So you have started marketing your brand on various social media platforms. You have a professional photographer, a content writer and you pay for Facebook advertising regularly. Now what? Just sit back and wait for your customers to come you? Not quite! Enter, social listening.

Having your brand on social media is just one part of getting your name out there and letting consumers know what you’re all about and how you are different to your competitors, but your marketing strategy can’t stop there. You need to follow what your audiences are saying about your brand and what your competitors are doing that you aren’t.

This is where social listening comes in. Simply put, you need to be privy to any conversations that take place on social media, that are relevant to your brand. Social listening includes, firstly, the monitoring of your brand’s social media pages and profiles for any feedback or mentions of your brand, as well as the monitoring of any discussions that include specific keywords, topics or industries directly related to your brand.

Secondly, social listening includes analysing results from monitoring to gain insights into the market, in order to use it to your brand’s advantage.

Social listening enables companies to identify root causes behind conversations and use these findings to implement improved marketing strategies. These strategies can incorporate the content your audience really want. They can also create new ideas based on industry trends and ultimately improve customers relations as you are able to interact with customers, as you are also aware of the discussions they are having, which might include their preferences, tastes and concerns.

Here are 5 reasons to use social listening:

1.    It promotes a customer-centric mindset in your company. Instead of making assumptions and guessing what your customers want, you can actually hear it directly from the source, by reading their comments and opinions on social media. It allows you to use social media to solve your customers’ problems before they have to bring it to your attention.  This way you are constantly assisting your customers along their journey, instead of pushing your product or service onto them.

2.    It improves customer relations. By interacting with your customers directly, you are creating a sense of trust and ‘relatability’. Customers love interacting with brands directly. It lets them know their opinions and feedback are taken seriously and maintains that personal human element.

3.    It provides immediate damage control. Should your brand face a scandal or incident that causes negative attention, you are able to manage the crisis before it gathers momentum.

4.    It provides new opportunities. By listening to what customers have to say as well as what your competitors are up too, you might come across new and improved ways of doing things within your brand. Sometimes customers have great ideas for the improvement of a product or service that you may not have even thought about. Likewise, by monitoring discussions in your industry, you can track any new trends that may benefit your brand.

5.    It increases customer acquisition. By tracking the type of content that your followers enjoy, you can create similar and relevant content to match their preferences, thereby attracting them to your brand instead of having to bombard them with advertising they may not be interesting in.

Social media can indicate growth or a change in customer trends and you need to be aware of this so you can adapt as quickly as possible. Similarly, you brand needs to be at the forefront of ‘whats new’, so you need to constantly be on the lookout for new products, improved services and content that’s engaging and reliable.

At Image Matters, our ears are always burning, so contact us anytime if you want us to do all the social listening for you.