Social listening provides valuable information about your business, your customers and related industries, as well as insights for competitor analysis. While this process of rooting out the posts, tweets, and status updates that matter to your brand among the millions that are created every single day can be time consuming, there are a number of reasons you should be monitoring online conversations about your brand and business. If you’re skeptical as to whether or not social listening provides enough of a positive ROI, here a few things to keep in mind about listening in on social media conversations.
Brand Health Awareness
With social listening, your marketing team and business as a whole can see what the health of your brand online is. Your brand isn’t just what you make it out to be; a brand is determined by the company and how others view it. By listening to the conversations that surround your brand on social media, you’ll be able to determine the perception of your brand by others. Search for various terms across the different social networks that relate directly to your brand such as: your company name, brands, products, specialized services, specific campaigns, figure heads, and misspelled variations of each.
Improved Response Time
By closely listening in to the conversations surrounding your brand or business on social media, you’ll be able to determine which posts require an immediate response and which can be put off for a later time. Searching the terms you established when determining brand awareness, you will be able to see most customer service related questions. As you monitor the social conversations about your business, you’ll be able to more quickly respond to potential crises and provide a faster customer service response time. You can prioritize what items need immediate action, and which can be put off for a day or two. In a study by Forrester Consulting, one marketer at an enterprise banking company confirmed that for their business, “The benefit of listening and engagement is the immediate response to customers’ problems and needs around our products. The immediacy of digital is what is driving better brand loyalty and image.”
Lead Generation
Listening at the customer’s point of need can help you discover opportunities to help by offering information or expertise, without sales pressure, at the perfect time. By being present on social media channels when a customer or business is in need of what you’re offering, you can reach out the right people at the right time. GNC used their network of experts and fitness pros to connect with customers who were having questions about specific products. They would offer up incentives to those who are having issues with a product by giving them the chance to try a similar product or receive store credit (via a gift card) to try something else if they choose.
Competitive Analysis
As you track words relevant to your brand and industry, you are sure to come across conversations about competitors. You’ll be able to see what other brands are doing well, or not so well, and apply the best practices to your upcoming and current strategies. Observe what issues with competitors’ products or customer service keep taking place and how you can use the information to better your business. In the same study by Forrester consulting, 53% of marketers surveyed responded that listening and digital engagement initiatives led to market research while 36% responded saying it led to competitive intelligence.
Company Feedback
From product feedback to the effectiveness of your customer support software and team, social listening can help you discover what people like and dislike about products and your business as a whole. While negative feedback isn’t what you want to see, you’ll gain a better understanding of what people think of your products and where you can improve. In a 2008 study by the Aberdeen Group, 62% of Best-in-Class companies cited the need to gain better consumer insight as one of the top two factors driving their organizations to focus resources on social media monitoring and analysis. Gain insight and customer feedback with a social listening strategy.
Social listening is a discipline that must become an ongoing process as conversations are constantly changing, in real time. Some B2B businesses are able to do so with a sales or CRM software, but small businesses and B2C companies may find more success with a social listening tool that monitors their social media networks. Whichever platform or method you use to collect customer insight and data, it’s important you spend time on social listening to better your business across all departments.
