Why “Social Listening” is key for a business
Social Listening or what others like to call media monitoring, is about searching the web and social networks to gain an understanding about what is being said about your company, your competitors, and other related topics.
It is vital to gather insight about your customer, prospects, products, and competitors so you can always be one step ahead of your competition and constantly improve your brand. Below are seven ways social listening can lead your brand to more success:
Increasing Conversion Rates by Solving Problems
If you monitor keywords that relate to people's problems and needs of their frustration with a competitor's product you will find more business opportunities. By entering monitors terms like, "competitors brand name can't/won't" will help identify pain points that you could potentially resolve. By identifying these users, you can reach out to them and increase the likelihood of them becoming a customer by asking what their product expectations are and what seems to lack. Thus, you will be able to explain your products benefits and added value.
Attracting New Customers
In order to increase lead generation, brainstorm keywords that people might use when researching a product and track these terms across social forums and groups. Join the conversations and find out more about any potential customers' needs and expectations so you can promote and improve your product. Be genuine in your interactions and avoid sounding like a virtual sales representative.
Identify Influencers and Advocates
After a big product launch or update, track the link of your press to see who's sharing it. This information helps you identify influencers in your industry. It is important that you reach out to them and begin to build relationships with them. In addition, it will benefit you to recognize and look out for your biggest brand advocates. They should be rewarded with giveaways or special offers and they should be kept engaged continuously as your brand grows, because pleased customers are one of your greatest marketing sources.
Where does your Community Hang Out?
When you're an active social listener you find out where your potential and current community members carry on significant conversations about your product's or service's industry. These conversations are present on Twitter, Facebook, Quora, comments on blogs and/or somewhere else, and tracking these conversations is important so when the time is right you can join in.
Grow Customer Care
Social listening allows you to instantly discover both the positive and negative feedback. You can do this by monitoring your brand on any social network simply by examining your social page. As a result, you will be able to improve your customer care by showing appreciation for the positive comments and responding to dissatisfied customers, which can turn these negative experiences into helpful ones.
Get Feedback on your brand
Through social listening, your able to find out possible problems early in your brands life cycle. You can do this by tracking your brand name's mentions and if someone is having any issues whether it be on your site or the product/service itself, you can address it immediately. You can then respond directly to the customer facing the issue to encourage customer care and the human side of your business.
Drive Innovation
In order to drive innovation, you don't need to directly ask your customers what it is that they want. Asking them can result in twisted answers, distortion, and potentially, unsuccessful products. By social listening, you don't have to ask people what they want; simply just stay tuned to the conversations happening and use them as insight to understand what they need.
Get the Most Out of Social Listening
Social Listening goes well beyond just monitoring your brand's reputation. Social listening enables you to improve your customer care, your service's/product's development, and human resources through the insight of your community members and online customers.
Let us know what you think and how you use social listening to improve your business!