5 Ways Social Media Listening Can Benefit Your Business

Listening is one of the most underrated skills in marketing. Oftentimes it is the passive action of listening followed by a strategic response that will truly satisfy customers’ needs. With social media, you have the opportunity to tap into a sea of opinions. Social Media Listening is a way for your marketing team to sort through the data and engage in positive discussion with customers.

Here are 5 ways social listening can benefit your business.

1. Streamline customer service. Social media is best utilized to address customer concerns. Rather than simply reacting to what’s said, you can first evaluate the feedback. It might be a unique issue to that person or one that is general.  After you’ve evaluated the severity of the concern, you can swiftly craft an appropriate response to quell any dissatisfaction. Having a prepared guide for responding to different situations comes in handy.

2. Seek out trends. Social media is a window into what customers think about your company, its products, and its marketing efforts. A concern that is affecting one person may be affecting others. Responding to concerns quickly and directly can stop negative trends before they start. There will always be potential outliers who are overly critical or positive, but marketers can notice patterns that can guide the overall marketing strategy. It is also beneficial to track keyword and topic patterns that relate to your brand for use in SEO and SEM campaigns.

3. Empower Brand Advocates. By interacting honestly and with purpose you can become a valued member of your industry. Giving your company a human voice shows potential customers a person with whom they’re interacting. And, if you’re friendly and trustworthy, they will be more likely to do business with you again. You might even earn an advocate for your product. Consumers are 71% more likely to make a purchase based on social media referrals (Hubspot).

4. Inspire customer creativity. You may find that a customer has a good idea that can be implemented into your business. People posting about your business are going to be motivated, without bias, and have a novel experience with your product. You can also set people up with options and allow them to vote for their favorite. Lays embodied this possibility with their “Do Us a Flavor” campaign. They successfully generated 3.8 million new chip flavor submissions over 10 months by inviting their customers to get creative (Lays).

5. New way to reach your customers. People love the fact that you’re paying attention. They love it even more when they get the benefit of your interesting response. Maybe you notice a customer who expresses a problem that you can solve. In this way, Social media gives your company the chance to avert the traditional hardsell of an advertisement and instead meet them where they are. This means you need to differentiate from other companies by being yourself and responding with unique offerings.

Ready to listen? Want to know more about social media tracking tools? Read this link.