As a business owner, do you ever feel you’re doing everything right regarding your content and marketing style, but something feels off about the results?
You post consistently, run different ads, and take content creation seriously, but still, you don’t get the desired results. Sorry to break this to you, but the problem may not be what you’re trying to communicate, but rather how you’re neglecting what you’re hearing about your brand.
Now, let’s dive into what social listening is.
What is Social Listening?
Social Listening is the process of tracking and analysing conversations, engagements, and conversion, monitoring trends and feedback to understand what people are saying about your brand and your competitors. By extension, it can also refer to actively keeping up with your industry news.
It involves identifying trends, tracking mentions, hashtags, and keywords, consistently staying up-to-date with discussions across social media platforms and digital spaces, and using that information to enhance your overall marketing strategy.
According to a survey by Social Media Today, 80% of brands consider social listening an essential strategy in their presence, conversion, and growth, and how it helps them make quality, result-driven decisions.
When done properly, social listening will reveal your customers’ thoughts, feelings, and needs, allowing you to meet those needs before your competitors do. The outcome leads to increased trust, improved products, more brilliant campaigns, and higher conversion.
Let’s highlight more reasons you should consider social listening as a business owner ;
Why Social Listening Matters
- It helps you understand your audience: Social listening gives a deeper insight into your audience’s wants and needs. It helps you create content that converts and resonates with your audience. It helps you understand your audience’s pain points and gives solutions that can help improve engagement, generate leads, and increase conversion.
- Improve products and services: Adopting strategies like competitor analysis is one of the most effective ways to improve products and services. You can leverage what people are saying about your competitors and your products to be innovative and develop products that meet customer needs. According to Salesforce’s 2019 “State of the Connected Customer” report, 73% of customers expect companies to understand their unique needs and expectations. This statistic emphasises the importance of social listening in gaining insights into customer sentiments and preferences—social listening gives you that exact intel.
- Build relationships: Social listening helps businesses build connections with customers, allowing them to address customer concerns promptly, engage in meaningful discussions, and demonstrate care and empathy. This will increase customer loyalty and trust, and satisfied customers will share their experiences. A report by Bain and Company shows that engaged customers demonstrate a deeper level of commitment to the brand and spend 20% to 40% more than those who are not. Now, that is the power of building a strong relationship with your customers.
- Boost conversions: Understanding your audience’s needs and preferences through online conversations will help you tailor your offers to meet these needs, provide adequate solutions, and create messaging that resonates with them. This will help you generate more leads and increase conversion.
Now that you understand the importance of Social listening, let’s discuss how to implement it effectively.
How to Effectively Use Social Listening
- Get familiar with the right tools: tons of social listening tools can help you achieve your desired goal. However, when selecting tools, consider how easy they are to use, your budget, customisation options, and the features. Think about your business’s specific needs and define your goals. Also, test and evaluate. This will help you monitor and analyse conversations, giving valuable insights into your company and industry. Tools like Brand24 will help you understand your online reputation and make informed decisions.
- Monitor the right keywords: This will enable you to track brand mentions, identify industry trends, analyse competitors, and discover opportunities. This leads to better reputation management, data-driven decisions, customer insights, and helps you stay ahead in your industry.
- Analyse sentiments: Keep up with what people say about your brand and your competitors. Sentiment analysis will help you know where your brand stands and fine-tune your messaging or product features. Amplify positive feedback and address negative feedback publicly, offering solutions to solve the issue.
- Spot trends and pain points; Observe the patterns in customer complaints and questions, but don’t ignore them. If many people ask the same thing, that’s a hint at a potential content idea, product tweak, or sales opportunity. Make every comment and review count. Leverage that to boost your overall brand activity.
- Be intentional about engaging your audience: Don’t just watch conversations from the background. Actively engage with your customers. Participate in discussions and make them feel heard. Thank users who compliment your brand, respond to complaints professionally, and answer questions quickly. This builds trust and shows that your brand cares.
Finally, social listening is a powerful way to put your customers at the centre of your strategy. When you understand your customers’ behavior, you can earn their trust and turn that into real conversion. So stop guessing and start listening. Your customers tell you what they want, so you need to tune in.
Want help getting started with social listening? Contact Us – We’re always here to help brands like yours grow smarter.