decide what to listen for online and on what platforms. Then, figure out what you want to accomplish. Most businesses use social listening to learn how people feel about their brand, monitor industry trends, and identify high-impact keywords and hashtags. Casting a wide social-listening net will undoubtedly capture some negative reviews. Rather than avoiding unpleasant feedback, use it as an opportunity to shine. If a customer complains, reach out as quickly as possible and say you’re sorry they’re having this experience. (You’re not admitting missteps but acknowledging the commenter is unhappy.) Then, describe what you’re doing to solve the problem or offer to discuss the issue directly with the commenter. This demonstrates a sincere intent to keep that person as a customer. Log, organize, analyze, and study your data for trends and insights. Over time, understanding where, how, and why your business is mentioned online will empower you to stay ahead of customer tastes and industry trends. TAKING THE PULSE Social Listening Supercharges Marketing Success
Monitoring what people say about your products and services on social media, known as “social listening,” can be a powerful tool in your marketing arsenal. Deciding how to use it, however, is a high-risk, high-reward proposition. According to the Digital Marketing Institute, a training and certification company, social listening has huge potential rewards if done well. These include burnishing your brand’s reputation, understanding your customers more deeply, and gathering valuable intelligence on your competitors. However, if you decide not to bother with social listening or do it poorly, you miss out on the world’s largest source of customer insights at your peril. For example, if a new marketing campaign touches on negative commentary on social media, a tuned-in business can quickly retool the campaign. A company that doesn’t use social listening is likely to be blind-sided. Companies can also analyze conversations to determine what customers like and don’t like about, for example, a new hamburger menu item or a meal-delivery service, and understand the underlying emotions.
This doesn’t mean you must spend all your waking hours reacting to YouTube, Facebook, X, and TikTok notifications. Various social listening tools, including Hootsuite, Google Alerts, Brandwatch, SparkToro, and Mention, can assist you. The first step in working out a social listening strategy is to research your buyer personae, or the fictional profiles of your prototypical customers, to help you
Also, if your business should
face a crisis, insights gained through social listening are essential to crafting an effective response. Social media will most likely provide the first notice of the problem
and probably be the best medium for an initial response. A finely tuned social listening strategy enables businesses to get out in front of the issue, show they’re working to solve it and assure brand loyalists that damage control is in place.
2 | (410) 832-0000 | jwyatt@harrisonlawgroup.com
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