What is Social listening? Social listening can provide your company with major insights into what your audience wants from you on your social media sites. With the right tools knowledge and social media strategy development, you’ll be able to perfectly edit what it is you’re posting to have the biggest impacts.
Social listening, in a sense, is a way to eavesdrop on your target audience, and use that information to create the products that they want.
Social media platforms are a place for people to freely speak about whatever they want, so if they have a problem with the vacuum cleaner your company produces, you can see their complaint, take it into consideration, and also reach out to the unhappy customer in an attempt to appease them. However, social listening does not only apply to your products/services, in particular, you can also gain insight into the things that other companies are doing that are either great… or not so great, and make adjustments to your company as a result.
What tools can you use for social listening?
There are several tools that you can use to help with social listening, including BuzzSumo or Hootsuite.
These tools monitor your social media sites and how different posts have done. The best part about these sites is that they’re free! These sites offer the opportunity to track keywords or phrases across social media platforms.
Let’s say, for example, that your burger shop prides themselves in “all beef patties”, you can then track this phrase and whenever it is mentioned on a social platform, you will get the notification. What can you do with this information? You can contribute to the conversation, which helps to get your brand out there and being talked about.
Why do need it?
Another great aspect to social listening is the ability to intervene in social interactions that are taking place about your brand what we call digital brand reputation and monitoring.
If your company puts out a post that doesn’t sit well with your audience, you can see these comments and jump in, apologizing for your misstep. Same goes for if you had a faulty product or a company misstep. This ability to be aware of conversations doesn’t always have to be in regards to missteps, however. You can also be aware of when a posting does exceptionally well, and take that knowledge and apply it to your future postings.
See what your competition is doing
Social listening doesn’t only apply to your brand, it also applies to your competitors. Social listening allows you to see what your competitors are doing, and use that to your advantage. If your competitors aren’t engaging with their customers, this gives you an opportunity to swoop in and engage them. If your competitors are doing great with a certain posting, you can learn from this and apply some of the same methods to the things that you post. Overall, you can use your competitors to better your own social media presence, by either learning from their mistakes or from their success.
Engage with your target audience
A great opportunity offered by social listening is engagement with your customers, preferably, some of your biggest fans. Believe it or not, there are people out there promoting your brand for absolutely free!
They simply love your products and want the world to know it!
It’s extremely beneficial to engage these people to show that you’re appreciative of their help and input. By showing your appreciation, you only further increase the chances of these people continuing to rave about how great you are! Some companies may pay a celebrity or a social media star to promote their products, but with loyal fans who are nurtured and appreciated, you don’t have to pay a dime, and still reap the benefits. Maybe not on as big of a scale as having Chrissy Teigen including your products in her Instagram posts, but still, an impact! These average, everyday people still have an impact by sharing your product with their following on their social media platforms, so show them some love!
Paying attention to what’s being said about your brand online can be very helpful to your image at Social Motto Detroit its what we do best, and we love it!.
Being able to step in when there are issues, engaging your customers, and learning from mistakes will all help your brand’s online image. By listening to your audience talk about your brand, you get a real-time update on how your brand is performing, no waiting for stats on posts or sales made, you can see your customer’s reactions as soon as they post it. If you aren’t already in the practice of social listening… it’s time to listen up!
