The benefits of social media listening
Social Media listening, is about tracking or listening to the discussions which are taking place about your brand on the social media websites. With this, you can easily find out what people are saying about your brand, how often, as well as, you can look for spikes and opportunities in the engagement in many aspects. It is certainly an important tool not only for your social media crisis plan, but it can be incredibly helpful for developing targeted plan as well.
We all know that, in this particular moment, in some corner of the world, your existing or prospective customers might be tweeting about what they are planning for their upcoming camping trip, instagramming about the coffee they had, pinning pictures of their last trip or might be liking the Facebook page of one of your competitors. Sounds normal, so why should you care about this?
The answer is pretty much simple – By sharing this much information on social networking sites your potential customers, existing clients and even your competitors are telling you about everything which you need to know to be more successful. If you listen to them properly, they will tell you about what should you sell them, how should you sell that to them and even how to beat your competitors. Only look for the relevant social signals through a social media management tool and you can use this information to pursue your prospects and customers towards the next stage of your customer life cycle.
By continuously and actively monitoring the social media discussions about your brand, you give yourself a great opportunity for:
- Listening to the negative criticism pertaining to your brand, which can be used to turn your unhappy customers into a lifelong patron, by sorting out their complaints about your brand.
- Listening to the appreciation and positive comments which people are giving about your brand to connect more closely with those people.
- Detecting a potential a social media crisis preparing to rise, before it develops completely and starts spiralling out of control.
Social media listening also helps you to:
- Find out the gaps in the market which could define a great opportunity for your brand’s growth and development.
- Keep an eye on your major competitors to know what they are up to and what is the current opinion of market about them.
- Discover new leads and sales opportunities for the potential clients who might be looking for your products or services at the moment.
- The information which you derive from social media listening opens new doors to newer marketing opportunities and helps you discover your business areas which need strengthening.