Introduction:

In simple terms, social listening is social media and web monitoring combined with analytics that can produce business insights. Monitoring tools also allow you to assemble and analyze all your mentions in one well-organized space so you can react to your clients’ specific questions, requests, or complaints in a timely manner.

The popularity of social listening has been growing for a simple reason. A well-developed social listening strategy can give your company both a financial and branding boost. Social listening is more than logging in to your Facebook page and checking the notification tab every 10 minutes. You need a social listening strategy, which begins by choosing the right network and tools and then, you can start to participate in conversations online.

Why is social media listening important and how can businesses use it?

Social listening goes well beyond just monitoring your brand’s reputation. You can use social listening insights to improve many aspects of your business, including business and product development, human resources and customer care.

When a customer stops doing business with you, it’s not because of price or product, it’s because of the service you provide. If you don’t respond to their messages online, then they don’t feel valued. It’s at this point, that they decide to shop elsewhere.

Social listening is a solution for businesses, the self-employed, and for corporations. Since communication has migrated to the Internet, attentive listening can benefit you enormously.

So what do you want to achieve? The most common uses for social listening include:

Eventually, your goals may involve a little of below each. But you need to be clear on them before you start, or else you’re likely to be disappointed.

• Brand monitoring: to know what people say about you in real time, and respond however necessary.
• Competitive analysis: to know what people say about your competitors, to study their marketing strategies, and “borrow” their best ideas.
• Influencer marketing: to find powerful people to share your brand name and build awareness on social media.
• Crisis management: to anticipate and mitigate bad social media crises. The real time aspect of social listening is especially valuable here.
• Customer service: to be able to find customers with problems and help them immediately, to keep them happy.

Social listening isn’t some magical wand for a struggling brand; it’s gives you the information you need to act on your strategy.

But first you should have the strategy. Once you have that, it’s time to get to work.

Let’s explore the obvious and non-obvious advantages of social listening.

• What are the benefits of Social listening to your businesses?
• Generate Leads by Solving Problems
• Monitor phrases related to your product, no matter your company’s size or reach, your clients are talking to you. It’s up to you to listen to them.

One way to find new business opportunities is to monitor keywords that relate to people’s problems and needs or their frustrations with a competitor’s product.

Respond on time if any potential leads turn up. Then explain your product’s benefits and added value, and make yourself available for questions.

You may also want to provide a demo of your product.

Attract potential Customers

Listen to your clients’ wants and needs, so you’ll know which pieces of information or keywords are the most important to them and where and how you should deliver the message.

People loved the fact their opinion was really taken into consideration and didn’t hesitate to express it in positive mentions online.

Join in conversations that lead to conversions. Later, check your mails or sites to see if anyone from the forum signed up to try your product. Respond to them promptly by offering to personally help them get started.

Identify Influencers and Opinions.

You might not even be aware that you already have influencers working for you. This is where social listening comes in handy. track the link to or the title of your press release to see who’s sharing it. This information helps you identify influencers in your industry. Reach out to them to start building relationships.

Brand ambassadors are a real treasure. They are worth every penny – influencer marketing is one of the most actively expanding areas in marketing. Identify and reward them with giveaways or special offers. Continue to keep them engaged as your brand grows, because satisfied customers are one of your greatest marketing resources.

Discover Where Your target audience available

Social listening helps in knowing which platform to focus on also helps you improve your social media marketing. Hence find out where your potential and current community members carry on important conversations on the social media platforms.

Track them and when it is time, join them and show case your business highlights.

Improve Customer Care

People share an entire spectrum of emotions online and these feelings are caused by their experiences with products or services. Your audience expects a response. Yet, on the other hand, they are always surprised when they get one!

Hence Listen and take care of your audience at all times, not only when you’re looking for sales opportunities. Going the extra mile is always a good idea and aids in customer retention.

Get Feedback on Products

Social listening also helps you identify potential issues early in a product’s life cycle. Track your brand name’s mentions and if someone posts a bug about your product, assign the issue to your development team so it can be fixed as quickly as possible.

Then, respond directly to your customer to nurture transparency. If feasible, use your personal email account rather than your company account to show the human side of your business.

Evaluate your performance

Good analytics tools make a big difference. When you’re collecting large numbers of mentions, it pays to be able to analyze this data. This means you want to choose a social listening tool that lets you build custom graphs and reports that match your goals.

Drive Innovation

Social listening helps to make you more responsive by alerting you immediately when new messages appear. These could be questions or complaints, but they may also be opportunities for you to engage and build brand awareness. Just as you can go viral in a bad way, a witty and well-timed social media response can spread like wildfire.

Good social listening can actually help you build a stronger brand reputation online. Buyers want to know that your company listens to them, is approachable, and belongs in the modern market.

 You also need to think about how much “noise” you want to collect. While it might seem exciting to gather tens of thousands of mentions per day, it may be difficult to actually do anything useful with them. You certainly can’t respond to all of them!

 What are the non-obvious advantages of social listening?

• Social media is a fast-moving, high intensity space. It’s where things “go viral,” after all. For this reason, brands need to watch carefully for negative press. One disgruntled former staff member, or an unhappy client, can post virtually anything they like online. And if that message gains traction, you’ve gone from one person saying bad things, to thousands.
• Reacting to negative mentions is one thing, but preventing them from happening is something completely different! Instead of reacting to someone’s disappointment or anger, solve their problem. Explain, exchange the product, improve your service, compensate, or just express your regret. Many haters that have been addressed early enough have even gone on to become brand ambassadors.
• It may seem dramatic, but a brand crisis can catch you when you least expect it. And if it does, you’ll be glad that you caught it early and had a chance to limit the damage. That’s why social media monitoring should be part of your entire process.

Summary:

Social listening isn’t the one thing that’ll take your social marketing from good to great. It’s a tool in your kit – a source of information that can make a big difference.

• To make it work for you, you need:
• Clear goals for what you want to achieve
• A good social listening tool
• The ability to pay attention and respond quickly
• The desire to improve your performance based on results

In the end, it’s actually not all that complicated. With a little strategy and a lot of common sense, you’re all set for success.

“Assess the requirements, Explore the opportunities and Implement the changes and Succeed – Sky is the limit”.