A majority of companies are familiar with social media analysis and social media monitoring. While these both remain important components of an online marketing strategy, there is another factor that your business should consider implementing. Social media listening is the process of seeking out public dialogue regarding your company and reacting to this information to improve upon your services or products.
Companies can search for specific words or phrases to discover what their audience or customers are saying about a particular topic. After analyzing this information, organizations can decide how to respond to the results. Social media listening is one of the best ways to improve your business from the perspective of the customers. In short, this strategy determines the causes of online conversations and introduces a strategy for making positive changes.
Through the implementation of social media listening, you’ll be able to create content that is in demand, improve customer service, generate new ideas, and constantly shift your strategies to meet the current needs.
- Customers love to hear back from companies.
There is nothing worse than reaching out for help from a company only to receive a general or automated response. Customers have a strong desire to hear back from a company on social media in a personal manner. Social listening is a great way to create rapport with customers through bespoke and timely responses. This form of communication can also help companies secure recurring and loyal customers. When replying to requests or comments on social media, it’s important that companies offer valuable responses. While receiving a reply is nice, customers are only going to appreciate something of value.
- Companies can closely monitor their growth.
Every brand faces incidents that may cause a few negative comments on their social media platforms. Unfortunately, some larger scandals or issues may result in a plague of negativity that significantly affects a company’s success. While a few bad replies may be manageable, an onslaught of negative comments can seriously impact sales.
During these sensitive times, it is critical to use social media listening. Through the careful analysis of these events, companies will be able to determine how the rise of negative comments has affected particular factors of their operation. More specifically, you’ll be able to determine whether these comments resulted in a loss of sales, followers, clicks, or other important metrics. After determining the extent of the damage, a company can determine the best course of action.
- You can discover new opportunities.
Many companies make the mistake of working backward from their desired result. Every successful organization must be able to meet the everchanging demands of their customers in order to maintain success. Instead of making inferences about the demands of your customers, it’s much easier and more practical to simply listen. Social media platforms are one of the best places to listen to this information.
Whether discussing with other customers or making requests to the company, many customers will make their desires known on social media. For example, a group of photographers may be discussing their frustrations regarding the weight of modern cameras. Photography companies with the right social media listening strategies will be able to pick up on this trend and take advantage of the growing demand. By releasing a lighter-weight camera, companies will effectively meet customer demand without having to make guesses.
- Companies can improve their customer acquisition.
Companies can greatly improve their customer acquisition through the implementation of social listening. Potential customers and recurring clients are always active on social platforms. Their behavior on social media can offer companies a glimpse into the type of content that is engaging. By ‘listening’ to what customers share and post online, companies can better inform their social media strategies to become more digestible for their target audience.
NetBase can greatly improve your company’s social media listening strategies. With these improvements, your organization will be able to enhance customer acquisition, capitalize on new opportunities, monitor growth, and more. NetBase is the best source for improving your social media strategies overall.
