The current world population is 7.8 billion people, and of those people, almost 4.57 billion are on the internet! That’s a lot of potential consumers right at your fingertips. People seem to be a lot more vocal these days about things they love or don’t love about businesses (hello, google reviews!). You want to know what your customers think about your products and services, so, in today’s entry, we are going to tell you what you need to know about the world of social listening.
In our last blog entry, we talked about why social media is so important in today’s day and age. In case you missed it, we explained that, for personal or business use, social media can be an incredibly useful marketing tool to reach your ideal consumer base. What we are going to delve into today is what happens after you garner those loyal customers. How are you going to keep them excited about your content? How will you keep them coming back time and time again? Two words: be interactive! Think about it this way- would you rather speak to a real-life person or a brick wall? Pretty straightforward, right? As human beings, we want to be listened to and appreciated. This is why interaction is key in social listening.
Let’s start by looking at the definition of social listening: Social listening is the monitoring of your brand's social media channels for any customer feedback and direct mentions of your brand or discussions regarding specific keywords, topics, competitors, or industries, followed by an analysis to gain insights and act on those opportunities. Essentially, you are going to want to keep on top of what your consumers are thinking about you and your competition.
Let’s move into the best ways to do that. The first step in social listening is to develop your research, figure out your data and apply meaning to the research results. Take a look to see what information already exists out there in the world. Jump into Google or any other search engine and go wild! Are there influencers talking about your brand? Any reviews left on sites like Google reviews, Yelp or TrustPilot? How are your Facebook, Instagram and Twitter pages looking? Are they up to date? There is so much out there to look at. This is a great way to look at your organization from your consumer’s point of view and can provide you valuable insight on what they’re thinking. A very important key here is to see how many questions and replies are happening on your social media pages. Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have powerful messaging systems set up to allow your consumers to interact with you directly. They are also able to comment on photos, retweet, share and like your posts which are incredibly useful analytics to keep on top of as well.
Now, we all live very busy lives and it can be really challenging to make sure that you are responding to every comment, keeping posts new and refreshing and replying to overflowing inboxes. This is where brilliant tools like Hootsuite and Loomly come into play. These are reliable, easy-to-use social media management solutions for the busy business owner. They allow you to keep track of what's happening on each and every platform you use. You can respond to a Facebook message while creating an Instagram post. Another awesome feature is that they allow you to schedule social media posts ahead of time! That way you are always providing fresh off the press content for your viewers. It’s a glorious win-win for you and your eager clientele!
Social listening gives you a major competitive advantage out there in the world of the internet. It’s been proven time and time again that people respond better to brands who interact with their customer base. It builds trust, loyalty and helps foster that business to consumer relationship every good business owner strives for. In fact, the advent of social media has made this so commonplace that recent research shows that people are actually beginning to expect responses from brands! This is why becoming an expert on things like social listening and understanding the benefits of social media marketing is so important for modern day businesses.
So, get out there, take a look at your existing pages, start setting up your Hootsuite account and respond to those 25 unanswered direct messages crowding your inbox. Give the people what they want! I promise you’ll be better off for it!
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