Social media is now much more than a basic platform for broadcasting. As a business, you need a successful strategy built around reaching the right audience at the right time with the most relevant and insightful content. In order to do so, you need to get more involved with social listening. It is important to firstly understand that social listening is not the same as media monitoring. Though they are similar to one another and go hand in hand, they are essentially two sides of one coin. Social listening is more of an extension of media monitoring.
What is Social Listening?
Social listening involves tracking particular topics of conversation, keywords, phrases, brands or industries and leveraging your insights to find opportunities or create fresh content for those audiences. It is must more than simply watching out for mentions, comments and responses to your social media profiles. If you are only looking at your notifications then you won’t find much from people who may be talking about you, your brand, or anything surrounding it that you could be taking advantage of.
By monitoring, you are only collecting responses to what you put out there. With social listening you can compare yourself against competitors, find out what content your audience wishes to see, come up with original ideas for marketing campaigns and improve overall customer experience.
Use Social Listening to Solve Problems
A great way to bring in new opportunities for your business is to look at the keywords relating to peoples problems, needs or frustrations with what your competitors have to offer. For example, say you are a local coffee shop and notice someone talking about a nearby competitor not offering an alternative milk suitable for their allergies.
By using social listening, you can reach out to the potential customer and let them know that you can offer them what your competitor can’t, and even ask if there is anything else they would like to see available to purchase.
Once you identify your potential customers, you are then able to know more about what they want and make yourself available for any queries they may have. You may even want to offer a demo or sample of your product or service.
Bring in New Customers
To use social listening to bring in new customers, think about the keywords that are often used by people who are looking for a product and keep a track of them. Not just the product or service itself, but other words surrounding it.
Join in the conversations to discover the customers needs and expectations. Keep your engagement genuine so they know that you are looking to offer them what they want. From there you can pair up your insights with who has engaged with you to see if your approach has worked.
Identify Influencers
If you are to launch a product or update, you can use social listening to keep track of who is talking about it and sharing your product information. By doing this you are able to identify influencers in your industry and reach out to them to start forming a relationship. You will also need to see who your biggest brand advocates are and reward them for their loyalty. Make sure they stay engaged as your brand develops.
Use Social Listening for Product Feedback
Social listening enables you to identify potential issues in the early stages of your product or service. Keep an eye on the mentions to see if anyone has had any problems and assign this problem to your development team to get it fixed.
It’s important to respond to the customer directly to let them know that you are on the case and are there for their needs. It’s always a good idea to let them know who they are talking to as well so they receive a more human connection.
Innovation is Key
Though it may seem like a good idea to simply ask your customers what they would like, their answers may be skewered and perhaps unattainable. It’s better to give them an idea for a product or service and let them give you the feedback, as opposed to asking for thoughts based on nothing. After that, you need responsive web design in Stockport and social media marketing in Stockport to enable you to move with the time and demands of your consumers online.
Knowing what your audience wants is key to bringing in customer loyalty and providing them with a product or service you know they will benefit from, and with a team of experts to help your website demonstrate those offerings in a clear and attention-grabbing way, your business can flourish. Contact Search & More today for responsive website design and content writing in Stockport.
