Before the social media boom, businesses relied on methods like customer surveys and focus groups to gain insight into the needs, wants, and perceptions of their customers. These methods were not only time and resource-consuming but also limited in the scope of feedback they could provide.
Now, social media provides an unprecedented opportunity for businesses to observe and learn from customer conversations in realtime. This has given rise to the practice of “social listening,” which involves tracking conversations related to your brand and its products or services.
What Can Social Listening Do for Your Business?
Social listening gives businesses a comprehensive view of their customers’ conversations and activities, helping them gain a better understanding of their target audience. Through social listening, businesses can identify key trends and topics related to their industry and products, track sentiment toward their brand, measure the impact of their campaigns, and much more.
Read Also – What is Social Listening?
By using social listening, businesses can quickly identify customer pain points and social media listening aids in developing marketing strategies to address them. Additionally, they can create a more personalized approach to engaging with customers, which can lead to increased customer loyalty and better brand advocacy.
Here are eleven ways businesses can use social listening to gain valuable insights and improve their bottom line:
11 Ways In Which Social Listening is Helpful for Your Business
Social listening solutions, when used strategically, can provide a wealth of insights that help businesses take their marketing efforts to the next level. Here are 11 ways social listening can be used to improve your business:
Managing The Brand
Every business has a unique brand identity, and social listening is key to managing it. Through social media, businesses can gain insights into how customers perceive their brand and products. This allows them to identify potential areas of improvement.
For example, a business may use social listening to identify negative sentiments toward its products or services. This helps them address customer complaints more quickly and effectively.
Taco Bell is a great example of a company that has used social listening to great effect. In one instance, the company’s social media team found out that customers were consistently unsatisfied with the cheese content within their Quesalupa. They immediately took action by dispatching emails to restaurants, reminding them of how to make sure it meets customer satisfaction levels. This resulted in a significant improvement in customer satisfaction and an increase in sales.
Managing & Monitoring Campaigns
Social listening can help businesses improve their campaigns. They can track conversations about their brand and products and understand what people think. This helps measure how successful the campaign is.
Businesses can also use social listening to find out what customers like and dislike about their products or services. This allows them to make improvements.
Almost every business uses social listening software to track keywords and phrases associated with their marketing campaigns. This helps them monitor conversations and respond quickly to customer feedback or criticism.
Create a Better Content Strategy
We all know that content is king when it comes to online marketing. Social listening can help businesses maximize their content efforts by providing insights into customer response.
Businesses can use social listening to measure the success of their content campaigns and make adjustments accordingly. By monitoring customer conversations, businesses can get a better sense of what content resonates with their target audience. This makes content strategies more effective.
For example, we all know the infamous Women’s Day tweets by Burger King in 2021. After monitoring customer conversations, Burger King realized that their content was not resonating with customers. They quickly changed it to better align with their brand identity.
Crisis Communication and Management
No matter how well-prepared a business may be, issues are inevitable. Social listening enables businesses to identify potential crises and respond appropriately.
By monitoring customer conversations and tracking keywords associated with their brand, businesses can identify any potential negative sentiment and take immediate action to address it.
This helps businesses minimize the impact of a crisis. It also demonstrates their commitment to customer satisfaction and helps build trust.
For instance, the Kendall Jenner Pepsi ad in 2017 drew a lot of criticism. The company pulled it and issued an apology. Pepsi was able to respond quickly to this controversy because they were monitoring customer conversations on social media.
Competition Strategy Analysis
Competitor analysis is a key element of any business strategy. Social listening services can help businesses track what their competitors are up to. They can also compare customer responses.
For example, if two companies are competing for the same market segment, social listening can help businesses gauge which company is winning the battle. Businesses can also differentiate themselves from their competitors using social listening.
Identifying Growth Opportunities
Businesses can use social listening to identify opportunities to grow. Social listening tools and solutions track what people are saying about their products and services, what their competitors are up to, or if customers want something new. With this information, businesses can make changes to become more successful.
Let us take the example of a business looking to enter a new country with its products. By monitoring customer conversations in that country, they can get an idea of the type of product or service they should offer. They can also make necessary adjustments to their existing products and services.
Helps PR team To Make Better Decisions
Social listening is also a great tool for PR teams to stay on top of potential crises and respond accordingly. By monitoring customer conversations, PR teams can identify any potential issues and take immediate action to address them.
Helps in Influencer Marketing
Nowadays, influencer marketing has become a powerful tool for businesses to engage with their target audiences. Social listening tools can help businesses identify potential influencers who would be a good fit for their brand and reach out to them.
It can also help businesses measure the success of any influencer campaigns they are running. By monitoring customer conversations, businesses can see how their campaigns are doing and make changes to ensure they are achieving the best results possible.
For example, companies like L’Oreal and Netflix, among others, have leveraged the benefits of social listening related to influencer marketing. They have worked with the right influencers for their brand and ensured their campaigns are successful.
Market Research
Social listening tools help businesses find out what people are saying about their products and services. They can also see what their competitors are doing. This information helps them decide if they should make changes or add new things to their business so that more people will buy from them.
It also helps them create better marketing campaigns by finding the right influencers who fit with the brand. Finally, social listening tools help with market research by providing insight into customer opinions and trends in the market, which can help businesses make better decisions.
Understanding Target Audience
By tracking customer conversations, businesses can get an idea of what people like and don’t like about their products and services. This helps them adjust their strategy accordingly so that they can better serve their target audience.
Suppose a business is looking to launch a new product. By tracking customer conversations, they can see if it’s something their target audience would be interested in or not. If customer conversations show that there is a strong interest in the product, then they can proceed with their launch plans.
L’Oreal, when launching a new hair color in 2011, was able to get an idea of its target audience’s interests by using social listening tools. They were able to use this information to develop the L’Oreal Feria Wild Ombre product. This color was a huge success, which wouldn’t have been possible had L’Oreal not used social listening tools for market research.
Tracking Your Brand Mentions
Finally, social listening tools can help businesses keep track of any mentions of their brand. This is important, as it helps businesses identify potential issues and respond to customer queries quickly.
For example, if a customer writes a negative tweet about the brand, businesses can use social listening tools to identify it and take action. They can reach out to the customer and try to resolve their issue. This improves customer satisfaction.
Conclusion
Social listening is a powerful tool that can help businesses in several ways. The benefits of social listening can range from understanding customer opinions and identifying potential influencers to measuring the success of campaigns. All these factors help businesses make better decisions and grow.
To get the most out of social listening, businesses can hire a social listening agency. Or, they can use a powerful social listening solution, like the one offered by Konnect Insights. With our social listening solution, businesses can maximize the value of their data and create a powerful brand image.
Contact us today to find out how we can help your business with social listening. Let us help you gain the insights you need to succeed!
