What is social listening?
Social listening is the process of monitoring what people are saying about you, your industry and competitors online. The insights you gather from these conversations can be used to enhance your business.
Why is it important?
You don’t have a relationship with an online business without building some sort of rapport. Conversations about your business give people reassurance that your brand, service or product is reliable. If you listen, you can evaluate customer experiences, likes and dislikes and use that feedback to create more appealing offers or enhance your services.
At Concise Digital, we use tools to track conversations across our customers’ social media platforms.
How can you use it for your business?
Monitor opinions and attitudes – Businesses can’t control what people say about them on social media but it is important to listen before engaging with your audience to gain valuable insights.
Customer service – Businesses use social media to respond to questions and complaints about their products or services. Social listening provides an opportunity to convert an unhappy customer into a satisfied one if the response is reasonable.
Increase engagement – Consider which posts attracted the most engagement… why? Take a look at strategies that worked on social media (including your competitor’s posts) and think about how can you replicate or adapt them for your needs.
Check out the competition – Use social listening to see what your competitors are talking about and learn from seeing what type of posts gain the best response.
Find influencers – Use social listening tools to identify key influencers for your industry and try to make alliances with them to reach your desired audience.
5 Tips for success:
- Choose a social listening tool that’s right for your business and expertise
- Listen regularly and often
- Don’t just listen on the channels you are active on as this can limit your view of what is actually being said about your business
- Respond quickly to comments and don’t forget to thank people for their feedback
- Don’t get put off by the numbers – look at the stories behind the figures
Do let us know how you get on in the comments section.
