to what they have to say, your brand will benefit from knowing who is directing the conversation.

These are just a few of the ways you can broaden your listening scope to find opportunities for engagement and identify competitors and influencers in the retail industry. For the retailers out there, what are some other ways you are monitoring industry conversations? Did you focus your listening efforts on conversations around Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday? Why or why not?

Zoë Geddes-Soltess is a Community Engagement Specialist at Radian6, with a focus on Consumer Packaged Goods and Retail. You can follow her on Twitter at @zodot.