Posted by I’ve already spoken about social mentions in my previous blog and why it is important for customer success. Another important factor that businesses should dig deeper into is social listening.
What is Social listening? What use does it have for businesses?
Imagine being so excited to start a business and putting all the effort, time, and money into logistics, production, marketing, customer support and then not being able to cater to your target audience. You need to be able to know what they want from you. You need to be able to hear what they’re saying about you personally. Or maybe about your brand, or your industry, or what you stand for.
Now in the past, the only way to do this was by conducting surveys. All kinds of surveys. But you’d never have exact data because how often do people actually fill in the truth? You can’t force someone to give their opinions just because you need it. There are high chances you’ll get false information.
But what if you could just wait for people to feel strong enough to talk about it on the internet?
This way you can get truthful data and use that to make improvements in your existing services or add new services. And you can be sure that this will be received well by your audience because you’re literally giving them what they’re asking for.
This is where social listening comes in.
Like social mentions, a social listening tool will pick up conversations or articles that contain your keywords from the internet. It will scan anything from Social media to News channels to blogs and bring it all to you in 1 dashboard and at your fingertips.
Once you have all this data, it’ll be pretty easy to find out what’s being said about you online and what people are expecting of you. Then from here on out, you can get your brilliant product strategists to create and execute what has been requested.
What kind of data can you get from using a Listening tool?
1. Pulling conversations from social platforms
Like I’ve mentioned previously when you know what people are saying about you on social platforms, it gets easier to address their concerns. You get bonus points here because then others on the platform can see that you care about your customers and value their opinions. You can reach so many more people if your own customers have a positive opinion about your brand or business.
2. Pulling mentions from forums, news, blogs
This data helps you understand what’s being shared on non-social platforms. You can see where people have mentioned you or your brand/business in the form of recommendations to their own audience. There may be news blogs or forums where people talk about your industry. Here you can also ask to be included in their posts and maybe have some kind of content or link exchange.
3. Specific metrics from tools
The kinds of data and metrics you can get from tools varies of course. The most basic ones would be total mentions, number of mentions for each keyword, number of social mentions, number of non-social mentions, social media estimated reach, likes, shares and interactions, positive sentiments, negative sentiments, neutral sentiments, more.
4. Competitor data
Your keywords should include your competitor’s brand/business name, names of key people in the company. Also, other important words from their slogan or motto, words from the names of their bestsellers, etc. This way you’ll be able to analyze and decide what you should be doing to one-up them.
How will all this data help me improve and grow my business?
1. Analyse sentiments
Once you get sentiment data, you can see how much you have to improve your online presence. The goal is to bring the negative mentions as low as possible and try to increase the positive mentions. You can do this by permanently fixing the common issues that people highlight. By responding to them within a reasonable time, of course, the faster the better. You can also create and execute marketing campaigns that target this audience and get you more reach.
2. Competitor Analysis
The data you get from your competitor’s keywords will help you understand what your rivals are up to. This will give you a chance to one-up them. You can also use keywords that will help you track what their audience expects from them. If you have the resources and means to get what is being asked for, then you can use this kind of strategy to add to your services or products and grow your business.
3. Plan and execute campaigns
Now that you have certain data relating to a product or service in demand, and if you’ve decided to get on board and make it available to the audience, you will be able to plan and execute marketing campaigns based on the online mood. Understand the sentiments behind each comment or request and drive your campaigns based on that. Once the audience feels they’ve been heard and you’re actually doing something about it, they’ll be more likely to gravitate toward and trust your brand/business.
4. Industry trends
If your keywords include industry-related words you can also stay on top of industry trends. Knowing what others in your industry are planning or already doing will help you get with the times and make sure you’re not left behind.
Nobody wants to be late to trends and you definitely don’t want to be mocked for it. Get with it using Social Listening and you’ll find that your audience and customer base will definitely grow.
How can I be absolutely sure that social listening will help me achieve all this?
For the last 15 years or so, people have taken to sharing all their opinions about everything online. Be it a service or product from a particular site, or their social platforms, or review channels. If all these opinions are pooled in 1 place then a social listening tool is one of the only things that can help you pick and analyze the opinions that matter to you, your brand/business.
Reviews
Reviews are super important for brands. While most people post reviews on the site’s review page or Google Reviews, there are also tons of sites dedicated to just reviewing companies. Since a Social Listening tool doesn’t only pull mentions from social platforms, you can keep track of people posting reviews about you on various channels. Doing this will help you make sure that no customer is left hanging even if they haven’t contacted you directly on your platforms. This also shows other users on that site that you truly care about your customers and their opinions, drawing them to use your services/products.
Social Media as a personal guide
When people find something they might like or are on the fence about a purchase, they will usually go to social media and ask other users about the product/service. They will rely on this information to help understand if they should invest in you or not. This means, once your listening tool picks up on this conversation, you can choose whether you should reply to them or allow a few active users to guide them to make the right decision.
A Listening Tool gives you so much power over influencing your audience’s decisions and opinions about you. If you’re not already using one you should definitely head over to Crowdfire and get your Listening trial now!
If you are already using one, let me know how it’s helped you in the comments below! 😀