I bet you have a captive audience among your pals. I have no doubt that your preferred boss does as well. Then why do companies believe it’s acceptable to constantly promote themselves via social media while completely ignoring their customers’ wants, needs, and (dare we say it) complaints and bad reviews?
If you want to be successful, you can’t let that happen anymore. The advantages of social listening extend far beyond happy customers.
Your brand’s reputation, referrals (word-of-mouth advertising), unique selling points (USPs), and the ability to monitor the actions of your competitors can all benefit from a well-thought-out social listening strategy.
Discover the steps to developing an effective social listening strategy that will revolutionise your company and catapult your brand to new heights.
To what extent does audience or social listening play a role in effective communication?
To put it simply, audience listening entails keeping tabs on what people are saying about your company, its products, and the competition across various online platforms.
Learning about your target market’s wants and needs is facilitated by attentive listening. Simple and fast, it allows you to learn more about your current and potential clientele and target market.
To what end does social listening serve?
Listening to your target demographic can help your business in many ways.
- It is especially crucial for business-to-business marketers to keep up with the latest developments in their respective industries.
- Listen to what customers are saying about your product or service on various online platforms.
- Keep an eye on what the competition is saying online.
- Create fresh concepts for content, messaging, and campaigns
- Improve your customer service by getting to know your audience’s wants and needs.
- Revise offerings in response to changing consumer demands
- Create a connection with your target demographic that will last.
- The art of attentive hearing
Three-sixths of U.S. consumers who are prompted to recommend a brand online cite “great customer service” as the reason. Consequently, it is important to use social monitoring to ascertain the general public’s opinion of your brand.
If you want to learn to listen like a pro, follow these six easy steps!
1) Figure out what you should be keeping an eye out for
Once you have a thorough understanding of your target audience in the form of a buyer persona breakdown, the first step in developing an effective social listening strategy is to determine the goals you hope to accomplish.
All aspects of your digital marketing plan, including social listening, should work together towards a common goal. Social listening allows you to keep an eye on a variety of different things, such as:
- Advertising terminology
- Changes or advances in a specific field
- Locate and observe comparable businesses
- Customer comments, whether negative or positive, are considered feedback.
- A Few Chosen Keywords (here are some great free keyword research tools to help)
- Discussions of issues pertinent to your business or field
- Hashtags which are both relevant and specific
- Forums, whether on LinkedIn, Reddit, Facebook, or Google Groups
- Keeping tabs on some or all of these will help you learn more about your target market, your competitors, and your industry. Because of this, you’ll be able to create more engaging content and spread your brand message more effectively.
Utilize a social media monitoring tool
There are a wide variety of audience-listening aids available. Let’s check out five of the most widely used for companies like yours.
Hootsuite’s unified dashboard makes it simple to monitor activity across multiple social networks from a single location.
You can keep an eye on how often your brand is mentioned, how often certain keywords are used, read and respond to messages, and keep tabs on accounts with a lot of sway.
3. Keep tabs on your rivals
Always keep an eye on what the competition is up to, especially if they are generating a lot of interest or making waves in the market.
Metrics and social intelligence software for social media platforms can help you do this. Pay attention to the formats, topics, conversations, promotions, and posting frequencies that your rivals have found to be the most successful.
4. Educate yourself on how to address criticism, praise, and complaints
It would be foolish to ignore your customers’ feedback, whether positive or negative, if you set up social listening to track mentions.
At some point or another, every company will receive a negative review, real or otherwise.
Reach out to the person who has expressed displeasure with your product or service. Begin by saying something like, “I’m sorry you’re having this experience,” and then address the problem head-on.
5- Make notes
You can learn a lot about your audience and improve your content by reviewing past interactions.
Create a spreadsheet and assign someone the task of keeping it current. A member of your marketing or customer service team, as determined when you establish your social media style guide and routine, could fill this role.
#6 Do Something About It
Every week or month, pull out your updated spreadsheet and peruse each tab with a new perspective. Is there a common thread running through your criticisms, or a discernible pattern that you can use to inform the development of superior content or the enhancement of an existing service?
If that’s the case, you and your support staff need to figure out a way to permanently fix the problems your clients are experiencing. For additional input, you can always conduct a social media poll or send out an email survey.
Get to know your customers better through social listening
Marketers and businesses can learn a lot about their customers and brand from social media. The difficulty lies in understanding how to make the most of each platform, as well as how to analyse the data to draw useful conclusions for business. In addition to covering the fundamentals of Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, DMI’s social media marketing course delves deeply into social content, strategy, and commerce.