Social listening is the ability to monitor or listen to what is being said about a company or brand online. This allows you to get an overall picture of what people are saying about you on social media, forums, blogs and other websites. By using the right tools, you can use social listening to improve your business.

There are a number of tools available to help you listen to what is being said. It can be something as simple as setting up a Google alert for your name or brand or something more robust like a tool specific for social listening like Brandwatch. Regardless of what you use, social listening is an important part of your online marketing efforts. Here are some ways to use social listening to improve your business.

 

Customer Service

 

Social listening gives you an opportunity to identify both positive and negative feedback about your business. You set up keywords to listen for and see what people are saying about you. This gives you the opportunity to thank your customers for positive reviews and respond to customers who may have had negative experiences to improve them. When tracking keywords, be sure to set up alerts for variations of your brand (eg. acronyms, the name without spaces, the name with and without the @ symbol etc) and include any common misspellings as well.

 

Product feedback

 

Just launched a new product or service? You can seek out immediate feedback from early adopters by monitoring for product related keywords. You’ll be able to see what people like or don’t like. What features they think may be missing or how to improve the user experience. They might highlight any bugs that they encounter and you can pass that on to be fixed as soon as possible.

 

Identify influencers

 

By keeping an eye on who is talking about you and how frequently, you can identify avid fans who can be turned into influencers to advocate for your brand. After you’ve identified them through social listening, you can reach out to them and develop a relationship. Depending on your product it can be anything from an additional product for them to giveaways for their community. Get creative!

 

Competitive analysis

 

Using social listening, you can monitor what your competitors are doing and gain insight about their company. You can keep an eye on what customers are saying about them, any big announcements or developments and what they’re sharing online. Using this information can guide your business decisions and see how you fit in the industry.

 

Get inspiration

 

As previously mentioned, social listening can help you monitor your competition. It can also help you to monitor industry-related keywords. Both of these can help your business see where there are opportunities for your business to fill. You can see what questions people are asking or problems people have encountered and attempt to solve them either with your current product and services or by developing something new.

How do you use social listening to improve your business?