Grow Your Brand with Social Media Listening

Social media has long been a popular online promotion tool for most companies worldwide. It is all about improving its image, building a loyal community around the brand, or getting traffic and customers. But, the primary purpose of SMM is not limited to remaining visible to the audience and bringing subscribers to the website’s landing pages. The possibilities of social networks go far beyond the channel of cheap traffic. 

Today, any information is spreading with an avalanche-like speed. In a situation where 91% of 18-34-year-olds trust online reviews, the loss of control over the brand’s reputation can lead to disaster. When monitoring your brand mentions in social media, you get valuable data and insights to influence your business.

In other words, social media is more than increasing your audience and brand recognition. It is also an excellent solution to uncover numerous insights and trends to win the competition.

No More Guesswork in Your Promotion Strategy 

By listening to your audience on social media, you can improve your reputation and prevent future problems. And these are not all the advantages that social listening can offer.

Social listening is tracking what is being said about your brand on social networks. It can be any comment, post, tweet, description of a photo with your brand’s products, publications of employees, or other people that can affect your company’s reputation on the web.

If considering the endless struggle for users’ attention in social networks, social listening will help you understand what impression is formed in the social media space about your company. When you know what the audience wants from you and your competitors, you can improve many aspects of your strategy.

Here’s how social listening will boost your social media marketing strategies.

Quick topic search for posts and messages.

Constantly coming up with new and exciting messages is challenging. So instead, use social listening to find out what your audience is talking about and what it wants.

Social listening is also widely used in research, whether it is market research or finding new content ideas. In addition, it will help to identify the latest buzzwords and trends to include them in your messages.

For example, Samsung discovered that people interested in OLED TV tend to care for the environment. Based on this, Samsung knew what its target audience lived by and made its posts on social networks focusing on environmental issues. Thus, social listening helped the company become a leader in the target niche of the market.

Instead of throwing millions of tons of cardboard away every year, imagine if we could recycle packaging into the perfect design piece.

The Serif’s award-winning Eco-Package is truly a future-first, planet-first innovation.#CES2020 #TheSerif #EcoPackage #SamsungTV #Samsung pic.twitter.com/QZqcb6Q0SL

— Samsung TV (@SamsungTV) January 9, 2020

Speak like a local.

When managing a global brand, you undoubtedly understand that your audience in various regions behaves differently. For example, your message created for the US audience can have a different effect on your Asian followers. 

People are more open and honest about brands than during surveys when communicating with friends and followers. So, by monitoring social media mentions in a specific location, you get a holistic view of a customer’s mood and expectations. 

Improve customer support.

Social networks have become a platform for customer service, and this is not surprising because it is more convenient for users to ask questions in the environment where they spend most of their time.

If you immediately respond to negative comments, you can prevent the spread of an unpleasant discussion. In addition, you show customers and subscribers that you are involved and always ready to help by working with negative comments and answering questions. This helps manage the brand’s reputation in social networks and establish trusting relationships with customers.

Understand the mood of your audience “here and now.”

Social listening gives a clear picture of what social media users think of your brand in general, your announcements, pricing/products line changes, and more. This is online data that you can get here and now. For example, you can immediately evaluate customers’ responses to a new product or understand whether there is a return from a PR campaign.

Keep an eye on competitors.

Innovative and intelligent brands are those whose attention is focused on achieving their goals and the people around them. Using social media listening strategies, you will get more information about your competitors. Conversation research gives you an idea of your competitors’ tactics, customer satisfaction, and general sentiment.

You can track competitors’ online presence by monitoring their mentions on Twitter and Instagram. As a result, you will understand competitors’ value propositions, some insights about product development, and new features. When you know what their customers want, you will implement these elements into your products and services.

Search for new clients.

Every business needs to know how to generate potential clients and convert them into regular customers. These loyal customers are not just good for your image, but they also turn other people into customers through word of mouth. Based on keywords and critical queries in your marketing strategy, you will be able to track the necessary conversations and bring potential customers to your products or services. In addition, you can use social listening to identify people interested in your product, reach out to them, and make your offer.

Just take a look at one funny example, where Eric did not notice the brand’s name of the trainers and asked Reebok about them. Reebok answered the question and directed the guy to the competitor. 

Find opinion leaders who love your brand.

Opinion leaders use social networks to discuss brands and products they like and recommend. How they relate to your brand and what they say can significantly influence the attitude of your target audience. That is why it is worth keeping track of what people are saying about you on social networks — this can be crucial, especially when anticipating negative comments and discussions.

Moreover, social listening helps identify those who love your brand and enjoy using your products or services. You can quickly contact such brand “ambassadors” and offer them cooperation. Influencer marketing is one of the most effective forms of promotion, so use social listening to find those who will directly or indirectly promote your brand.

Learn more about the latest industry trends.

Find out all the latest market trends and determine which ones your business fits into. You can adjust your brand’s positioning to keep up with the times depending on the trend directions. Analyze current discussions and hashtags to adapt your content to them and generally match trends.

It will also be helpful to monitor political and social discussions and conversations, as they can directly influence users’ purchasing decisions. For example, if there is a gap in the industry’s product line, you can keep that in mind and release the product that users are talking about.

Make social listening work for your business with Vista Social. The social media management platform offers powerful social listening tools to uncover business-critical insights. Understand and apply insights to your strategy. Revamp marketing, customer service, product development, and more using listening data.

Conclusion

Social listening is a necessary health check that every brand should regularly perform, no matter how big or small it is. Social listening should be an integral part of your digital strategy when you decide to put your brand online.

Combined with verbal communication skills, social listening can make you an unstoppable force capable of creating impressive social media content and providing an insightful and rewarding experience for your audience.

Listen, analyze, act, and optimize your strategy with Vista Social, a complete all-in-one solution for social media management. Identify industry gaps and leverage opportunities to differentiate your business. No credit card is required.