Social Media Marketing (SMM) has become the most effective marketing channel for businesses for more than two decades.
Over 53 % of the global population use one or more social media platforms for news, politics, entertainment, socialization, and to check out their favorite brands for products and services.
In this highly charged social media environment a company’s reputation is under constant surveillance which can determine the death or survival of the business. Social Listening is a very vital social media marketing tool every business needs to include in their social media marketing plan.
Top 3 Reasons Why Social Listening is Important:
Social Listening is the ability to monitor and analyze your company’s social media platforms for customer feedback, trends, and direct conversations about your brand, and your competitors. In order to gain useful insights to improve your product or service and make better marketing decision as a whole.
Monitoring you brand via your social media, blogs, websites etc., is the first stage in your social listening marketing strategy plan. This includes: likes, comments, reviews, shares and retweets. These social listening insights are very integral to track and analyze customer feedback, business metrics, monitor your competitors and industry trends so that appropriate actions can be taken to quickly address issues and seize growth opportunities. There are a number of social listening monitoring tools that are available to help marketers to monitor, measure social media metrics and scale their listening strategy in real time
Customers are the nucleus of every business, without them you can’t be successful.
Many businesses create great products and provide services that are in demand but maybe wondering why they are not increasing customer engagement or increase sales. They are probably not listening to their customers.
Customers have the freedom to instantly share information that laude or criticize businesses to millions of people on social media depending on the type of customer service they receive. It is very important to know what your customers are saying about your business on social media so that you can react to issues before they escalate or cause irreparable damage to your brand.
If you are using social media marketing but you are not listening to your customers – now is the time to start monitoring social conversations about your brands, products, services and social media campaigns. Interacting with your customers will help you to understand their behaviors- purchase patterns, likes, dislikes, needs, interests, attitudes, and emotions. You can convert social listening insights to impact in order to protect your brand’s reputation and deliver strong customer service.
Social listening insights are very valuable in measuring the results from audience feedback about your product or service, as well as what your competitors are talking about and what their customers are saying about them.
For instance, are your customers sharing rave reviews about your competitors’ product but just liking yours? Does your competitors’ use of influencers make their campaign more successful than yours? Have they increased engagement exponentially- retweets, likes, shares, comments? Do they have more followers than you? What are the metrics behind their overall engagement?
Listening to these social conversations will help you track your brand’s global mentions, monitor your competitors’ efforts across multiple social media channels and gain industry knowledge.
These metrics will provide you with key insights and business intelligence so you can implement an effective social media marketing strategy, scale your business and exceed your return on investment (RIO).
Social media marketing is the number one marketing tool used by businesses globally.
In order to realize the desired return on investment (RIO) and build a strong reputation it is paramount for businesses to create a social media marketing plan that includes social listening and utilize the relevant social listening tools to help them monitor social conversations about their brands and their competitors.
These key metrics and business intelligence can protect your brand’s reputation and help you create a winning social media marketing plan that will deliver strong customer service, enhance crisis management, increase engagement, improve products and services, scale your business and let your brand become a household name in your industry.
For more information on how to grow your small business on social media please leave comments below.
Caren Waugh is the CEO of CW Media Consultants, a proven communications and social media strategist, blogger, and print media contributor who helps small businesses to create brand awareness, strengthen customer relations, and shape their online marketing endeavors with winning social media strategies.