What is Social Listening, and Why is it Important
What is Social Listening, and Why is it Important?
In recent times, you may have seen more people in the digital marketing sphere using a particular phrase. As you probably guessed from the title, this phrase is social listening. But what does it mean? Why is it important?
What's Social Listening?
Essentially, social listening is the process of monitoring online conversations regarding a product, service, brand, or company. It's the modern, digital equivalent of holding a cup against the wall to listen in on what people are saying about your brand online. Often, this involves monitoring mentions of products, services, and brands. We also like to call this “digital listening” since it can (and should) span much further than just social media.
The field of social listening continues to expand and now encapsulates information-gathering about competitors and industry trends. Each year, more businesses are monitoring what people are saying about their competitors on social media. If fruitful, this process can provide leverage and opportunities to meet customers' needs more closely.
As social media's popularity grows, more and more people are using various platforms as an outlet for their opinions, views, and feedback. For this reason, social listening offers plenty of insights and aids in decision-making for businesses of all sizes.
Social Listening vs. Social Media Monitoring
At this stage, you may be sitting with a confused look on your face due to the similarities between social listening and social media monitoring. While the terms are sometimes used interchangeably, they are actually distinct concepts. For one thing, social media monitoring is mainly interested in your own brand, products, and social mentions with the immediate goal of to customer comments.
On the other hand, social listening is more expansive in that it covers the entire industry—competitors, trends, outside factors that might affect business—and should ideally go beyond just social in its reach. You listen to what people are saying about the market and your brand in order to improve and grow.
Importance of Social Listening
As a business or marketer, you probably have a to-do list as long as your arm. Consequently, every decision comes with an opportunity cost. Why should you prioritize social listening?
As barriers to entry fall and competitors look to steal your customers and employees, it has never been more important to understand precisely what your audience wants. Thankfully, social listening provides the information that you need to fine-tune your marketing strategy. In fact, it goes beyond marketing because you can use the insights for product development, hiring practices, and a variety of other things that would interest many teams outside of just marketing and communications.
By understanding social media conversations, you learn more about what people think of your products, brand, and service. Simultaneously, you learn what they think about the products of your competitors. From there, you can leverage this information to improve your service. Maybe you can develop a product that addresses specific customer desires or concerns.
From a financial perspective, you'll generate more revenue because your social media strategy, products, and every other aspect of the business will resonate with its intended audience more effectively than ever before. In fact, iit goes deeper than this: your audience will appreciate the effort you've put into understanding them.
In addition to using social listening to inform changes you make to the business, you can also directly reply to comments and conversations. At this stage, your heart rate has likely gone up a little at the thought of responding to people. But you shouldn't fear engaging happy customers or even harsh critics, because a single thoughtful message on social media can encourage people to spend money with the brand or apply for a job opening. According to some studies, as many as half of people who buy something from a brand appreciate responses from the company about that product or their user experience. It makes them feel cared for.
As well as responding to positive comments and questions, you can address negative feedback and control the narrative. Responding to negative feedback puts your side of the story out there and, so long as your messaging isn't aggressive, many customers (or potential customers) who view the interaction will be encouraged to give you the benefit of doubt, because they see that you try to accommodate even disgruntled users.
Curious to learn more about the differences in social listening, digital listening, and social monitoring? Want to know what we’d recommend focusing on for your brand?
Reach out to shout@luminodigital.com for a free consultation!