Learn how to use Social Listening to boost your marketing and sales strategies
Understanding what customers want and the best way to communicate with them is the dream of every brand, isn’t it? Many people might think it’s impossible to meet these expectations, but Social Listening is here to prove otherwise
If you’re not familiar with this strategy yet or have doubts about how to apply it to your company’s reality, in this article we explain everything you need to know: the benefits, step-by-step process, and which tools assist in Social Listening. Continue reading and check it out.
What is Social Listening
The Social Listening Social Listening is the process of monitoring what people have to say about your brand, product, or industry on social media and extracting insights to enhance the relationship with your audience.
This strategy goes far beyond just keeping an eye on notifications that arrive on your profile and responding to comments or messages from followers.
It requires you to pay attention to positive and negative feedback, conversations started in forums, important keywords for your business, among other things.
It seems like quite extensive work, doesn’t it? But it’s important to emphasize that it doesn’t end there. Social Listening, besides listening, also proposes the implementation of changes or improvements based on this audience feedback.
Thus, it is a process of analysis and strategy definition that takes into consideration a 360º vision of what is being discussed on the internet and how all this can be used in favor of the development of your brand or product.
But how does Social Listening differ from social media monitoring? Below we present the main differences and the advantages this practice delivers for companies.
Social Listening vs. Social Media Monitoring
Because of its proposal to listen and respond to what the public has to say on the internet, many people confuse Social Listening with social media monitoring.
After all, if you see notifications and respond to messages or comments, even negative ones, you are listening and paying attention to your followers, right? The answer is that you are listening and helping, but not completely.
The social media monitoring is just a part, albeit an important one, of Social Listening. It is responsible for collecting data, information, and offering an immediate solution to people who interact with the brand.
Social Listening, however, goes much further; it sees the whole picture and reflects on the audience’s feedback, whether it’s directly about the company and the product or not, and learns about their behavior.
With this, it is possible to adapt to trends in your industry, build longer-lasting relationships with customers, and deliver the experiences that these people actually want to have.
Advantages of Social Listening for brands
Considering the advantages that can be delivered by Social Listening, there is a series of strategies that can be adapted to the reality of your company.
When we not only follow the buzz but also analyze the context and its opportunities, there is a chance to
- develop improvements so that your product meets the expectations and needs of customers.
- identify new needs or market demands, anticipate changes in customer preferences, and adjust your marketing strategy accordingly.
- create a differentiated experience for your audience.
- produce and deliver the right content to the right people, always proposing solutions to your persona’s pain points.
- understand what perception people have about your brand.
- quickly identify customer problems or complaints and respond to them promptly and appropriately.
- leveraging market and current trends to create campaigns that generate engagement.
You can see that there are many opportunities to benefit from the practice of Social Listening, right? Next, you will find out how to start this process.
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4 steps to implement Social Listening
The adoption of Social Listening in your routine can occur through four essential steps
- Monitoring use tools not only to track notifications that reach you but also to look for what the audience doesn’t tell you directly, market trends, relevant keywords for the business, among other issues.
- Listening after gathering all the information, being able to separate the wheat from the chaff is very important to pay attention to what really needs to be analyzed and can contribute to the growth of your brand.
- Analysis with the data in hand, it’s crucial to interpret what they say about your company and how they can generate real opportunities for interaction with the public.
- Strategy definition once you know which path to follow, it’s time to plan what actions will be taken to enhance your product, campaigns, content, and the overall customer experience.
It’s worth noting that this process doesn’t happen in a straight line. It’s actually a cycle; every time you change your strategies and adapt them to the needs of the audience, it’s important to restart monitoring and understand how the new actions are resonating.
Tools that can assist in the process
The monitoring stage of Social Listening becomes much simpler when you have the assistance of the right tools. Therefore, we have selected here 3 social listening tools that can be very useful for your process.
- BuzzSumo: allows monitoring of trends, popular, and high-performing content, in addition to helping to identify influencers who can boost your brand online.
- Audiense: helps in tracking the target audience by offering powerful insights into various segments and also about your competition.
- Brandwatch: helps to understand what the public has to say about your brand, besides allowing the tracking of market opportunities and reacting quickly to negative consumer feedback.
With the right tools and a well-aligned Social Listening process it becomes much easier to meet the audience’s expectations and offer the best possible experience to your customers.
Want other tips on how to keep an eye on what they say about your brand? Then don’t waste time and also read our article 5 tools to monitor hashtags on social media!
