Businesses now have all of the tools necessary to find out how people feel about their branding efforts. Social listening is a marketing strategy that allows companies to read and respond to customer feedback on social media. This gives them the opportunity to fine-tune their marketing efforts to help them achieve their goals.
Social listening is really more about understanding and responding to the comments you’re getting from your target market on social media. Integrating social listening into your current marketing efforts can help you craft the perfect strategy based on the needs of the people you want to attract.
But how do you use social listening to strengthen your online marketing presence?
Have a Conversation With Your Customers
Think of social listening as a conversation with your customers that is happening online. As they provide you with feedback, you reward them with a response that assures them that their concerns are being addressed.
It’s important that you become more aware of feedback cues and respond to them appropriately. Failing to provide customers with an actionable response will earn you a bad reputation and diminish customer satisfaction.
Better Customer Service
Social listening can be a very effective tool to use for improving your current customer service strategy. Using social media as a supplementary customer support channel makes your brand come across as more approachable to potential and existing customers.
Customers no longer have to wait on hold in order to get a customer service representative when they can easily reach out to you via social media. Just remember to be especially responsive to complaints to avoid damaging your online credibility.
Use Social Listening Tools
Brands who argue that social listening is an exhausting marketing technique are those who do not know how to use online tools to their advantage. There are many social listening tools available that can help you efficiently manage feedback and respond to comments all in one screen. These intuitive tools make social listening less tedious and more focused.
Finding the right social listening tool depends on your budget and needs. Below are a few programs you can choose from to improve your current online marketing strategy:
1. BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo allows you to closely monitor online engagement through their Content Alert feature. Similar to Google Alerts, you can set it to notify you of any trends based on specific keywords, domains, and authors.
2. HooteSuite
More popularly known as a scheduling tool, Hootsuite also has a feature that lets you manage and respond to complaints more efficiently. This can be a huge time-saver and is ideal to those who are new to online marketing.
3. FollowerWonk
FollowerWonk is a social listening tool designed for Twitter. This tool gives you access to insights about your competitor’s followers, which you can use to improve your strategy.
Social listening is a marketing technique companies should not overlook. It is critical for your marketing campaign to be tailored to your audience in order for you to achieve the results you want. Use the internet in general and social media, in particular, to make your brand more approachable to customers.