Here’s Why Proper Social Listening Is Crucial to Your Success and How to Get Started?
4 min readThere is always time for social listening, even if you don’t believe there is. The last thing you need to do is risk a social media disaster and then spend time putting it out. Consider also all the potential revenue you’ll be passing up. Really, who has the time for that?!
Now, on a more serious note, I’ll explain why you need to keep an eye on your brand’s internet reputation and provide you with several tools that will make the process easier and more efficient.
How do you define social listening?
The term “social listening” refers to the practise of keeping tabs on online conversations mentioning your business across various social media platforms as well as the wider Internet. Because whether you realise it or not, your brand is always being discussed online and offline. This includes areas you wouldn’t expect, such as forums and blogs.
You may now sit back and let them discuss the matter at hand. Furthermore, by keeping an ear to the ground, you may safeguard your company’s reputation and discover new ways to strengthen links with your clientele. It’s the responsible thing to do, but you could be put off because you believe it’s too time-consuming and difficult. You don’t have too much free time on your hands, either.
Nonetheless, the effort invested listening to your brand’s reputation frequently pays for itself in the long run. And there are, like, plenty of tools you can use to speed up and simplify the process, such as:
Keeping an eye on product and brand references and keywords is essential (and respond to them, sometimes automatically)
Examine the level of brand and rivals’ audience participation.
Do some digging into hot subjects so you can be ahead of the curve and serve your readers with more timely and relevant material.
The perks of social listening for your company’s reputation
With the help of social media monitoring, you can take care of a number of operational necessities.
I’ve compiled a short list for your convenience:
Safeguarding the Image of Company
Keeping tabs on online discussions about your brand is an important element of managing your company’s reputation.
It’s possible that at this second, someone is complaining about your brand to someone else or writing a nasty review about their experience with your company, and you have no means of stopping it.
Even if someone had a positive experience with your company, you can’t improve it by reaching out to them and expressing gratitude.
Limiting the impact of social media disasters
You may benefit from a social media crisis communication plan and swift action by monitoring what people are saying about you in real time. However, early intervention can sometimes prevent a social media disaster from ever reaching its full potential.
Boosting Support for Customers
Social listening may make a huge impact in the quality of your social customer care, even if a customer complaint doesn’t have the potential to become viral (and not in the manner you’d generally want it to) (and your customer service overall). It allows you to respond quickly, address issues, and show them you care (even if they don’t really expect you to; that’s called “exceeding expectations” đ when they least expect it.
Recognizing sales openings
You become a part of the stories others tell about you when you put yourself in their midst. And that’s a great way to get in front of new people who may become consumers (even just by virtue of all of the above.)
By doing so, you’ll demonstrate your concern for your audience, something that is greatly appreciated by your social media followers. Having a strong social media presence also means cultivating a devoted fan base, which may lead to repeat business.
Additionally, it goes without saying that you won’t miss out on any potential direct sales leads if you keep an ear to the ground for your brand. That’s why it’s important to incorporate social listening into your marketing strategy.
Effective Brand Conversations Via Social Listening Tools
NapoleonCat
While not strictly speaking a social listening platform, NapoleonCat does provide many channels via which you may engage with discussions pertaining to your business.
Respond immediately from a centralised location anytime your brand is mentioned online, as well as monitor activity across all of your business’s social media channels.
Even if you have many locations marked on Google Maps, you can still monitor consumer feedback and reply consistently. Hours of time can be saved each week compared to doing it by hand.
Automated Facebook and Instagram comments can help you respond quickly to social media crises or seize sales opportunities as they arise.
Brand24
You can keep tabs on what people are saying about your business online with this handy monitoring tool. Consists of components such as:
customised reports based on sentiment analysis, hashtag searching, and the number of mentioned topics.
YouScan
YouScan employs image recognition to monitor brand logos across several platforms in addition to its usual brand mention tracking features. As a result, social media marketers now have more ways to interact with customers, work with influential users, and safeguard their brands from the abuse of their logos.
Digimind
A social listening and customer intelligence tool designed for brand reputation management. You may find influential people, watch online trends and rivalry, and more with the help of the tools it gives.
BuzzSumo
When it comes to online listening for the sake of content marketing, BuzzSumo is one of the most prominent platforms. Specifically, it aids:
make use of web trends as inspiration for fresh material,
Find influencers to work with, see how your previous material is performing, and more with this handy tool.