Social Listening: Why it’s Important?
What is Social Listening?
Social listening is the process of finding and contributing to conversations about you or your brand online by seeking out brand mentions, specific keywords or phrases and comments. Like social selling, social listening is about being where the conversation is – on social media. By listening to conversations, you can participate, educate and build relationships with prospects and customers.
Social listening is more than logging in to your Facebook page and checking the notification tab every 10 minutes. You need a social listening strategy, which begins by choosing the right marketing network and then, you can start to participate in conversations online.
Benefits of Social Listening:
It increases average spend per customer
A study by Bain & Co. found that when companies respond to customer service messages on social media, those customers spend between 20% to 40% more with the company.
It reduces operational costs
A study by Brand Watch found that handling customer service requests via social media channels is up to 12 times cheaper than handling the same requests by phone. McKinsey & Co. also found that shifting to social media customer service can reduce cost per contact by as much as 83%.
It gives you a competitive advantage
Research by Social Media Marketing University found that 76% of brands do not participate in social listening. And of the brands that do participate, only 38% actually respond to their customers.
It results in greater job satisfaction rates
According to Sparkcentral, 68% of companies say that the agents that are dedicated to social media customer service show greater job satisfaction rates than agents assigned to phone and email support channels.
Understand and engage with your audience
Social media listening helps you better understand what your audience wants from your brand.
For example, an existing customer might tweet about how much they love your marketing product. Or you might spot a conversation where people are looking for solutions your product or digital service could provide.
Industry and competitor intelligence
Social listening is more than understanding what people say about you. You also want to know what they say about your competitors and your industry in general. This gives you important insights into where you fit in the marketplace.
It shows you what your competitors are up to in real-time. Are they launching new products? Developing new marketing campaigns?
Avoid crises before they happen
It allows you to track sentiment in real-time, so you can know right away if there’s a significant change in how much people are talking about you or the mood behind what they say.
It’s like an early warning system that alerts you to positive and negative changes in how your brand is perceived online.
If you’re getting more engagement than usual, look for the reasons behind it. Your audience shares loads of helpful information about what they like and what they don’t. Those lessons can help guide your strategy across channels.
Fill your funnel
People generally love it when you offer to help solve their problems. But strangers on the Internet most certainly do NOT love it when brands jump into their social conversations with a hard sell.
Social listening helps you uncover questions and conversations about your industry on digital platforms. These are all potential opportunities to reach out and introduce your brand or share your expertise.