Social listening is an essential tool in marketing as it gives brands the opportunity to analyze, track, and respond to conversations about them on social media applications. While it’s an important part of audience research, it’s often overlooked by new companies that want to have a strong position in their industry. Here’s how you can maximize the use of social listening.
What Is Social Listening?
Social listening is when a brand tracks social media platforms for conversations or mentions about their brand. You can use these conversations to discover opportunities to act. Analyzing the information can help you find more customers or create a great relationship with your audience because it requires you to speak directly to them and solve problems.
While this may sound like social media monitoring, there is a separation between the two. Social monitoring is when a brand simply watches and takes metrics of mentions, hashtags, or industry trends. Social listening turns that data into something a brand can use.
Knowing how your customers feel about your brand or products can help you market them effectively. For example, the Fidget Spinner was initially marketed as a toy, but people with high anxiety started using it as a means for distraction. Fidget Spinner used social listening to interact with their audience and provide them with what they already wanted: a calming tool.
How to Use Social Listening to Your Advantage
Without social listening, you’re missing out on valuable insights and a way to connect with your audience. You need to know what people are saying about you. Otherwise, you won’t be able to market to them effectively. Social listening from companies like Falcon.io can help your brand in the following ways.
Helps You Engage with Customers
Your customers will likely comment about your brand on social media, whether they love or hate your product. They may even interact with your social page directly to ask questions. For example, if your customer is having an issue applying a coupon for their items, they may ask you what they’re doing wrong or why it isn’t working.
You can directly respond to your customers, but if this problem becomes a trend, you can post on your social media pages about how to fix this issue. Engaging and listening to customer feedback makes your brand trustworthy and approachable, which are both great things to be.
Help You Track Competitors
A potential customer base may comment on what they like about your competitor or what their products lack. You can also find out their prices, how successful their companions are, and what new products are launching. These insights can provide you with new opportunities to do better than your competition.
Helps You Manage PR Disasters
Social listening is the best tool for helping you address PR disasters. On social media platforms, everything happens in real-time, so if you are quick to respond to a problem, your customer base is more likely to trust you even after the issue. When a PR disaster does hit, you can respond with an apology, a reassurance from your team, and refunds or advertising deals to fix the problem.
When Zion Williamson’s Nikes exploded during a game resulting in a knee injury, Nike responded by apologizing and making a statement. They also offered Williamson a lucrative advertising deal to show goodwill towards the player.
Helps Discover Leads and Influencers
Influencers are the backbone of social media marketing, as people are more likely to buy from people they know rather than the brand on its own. If an influencer is already using your hashtags to promote your products, you can offer them a share of the profits to further market your products.
Influencers and advocate hashtags can also give you more leads because they build relationships with consumers. You can even do this yourself by answering questions on social media instead of selling to your audience right away.
short url:
