What You Need To Know About Social Listening

These days, reputation is a key driver of an online shop’s success. Online business owners need to be aware of what their customers think about their businesses, i.e., is there negative talk happening in the background? This is where the concept of social listening should come into play.

Understanding Social Listening Vs. Social Monitoring

Social listening is the process of analyzing, collecting, and finding your social mentions. This way, you know what social media users are saying about your brand and online business. Why do their voice matter? They may be your current and potential customers! Determining your brand’s current health is important as it allows you to improve many aspects of the business such as the product itself, pricing, logistics, the packaging, the overall customer service, and more.

Social monitoring, on the other hand, is the process of searching for individual posts that mention your company and then addressing them one at a time. In addition, the first step to social listening is typically accomplished with social monitoring.

As you can see, social monitoring deals with customers’ comments on a personal level. Social listening plays a more strategic role.

What Can One Accomplish through Social Listening?

• Better crisis management

In today’s digital-driven world, crises can get infinitely magnified through social media. It’s important to have one’s ear to the ground so that the potential crisis can be contained and controlled before it blows up.

• Focused competitive analysis

It can be immensely and informative to know what your potential and current customers are saying about you and your competitors. By understanding their dislikes, you can improve your marketing strategy by telling them what they want to hear, i.e., the perfect message.

• Identify influencers and brand advocates

It is good to identify the people who are saying good things about your brand. If these social media users have a lot of followers and are relevant to your niche, they can offer some leverage. Consider reaching out to these social media influencers and collaborate on an advocate marketing campaign or influencer marketing campaign.

• Sound reputation management

One negative review may be all it takes to damage your reputation. It is important to keep an eye out for negative user posts about your company and address them without delay. In addition, you should also continue collecting positive reviews to offset negative ones.

• Improve products and services

Do customers complain about late shipments? Do shipped products contain a glaring flaw? If your customers are repeatedly sending the same feedback to your team, it’s time to address these recurring problems.

• New customer acquisition

Customers do appreciate a brand’s effort when it actually addresses their concerns, e.g., responding to individual feedback.

Establish a Social Listening Plan

Want to take social listening more seriously and utilize it to improve your business? Similar to an SEO strategy, establish a plan that allows you to track your brand name, branded hashtags, your slogan, industry buzzwords, negative keywords, and more. Make sure that you listen to the talk that surrounds your competitors as well. Once you have everything set up, analyze your findings, and measure your success once every few weeks. This allows you to stay ahead of the curve and maintain a positive online reputation.