What is Social listening?

Social Listening is the strategic process of consolidating conversations about a particular topic on social media and web channels. Social Listening is a great way for brands irrespective of their size, audience, or industry to gain a deeper knowledge of their audience and market. Understanding what is being spoken about them can prove very beneficial in tailoring offerings to better suit the customers and audience at large. 

Social Listening can be beneficial, especially for SMEs enabling them to make a breakthrough in competitive markets. Using social listening, product and service offerings can be tailored to better suit the audience, understand them better and overall improve the level of offerings.

Customer Insights and Feedback

Social Listening can be a very beneficial tool if employed in a proper manner. An effective social listening strategy can enable SMEs to uncover a whole range of information. Uncovering information regarding customer needs, preferences, and sentiments can be very beneficial in the product development phase. Understanding how a brand’s offerings are being perceived in the market can enable teams to tailor their offering better.

Additionally, Social Listening is an amazing way to gather organic feedback. Customer love talking about their experiences regarding products on social media channels. Having a robust system in place can enable brands to use this feedback, positive or negative to their advantage.

Managing Brand Reputation

Managing and maintaining a positive brand reputation is especially important for SMEs trying to make a break in the market and going head-to-head with big brands in the same industry. A larger brand with millions of followers may find it quite difficult to be able to address all customer queries, leading to resentment. SMEs have the chance to show how their offerings are superior and can persuade such customers to try them out. Additionally, these customers may decide to make a switch seeing the positive brand image that the brand carries.

With more and more people using social media and web channels in their daily lives, it has become all the more important for brands to maintain their reputation on such channels. Social Media conversations now have the potential to persuade anybody’s brand perception more than any brand ambassador. Online review sites have become a go-to sight for customers looking to try out new products or services According to Trustpilot – 89% of global consumers check online reviews as part of their online buying journey, and 49% of global consumers consider positive reviews one of their top three purchase influences. This makes it all the more important for brands to pay attention to reviews. Apart from review sites, mentions as well as conversations and discussions about brands is an upcoming avenue for customers to perceive brands. 

Friends are one of the biggest factors influencing purchase decisions, especially in the D2C space. According to Viral Loops – 90% more likely to trust and buy from a brand recommended by a friend. If a brand is being acknowledged in online conversations, that single conversation has the power to influence more people more effectively than any other marketing campaign.

Competitor Analysis

Competitor analysis is one of the most amazing ways to understand how you are fairing against your competitors. With the help of effective social listening tactics, you can keep a track on what your competitors are up to. Tracking their strategies can enable you to understand their mindset. Seeing how they interact with their customers can give further insights into their brand strategy.

With the help of competitor analysis, you can benchmark your performance against theirs. This is an amazing way to undertake SWAT analysis. With this, you can uncover some crucial strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for improvement. Undertaking competitor analysis is an amazing way to ensure you never fall behind your competition!

Market Research and Trend Analysis

Social Listening is one of the best ways for brands, especially SMEs to research the audience’s needs. Understanding the gaps in the markets are an amazing way to customize offerings and promotions that make the brand’s offerings more interesting to the end customer.

Social Listening can also help uncover some key underlying trends in terms of market demand and preferences. Being able to forecast future trends can help the brand be better prepared for the future.

Read Types Of Marketing Analytics

Crisis Management

Conversations on social media channels have a tendency to spiral out of control very quickly. A small issue faced by a particular customer can turn into a major crisis for a brand. This can be very detrimental to the brand image. With the help of social listening, SMEs can be notified of conversations about their brand in real-time and ensure they are able to avert crisis.

Within the Konnect Insights platform’s Crisis Management module, alerts can be set up to be triggered after certain conditions are met by a specific conversations. Click Here to read more about Konnect Insights’ Crisis Management functionalities.

Conclusion

With all these functionalities, it is quite clear that social listening is very important for SMEs to implement in their CXM strategy. Not only does it help maintain brand reputation but also ensures positive customer experience, helps avert crisis, and most importantly, learn about the audience and markets which is all the more important for SMEs trying to make a break in the market.

While social listening is an important process to undertake, Choosing the right platform can make all the difference. Here is a checklist to ensure you make the right choice while choosing your social listening platform.

To learn more about how Konnect Insights can enable SMEs with the right social listening capabilities, CLICK HERE