It feels great when your friends or your Ma and Pa listen to you, right? Not just absently nodding but properly listening to your ideas and problems? In the same way, a customer feels truly valued when brands hear out instead of pushing random ads and products down your throat. But it still feels like brands and companies use their social channels to do exactly this. As we move deeper into 2023, the success of your brand will depend on how well you listen to your users’ pain points, needs and complaints. So what you need is a thoughtful social listening strategy for better connection and long-term customer satisfaction.

What is Audience or Social Listening?

When you keep a track of what people are saying about your brand, products and competitors on digital media channels, you are engaging the audience listening. Social listening is one of the most common and effective ways to conduct audience listening. Monitor conversations on social media channels to understand what people say about your brand or topics related to your industry. Keep track of what's being said every day to create better content, build better audience personas, and devise better digital strategies. Gain a better understanding of your audience's needs and desires using audience listening. Delve deeper into your audience research for specific insights into your existing and prospective customers. Create meaningful and sustainable long-term relationships with your audience members using audience listening.

Why should brands use social listening?

• Strengthen industry knowledge by staying on top of developments in your niche. This is particularly vital for B2B marketers.
• Be in the loop about what people are talking about your brand or products on social media and other online channels like blogs, news articles, and websites.
• By carefully listening, you can get a clear idea of your customer’s pain points, needs, motivations and expectations and craft thoughtful messaging, campaigns, and content. The outcome is enhanced customer experience.
• Likewise, you can constantly adapt to your existing clientele’s needs smoothly. This is crucial because the rapport you build and the long-term relationships you cultivate via social listening are more meaningful and valuable.
• You can also prepare for any social media crisis or brand incident and react accordingly.
• You will have the pulse of the market like competitor updates, mentions, and announcements made on social media channels.

How You Can Listen Like a Pro?

• Know what to listen out for

The primary thing when crafting a social listening strategy is to know what is it that you are trying to listen to. This will help you align your social listening plan with your overall digital marketing strategy. You can keep your ear on some basic metrics such as:

• Innovations or developments in the industry
• Brand mentions
• Competitors and their mentions
• Customer feedback including reviews, complaints etc.
• Relevant hashtags and targeted keywords
• Topics that are related to your niche

 

• Use particular tools

Many audience listening tools are available. For example, Google Alerts is quite popular due to its scope. It can track everything from blogs to scientific research. Besides searching for your selected terms, it can also alert you for any term, enabling you to track products, competitors and keywords. You can also set the frequency and keep a close tab on discussions related to you and your brand.

• Learn how to React to Feedback

This will include both positive and negative feedback and while monitoring mentions, you will do good to react to both. Like other businesses, you might get a bad or even a fake review at some point in your journey but your response will make all the difference to your potential customers. For a complaint, you can start with a heartfelt apology and ask for more details for a proper resolution. In case of positive feedback, express gratitude. If it’s on social media, respond ASAP.

• Keep an eye out for your competitors

This is more crucial in case they are driving engagement or creating a buzz in the market. You can effectively use social media metrics and social intelligence tools. These will help you not just with the numbers (likes, followers, etc.) but also the kind of content that people are connecting to. 

• Make Notes

There should be a dedicated someone who will regularly update all the insights gained. They will note down the type of comments on the content you’re generating; this way, you will speak, so to say, to your social data and boost your brand presence.

• Take action

When you look at your data, do you find any recurring themes? If yes, what is it and how can it help you? If not, then this lack also indicates that your overall marketing strategy needs an overhaul. Looking at your insights at regular intervals with a fresh eye helps you craft a sustainable solution for redressing grievances and scaling your business. To tune you’re your ears and pick even the faintest buzz of happenings, you’ll need the perfect team of digital marketers, one that’s got experience as well as constantly seeking the new. We Love Digital Marketing, a professional digital marketing agency has both and can go the extra mile to help you with audience listening, social media marketing, and more. For enquiry, contact us. Also read: Social Media Marketing Agency For Your Business In Kolkata

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