Your customers are talking about your brand on social media. Are you listening to what they’re saying?
If you are not using social media listening tools, you are missing opportunities for business growth and development.
Let’s see what the latest statistics say about brand related conversations on social media:
- 96% of the people that discuss brands online do not follow those brands’ owned profiles (source: Brandwatch);
- 78% of people who complain to a brand via Twitter expect a response within an hour (source: Lithium);
- 56% of Millennials have complained or called out brands on social (source: Sproutsocial).
Here are 7 ways to grow your business with social media listening tools:
1. Monitor and influence brand awareness
In your social media listening tool’s dashboard, setup a series of keywords that are relevant for your brand. They should be: your brand name, your industry, your CEO’s name, your products etc.
Whenever any of these keywords come up you have the opportunity to react, whether they are mentioned in a negative or positive context. Don’t let either of contexts go unattended! Respond to each of them appropriately.
Measure any changes in brand awareness and take the necessary steps to influence growth.
2. Monitor and control brand crisis
Mark Schafer has written recently about how one of Marriott Hotels screwed up his stay starting with his hotel reservation followed by misplacing his parcel. Mark tried various ways to solve his problem: by phone, through email and finally taking it up on social media.
Mark’s attempts have fallen on deaf years: the hotel remained silent. Obviously the giant hotel chain has a communication management problem including lack of monitoring their brand name on social media.
Pointless to say Mark has decided to never step into another Marriott Hotel again. He turned to his social media community and shared his story publicly. The Marriott Hotel is a giant brand name and it’s amazing to me that its customer management strategy doesn’t include monitoring its brand name on social media.
3. Find prospects and turn them into leads or customers
If you setup your relevant keywords correctly, you can easily use social media listening tools to find prospects.
Depending on the context, you can send them a link with a solution to their problem, a sample of your product or a free trial of your service. It’s up to you to find the best way to drive them to the next step of your marketing or sales funnel.
4. Monitor your competition
Always keep an eye on your competitors and keep yourself up-to-date with their campaigns and what their customers are talking about.
5. Find conversations your brand can join or learn from
Using one of the social media listening tools available you can find conversations around your brand, your products or subjects relevant to your industry.
These conversations can be a source of inspiration for new articles on your company blog.
Or they can help you update your buyer profile and customer journey.
Get into your customer’s mind, extract valuable information on how to improve your product so it’s 100% fit.
If your input is valuable to the conversation, don’t be shy and jump right in!
6. Find reviews and feedback
If your customers are happy with your products, they will turn to their social media accounts and tell their community about it. If they are disappointed, they will do the same.
Thank your customers for positive reviews and show them some love – send them a discount coupon or a gift. Reach out to your dissatisfied customers and look for a way to address their complaint.
7. Find influencers
Social media influencers are persons with large communities.
These influencers usually fall into the following categories: experts in their fields, TV and radio personalities, artists, politicians, bloggers, fashion models, actors etc. They can influence the opinions of their community members and their buying decisions.
Using a social media listening tool you can find micro-influencers with smaller communities, but high engagement rates. Reach out to them and find together the best way to involve their communities and help each other.
