Have you ever commented on a brand on social media, maybe you love a product or you have a problem with a package you received? These are the things that brands are looking for on social media. They want to know how their customers naturally react and talk about their brand. You might think they are not listening but if they are a successful brand they are.
In today's digital age, social media has become the cornerstone of communication between businesses and customers. Social customer relationship management (SCRM) has emerged as a pivotal strategy for businesses to connect, engage, and build relationships with their audience. At the heart of SCRM lies social listening – a powerful tool that enables businesses to tap into the vast ocean of social media conversations and extract valuable insights. In this blog post, we'll delve into the world of social listening, exploring its significance in SCRM and how it can revolutionize your marketing efforts.
Understanding Social Listening
Social listening is more than just monitoring social media channels; it's about actively listening to what your audience is saying, understanding their sentiments, and deriving actionable insights from their conversations. In today's fast-paced digital landscape, social listening has become indispensable for businesses looking to stay ahead of the curve. It involves tracking mentions, keywords, and hashtags across various social media platforms to gain a holistic understanding of customer perception and behavior. Another form of social listening is for customer service, this is different from social listening for marketing. You can deliver better service by understanding how your customers are speaking about your brand.
Distinguishing Between Social Monitoring and Social Listening
Social Monitoring is the process of observing what customers are saying about your brand and instantly responding. An example of this comes from McDonald's; The company released a limited-time Grimace meal and purple shake, and unexpectedly people started sharing clips of themselves “suffering horrifying consequences” after drinking the shake. They shared these photos and videos with the hashtag #grimaceshake which received over 3.9 billion views. Through social media monitoring McDonald’s responded with a witty Instagram post of Grimace.
While social monitoring involves keeping an eye on social media channels for mentions of your brand, products, or industry keywords, social listening goes a step further by analyzing these conversations to extract meaningful insights. While monitoring provides surface-level data, listening dives deeper into understanding the underlying sentiments, trends, and opportunities within these conversations.
Benefits of Social Listening for Customer Relationship Management
Enhanced Customer Insights
Social listening provides businesses with unparalleled access to customer feedback, opinions, and preferences. By analyzing these insights, businesses can tailor their products, services, and marketing strategies to better meet customer needs and expectations.
Identifying Trends and Opportunities
By monitoring industry conversations and trending topics, businesses can identify emerging trends and capitalize on new opportunities. Whether it's launching a new product or tapping into a niche market, social listening provides valuable insights into what's resonating with your audience.
Improving Brand Sentiment
Social listening allows businesses to track brand mentions and sentiment across social media channels. By promptly addressing customer concerns and feedback, businesses can enhance brand perception and foster positive relationships with their audience.
Implementing Social Listening Strategies
To effectively leverage social listening for SCRM, businesses need to adopt the right strategies and tools. This includes selecting the appropriate social listening tools, defining listening parameters, and integrating social listening into existing CRM systems. By harnessing the power of social listening, businesses can gain a competitive edge in today's crowded marketplace.
Best Practices for Effective Social Listening
Define Clear Objectives and Goals
Before diving into social listening, it's essential to define clear objectives and goals. Whether it's improving customer satisfaction, increasing brand awareness, or identifying market trends, having a clear roadmap will guide your social listening efforts. It will also be helpful to know what you are looking for, popular brands have millions of comments and reactions on social media and it would be difficult to review every mention of your brand. Having clear objectives will help your team sort through mentions on social media and focus on what would help achieve your brand's goals.
Monitor Across Multiple Channels and Platforms
Before monitoring your social media channels and platform you need to understand what your audience's language is. You need to know which who your audience is and what social media platforms they use. As a brand, you might not need to have specific social media platforms because your target audience doesn't use that platform. Customers engage with brands across various social media platforms, and each platform offers unique insights. By monitoring conversations across multiple channels, businesses can gain a comprehensive understanding of customer sentiment and behavior. Customers respond and act differently on different platforms and understanding that and monitoring it will be helpful in knowing your customers.
Engage with Customers in Real-Time
Social listening enables businesses to identify customer concerns and feedback in real-time. By promptly addressing customer inquiries and issues, businesses can demonstrate their commitment to customer satisfaction and build trust and loyalty. Hubspot encourages us to create templated responses for how to engage with negative and positive comments. It is important to not only respond to the negative comments but also to the positive ones. Another tip is to invite customers to you through DM, email, or phone to pull the conversation of social media.
Continuous Refinement of Listening Strategies
The digital landscape is constantly evolving, and businesses need to adapt their social listening strategies accordingly. By continuously refining their listening strategies and staying abreast of industry trends, businesses can maintain a competitive edge and drive long-term success.
Social Listening Tools
Social listening tools can help your brand and customer service team review and monitor the social media and other channels that involve conversations about your business.
Hubspot
Lately
Hootsuite
These social listening tools can help you organize and track your social media. These can monitor social interactions, and track all messages, comments, and mentions on platforms. Lately uses A.I. to write social media posts for you and helps review and post to all platforms.
Social listening has emerged as a game-changer in the realm of SCRM, offering businesses unprecedented access to customer insights and opportunities. By embracing social listening and integrating it into their marketing strategies, businesses can forge deeper connections with their audience, drive brand loyalty, and stay ahead of the competition in today's digital landscape. It's time to harness the power of social listening and elevate your SCRM efforts to new heights.
To learn more about how you can use social media for customer care, check out Taylor's blog here.
Disclaimer: No AI was injured in the production of this content. AI (ChatGPT) was used as a tool to supplement, enhance, and make suggestions in writing this blog post.
Resources
Amaresan, S. (2022, October 7). What is Social Listening & Why is it important? [+expert tips on how to implement a strategy]. HubSpot Blog. https://blog.hubspot.com/service/social-listening
Newberry, C. (2024, April 12). What is social listening, why it matters + 14 tools to help. Social Media Marketing & Management Dashboard. https://blog.hootsuite.com/social-listening-business/
OpenAI. "ChatGPT 3.5 - Language Model" [Online]. Available: https://openai.com/chatgpt. Accessed 2024, April 15.
Panigrahi, S. (2024, April 4). 16 social listening strategies to incorporate into business strategy. Keyhole. https://keyhole.co/blog/social-listening-strategies/
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