How having a social listening strategy can help your business

Social listening is a simple strategy that any brand can use to help improve brand awareness and understand customers better. It’s a tool that is becoming increasingly vital – around two thirds of marketers today agree that social listening has increased in value in the past year. Analysing what is being said about your brand, and in relation to specific keywords, can create the kinds of insights that can be transformative for your business going forwards.

What exactly is social listening?

It is essentially tracking all the mentions of your brand across social media platforms in real time. You can also use it to track mentions of your competitors to get an idea of what their current perception is, as well as looking at trending content and doing sentiment analysis on topics that are relevant to your industry and what you do. Altogether, this information can be used to create insights that have an impact right across the business, from marketing to customer service and product strategy. The social listening strategy you use is the approach that you take to social listening, as well as the goals that you’re hoping to achieve by doing it.

Is social listening the same as social monitoring?

Social monitoring is the more passive of the two activities. It provides a way for your business to respond quickly to anything being said about it online but it doesn’t provide much of a big picture overview of brand perception and what your customers really want.

How can a social listening strategy help your business?

• Giving you an understanding of your customers. Social listening could highlight pain points that your customers have or where people are talking about solutions that they are looking for but haven’t found. Feedback like this can be used to improve the products and services that you offer and make customers feel more appreciated and engaged.
• Insights for products and business. When you are effective at social listening you’ll have a clear idea of what is working for your audience in terms of the business and your products – and what is not working. This is vital intelligence for your marketing teams, as well as product and customer services departments. Insights about problems with competitor products or services could also reveal gaps in the market that your business could fill.
• Tracking sentiment in real time. This is vital for crisis management and something that will allow your brand to stay on top of an evolving situation and handle it more effectively.
• A great way to nurture relationships through social selling. It’s important to note that customers don’t enjoy it when brands jump into their conversations and start trying to sell. However, it’s a different case entirely where relationships are gradually nurtured through social selling – and can naturally lead to the potential for more converstion where there is a strong social listening strategy in place.

Social listening could be the tool that your business needs to make it to the next level in 2023. To find out how Iconic Digital can help you with your social listening strategy, get in touch today, call us on 020 7100 0726. Find out more about our Social Media Marketing Agency in London.