WCRC Brands Illustrated up till 15 October | Page 15

effective advertisements.
When customers are either overjoyed or
disappointed in a product, they often take
to online forums to express themselves.
Browsing the comments that consumers
leave online is a great way for marketers to
see what their companies are doing right
and what needs to be improved. Social
media platforms make it easy for companies to compare their social media marketing efforts to those of their competitors.
The amount of shares, likes, comments,
and followers can easily be monitored
between companies.

are learning the best practices for how
to manage customer service issues on
social media. By actively using social
listening the brand can successfully
identify potentially harmful conversation
and ameliorate the situation before it has
a drastic impact on the reputation.
Moreover, try to allocate time and
resources to monitor more general
discussion about the industry as a whole
rather than concentrating on selected
competitors. These insights are valuable
for developing the overall business
strategies.

Why social listening is important for business?

Product Development and Yard-sticking the Performance
One of the greatest benefits of social
listening is to receive customer feedback
about the products, brand or industry.
Analyze what consumers are saying to
discover valuable insights and adjust the
business strategies to fit the needs of the
consumer. Be prepared to receive honest
feedback that sometimes criticizes some
aspect of the business.
Besides, social listening also helps in
measuring tactics for more short term
campaigns.

Determining Effective Social Media
Strategy
Integrating social listening helps in learning about people’s opinion about the brand
or the industry on the digital platform.
Focused listening helps in knowing which
social networks are most actively used by
the audience and the general sentiment
about your brands, products, competitors
or industry. As such it supports in determining an effective social media strategy.
Developing Brand Reputation and
Understanding Competition
In today’s social age it is the customers
who are determining conversation about
a brand, product or industry. Many brands

Benchmarking
Social listening is a great tool for benchmarking your brands to your competitors.
By measuring the volume of conversation
about your brand and your competitors,
you are able to benchmark
benchma your social
media performance.

So why do
don’t brands
listen?

The challenge comes from the
sheer volume,
volume velocity, and
variety. Besides
the dauntBes
ing technical
intricacies
of
technic
setting up the appropriate
analytics,
analytic the aspects of
choosing information
choo
sources, filtering
sou
the right data,
th
and its interpretation and

aggregation are susceptible to errors
and biases.
Used correctly, social analytics can
yield enormous benefits to an organization’s goals. It is critical that the models
correspond to the business context.
Social listening and analysis has to be
an ongoing process.
The goal of social listening isn’t just to
hear what others are saying about you,
it’s to act on those discussions. Social
listening is a skill that brands need to
develop and work on if they want to
achieve maximum success with digital
media. It is crucial aspect in gaining new
customers and retaining loyal ones. The
volume of conversation around your
brand is important. Part of the consumer
decision process is to see what others
have said about your product or service. If there are no reviews or relevant
mentions about your product or service,
then a potential customer may search
for a company that has generated more
social media conversation.
Customer sentiment is the single
most important factor that helps in
improving customer loyalty. A brand
can use its social media space to
converse with its target audience and
gauge their sentiments regarding the
brand. People appreciate businesses
that listen to them, respond and take
action on the suggestions that they may
have shared. When a brand offers great
customer service on its social media
page, it reaches out to more than just
one particular customer, but sends out a
strong message to all its customers on
the social network.
Perhaps what makes a business
truly social is how they utilize the vast
platforms, tools and user generated
content to better search, listen, engage
and enchant their customers. By understanding what is possible by properly
using social listening tools, it enables
a business and its employees to truly
march in harmony with their customers.
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