Social listening is a strategy used by brands to understand their customers, discover new audiences, and improve their products and services. It’s also becoming increasingly important as more businesses turn to social media to reach out to consumers. This means that social listening is now more important than ever before, and it all starts with knowing what your audience wants, needs, and desires.
What is social listening?
Social media listening is the practice of monitoring social media channels for key buzzwords and phrases. And then use that data to track the performance of your brand. It’s a way to stay up-to-date on what consumers are talking about, how they feel about your product or service, and what content resonates with them most.
Social listening allows us to use this information in order to make decisions about how best to engage with customers on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.
You can also use this data when creating content. It will help you curate something that resonates with the audience. So, when they share it—whether it be directly from the platform or via email—their friends see something similar too!
12 Companies With Great Social Listening Strategies
Social listening is a part of almost all brands’ social media marketing strategies. However, below, we will discuss the top 12 ones. This will help you learn more about these companies and their social listening strategies.
1. Nike
Nike’s social listening strategy is pretty straightforward. The company uses social media data to identify trends in the fitness and running communities, as well as the sneaker community. It also analyzes data about sports equipment purchases to help inform its product design process.
Nike’s approach relies on three main tools: Facebook Insights, Twitter Analytics, and Google Trends (Google Trends offers a free version). These tools allow you to monitor conversations going on across all your major social platforms at once. So, you can see what people are saying about your brand or product line.
2. JetBlue Airways
JetBlue Airways is a low-cost airline based in New York City. It has a social listening strategy that includes monitoring social media and responding to customers in real-time. They even have a customer service team that responds to customers on social media.
JetBlue uses Twitter Direct Messages (DM) to connect with its passengers. They answer their questions about flights and flight status, as well as other issues they may have experienced while flying with the airline.
Also Read: Social Media Monitoring vs Social Listening
3. Zappos
Zappos is a shoe and apparel retailer that offers free shipping on all orders over $50, which is a great strategy for social listening. The company uses social listening to find new product ideas and ways to engage with customers.
For example, if you’re looking for the perfect pair of running shoes and you like the look of this particular brand, however, you aren’t sure what size would fit best. Zappos will respond to you, helping you find the perfect fit.
Zappos has been using this strategy since 2003. It was when founder Tony Hsieh noticed that people were asking questions like, “What do I do if my shoes don’t fit right?” or “Is there any way I can return these?” These questions are signs that there might be an opportunity here. So, instead of ignoring them as unimportant (or worse yet, ignoring them altogether), he noticed them.
He actively listened and responded directly via email or phone call. He simultaneously sent out surveys through mailers. Zappos still sends out survey mailers every few days.
4. Taco Bell
Taco Bell is a fast-food restaurant with a strong social media presence. The company is known for its social listening strategy. They listen to their customers in real-time, respond to them in real time, and reach out to them via social media.
Customer service is their top priority. And they use social listening to deliver the best possible service. They retweet every cool thing said about their brand. They often engage with netizens to strengthen their social media presence for fun. They not only value the opinion of their customers but also respond to their complaints.
Taco Bell, for example, frequently heard from its customers on social media about their dissatisfaction with the cheese in the Quesadilla. They sent out emails to the restaurant in question and reminded them to follow the recipe for ensuring customer satisfaction.
5. Arby’s Restaurant Group, Inc.
Arby’s is a fast-food restaurant chain that has been in business since 1964. The company has over 1,000 locations throughout the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
Arby’s uses social listening to determine what its customers think about it and whether they’re satisfied with their experience or not.
It also looks at how other people are talking about them on social media and blogs. They see what people are saying about their products or services. This helps Arby’s improve customer service. It helps them provide better answers to their queries and resolve their grievances.
6. Ford Motor Company
Ford Motor Company is a global automotive company with more than $200 billion in revenue. The company has a strong social listening strategy that uses its network of employees, customers, and partners to monitor the marketplace.
The first step for Ford’s social listening program is to identify trends in the market. In addition to monitoring competitors’ activities on social media, this includes monitoring industry news and industry associations like the Association for Competitive Intelligence (ACI).
These sources are used for two reasons:
- Firstly, they provide insight into how customers feel about products, and
- Secondly, they help them identify new opportunities for their brand.
Social listening helps them identify and close the gaps between what their competitors are doing and what they need to do better themselves.
7. The New York Times
The New York Times is one of the most well-known news organizations in the world. With a broad reach. They have a team of journalists and data scientists who monitor social media for breaking news stories. They also have a real-time system for breaking news that sends out alerts when there are new developments on Twitter or Facebook (or any other platform).
The Times’ data science team monitors keywords like “NYC mayor,” “Trump,” and “news.” When they see these phrases being used together frequently within minutes of each other, they’ll get an alert from their monitoring system so they can investigate further.
The Times’ story selection process is based on two main factors:
- What’s happening right now, and
- What happened yesterday/last week/the month before that?
8. Amazon.com Inc.
Amazon.com Inc., a large online retailer, has been using social listening to improve its products and customer service for years. The company uses data from social media platforms to determine what customers want, who they are, and how they react to various products.
For instance, someone posts about their favorite soda on Facebook or Twitter. Then Amazon could see that there was a demand for a new flavor. They create a new listing based on this information. It also checks out the statistics of the hottest-selling products and their price ranges. If they don’t have it on their website or at the preferred price, they make it available.
Relevant Post: How Instant Delivery Platforms Can Benefit From Social Listening?
9. KLM Royal Dutch Airlines
KLM Royal Dutch Airlines is a global airline that operates scheduled flights to more than 200 destinations in more than 100 countries. The company’s social media strategy is extensive. It has a team monitoring multiple channels at once to track customer sentiment and look for opportunities to improve its business.
The company uses Brandwatch as its social listening tool of choice, which allows them to monitor all of its channels (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram) 24/7 across various languages, including English and Dutch.
The KLM Netherlands Customer Service department also works closely with this team. It helps them get real-time feedback on how well they respond to customer’s questions or concerns via email or phone calls.
10. Sephora
If you’re a beauty expert, chances are you’ve heard of Sephora. The company is one of the leading retailers in the industry, with over 2,000 stores across 35 countries. They also offer a wide selection of makeup products from top brands like Urban Decay and Nars Cosmetics that you won’t find anywhere else.
But did you know that Sephora also has a strong social media presence? They’ve been ranked as one of Forbes’ 30 Most Influential Brands on Social Media for 11 consecutive years. And it’s not just because they’re friendly with influencers or celebrities. Their strategy is entirely focused on listening to customers through multiple channels so they can provide excellent service and support when it is most needed.
11. Netflix
Netflix is a company that has been at the forefront of social media for over a decade. They have an excellent social listening program in place that monitors all forms of online conversations about their products and services.
In this way, Netflix can learn what people are saying about its content and how it can improve it. This information is used for PR purposes as well—Netflix sends out tweets or posts on Facebook with links back to content that’s relevant at the moment (for example, “The latest episode of Stranger Things just came out”).
12. The Coca-Cola Company
The Coca-Cola Company has a social listening strategy that uses data to improve its products and services, as well as its marketing campaigns. They use social listening to help them understand what consumers want, how they want it, and where they are getting it.
In addition to using data in this way, Coca-Cola also uses social media analytics tools (like Hootsuite). It helps them get an idea of how people are interacting with their content on Facebook or Twitter. It also makes it easy for them to figure out what works best for each platform at any given time so that they can continue developing new strategies based on those findings.
How do you develop a great social listening strategy?
It’s important to have a solid strategy in place before you start listening. You can’t just go and search Facebook for your competitors’ posts, Google customer reviews and insights on Twitter, or read LinkedIn groups and comment sections for the latest industry trends. You need to research how people are talking about them and what they’re saying about their competitors. Then, you need to figure out which social networks those conversations are happening on and why.
Once you’ve done all this research and set up your plan of attack, it’s time for action! Use tools like Hootsuite or Buffer so that when someone tweets at one company but only mentions another company by name in passing, there will be alerts sent out automatically. So that someone else who monitors those channels doesn’t miss anything either!
Now let’s say everything goes well; everyone is happy with their work product. They have metrics that show how effective each person’s efforts have been over time since they began collaborating months ago. Great job! Now let’s talk about setting goals based on these findings.
You need to know what the company’s goals are. For example, say you’re doing social media for one of these companies, and they want to increase their followers on Twitter by 200% in 2 months. That means they need around 2,000 new followers per month. With this in mind, it’s time to start monitoring their social media accounts every day and looking for ways to help them achieve those goals!
The next step is to start using social media tools like Google Alerts, Hootsuite, and Buffer. These are all great tools that will help you monitor what’s going on in the world of your client’s industry. They will also make sure they don’t miss any opportunities that arise!
Learn from these brands and pick up some tips on how to implement your social listening strategy.
Social listening is a great way to understand your customers and improve your business. It can be the difference between success and failure for many companies. If you’re not listening to what people are saying about you on social media, then you’re missing out on opportunities to build relationships with influencers and grow your brand’s reach.
Here’s how social listening can help:
- Learn from other brands to find new influencers who will promote or endorse your product or service. If someone makes an interesting comment online that relates directly back to what they sell (or offer), look into creating a relationship with them through email marketing or social media outreach campaigns so that they’ll tell others about how great the product works!
- Find out which competitors aren’t doing as well as they should be and then figure out why. Is there anything unique about their strategy? Are there any gaps between what these companies do well vs poorly? These kinds of insights will help guide future decisions when developing social media strategiesaround building relationships with influencers who might otherwise ignore one’s brand entirely due to the lack of interest level.”
Conclusion
We hope this article has given you some ideas on how to use social listening to improve your brand. There are many different ways to do it, and we encourage you to try them out for yourself! Whatever strategy you choose, we think that the most important thing is making sure your customers are happy with their experience—and if this means using social media more effectively, then so be it.
