Today’s business environment is more competitive than ever before, due to the fact that customers have more options than ever before. In order for a business to be successful in today’s competitive environment, they must have a strong focus on customer advocacy.
Fortunately, businesses can increase their customer advocacy through social media listening, which allows them to listen to their customers online.
Social media listening involves monitoring social channels such as Facebook and Twitter for mentions of the businesses name or brand, allowing businesses to monitor what is being said about them online.
By utilizing social listening tools, businesses can identify loyal customers who are talking about them positively and reach out to those customers with special offers or incentives.
However, in order for businesses to utilize this strategy effectively, they must have the proper social listening tools in place.
Before we get into the “how,” let’s take a look at what social media listening is.
What is Social Media Listening and Why Is It Important?
Social media listening is defined as ‘the process of gathering, analyzing, and reporting on social media conversations about a brand or topic’. Social media listening is the first step in the customer advocacy process.
It is also the foundation for social media monitoring, which involves listening to conversations and also tracking conversations to identify trends and opportunities by using the right tools.
Since social media listening is the foundation of the customer advocacy process, it’s important that organizations do their social media listening well and monitor social media channels effectively.
When it comes to social media presence, it’s important to understand that there is no silver bullet solution.
Social media listening is a critical component of social media management.
Here’s why it’s so important:
- It allows you to spot trends and opportunities that could lead to a spike in your business.
- It helps you understand your customers better, which will help you create a better customer experience and develop more content that speaks to them.
- It gives you an opportunity to respond quickly and build trust with your customers by showing them that you’re listening and care about their needs and concerns.
- You can use the information gathered through social media listening for benchmarking purposes, which helps you see where your brand stands in relation to the competition.
- It also provides insight into what your customers are saying about your competitors, which could give you a competitive advantage.
- It allows you to view the entire marketing campaigns and see what’s happening in your industry, which could help you identify new opportunities.
- Social listening can help you find leads by monitoring questions around your niche, the problem you solve and the conversations your competitors are having with their prospects and/or clients.
What Is Advocacy For Customers and Is It Important?
Advocacy for customers is a form of advocacy that involves your customers helping you market your brand for free. The goal of advocacy is to make your customer feel so good about your brand that they’re willing to share their positive feelings with other people.
This can be done through word-of-mouth or social media. When a customer posts a positive comment or review about your brand, it will help to build your online reputation and attract new customers to your business.
Advocacy for customers is very important because;
- It can help you build your brand’s online presence and track conversations.
- It can help you reach more potential customers through word of mouth and social media.
- It can help your business stand out from the competition.
- It allows you to interact with your customers and improve their experience with your brand, which will make them loyal to your brand.
- It increases your chances of becoming a trusted source in your industry because when people see that other people on social media are talking about your brand, they’ll be more likely to trust you and buy from you if they need a product or service like yours in the future.
- It builds customer loyalty and increases customers reach rates by making customers feel valued and
When done right, advocacy marketing can be a very powerful acquisition channel. Here’s an example of the power of advocacy: If a customer has a bad experience with your brand, he or she might write negative social posts on social media. If this happens, you’ll lose customers and potential customers will be less likely to purchase your product.
However, if a customer has an outstanding experience with your brand, he or she will be more inclined to share their experience with other people and they may even post positive social posts about your brand on social media. This is why it’s important to gain consumers’ trust so they feel comfortable enough to advocate for your brand and eventually help in your brand awareness.
What’s the Difference Between Social Monitoring and Social Listening?
Social media monitoring and social listening are similar but they have some key differences.
Social media monitoring involves searching for content on social media platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. It includes searching for keywords, hashtags and mentions in social posts that play a powerful role in brand awareness.
Social media listening involves studying what customers are saying about your brand on major social networks. It includes analyzing posts, comments and other social media interactions. It also includes analyzing the sentiment of a post or comment (positive or negative).
In general, social media monitoring is done more frequently than social media listening. Social media monitoring is done in real time (or close to real time) whereas social media listening is not.
Do you want to increase customer advocacy with social media listening?
5 Ways in Which Social Media Listening Increase Customer Advocacy
Social media listening can help you understand your customers better. This can help you increase customer advocacy. Here are 7 ways in which social media listening can help you increase customer advocacy:
1. Understand Customers’ Needs and Pain Points
Social media listening will help you understand the needs and pain points of your customers. This can help you provide better customer service and offer solutions to their problems. If a customer is unhappy with your product, social media listening can help you find out why. You can then use this information to improve your product or service.
Even if a customer is happy with your product, social media listening can help you find out what they like about it. You can then use this information to improve your product or service. Listening to social media can help you understand what your customers want. This will help you give them more of what they want and less of what they don’t want.
2. Find Out What Customers Are Saying About Your Competitors
Social media listening can help you identify the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors and get you an idea of industry trends. If a customer has a bad experience with one of your competitors, social media listening can help you find out about it in real time (or close to it). You can then use this information to steal market share from your competitor.
If a customer has a good experience with one of your competitors, social media listening can help you find out about it in real time (or close to it). Like the previous point, you can then use this information to steal market share from your competitor. Social media listening will help you identify the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors. This will help you give customers more of what they want and less of what they don’t want.
3. Get Feedback on Your Product or Service
Since customer satisfaction is our main focus, social media listening can help you in that by identifying your strengths and weaknesses. Like the previous point, social media listening can help you identify your strengths and weaknesses. This will help you give customers more of what they want and less of what they don’t want.
But in order to give customers more of what they want, you need to know what exactly they want. By listening to what your customers say about your product or service on social media, you can identify things that you do well and things that you can improve upon. In this way, social media listening can help you improve your product or service.
4. Stay Informed About Changes in Your Industry
The most important thing you can do to stay informed about changes in your industry is listen. Social media channels are a great source of information because they are updated constantly. Social media listening will help you identify the strengths and weaknesses of your industry. Which you can use to stay ahead of your competition and understand what customers want.
You can also use social media listening to find out about changes in your industry. For example, if your industry is the food service industry, you can use social media listening to find out about new food trends. This will help you stay on top of changing tastes and preferences. This is important because it can help you keep your business relevant in the face of changing consumer demands.
5. Find Influencers in Your Industry
Influencers are people who have a large number of followers on social media and are highly trusted by their followers. Influencers are important to your success because they can help you reach your target market better than any other marketing strategy. There are many ways to find influencers in your industry through social media listening. Like finding competitors, you can search for people who are talking about your industry and the products or services you offer. These people may be influencers because they are highly respected within the industry.
Influencers can also be found by listening for mentions of events in your industry. For example, if you own a food truck, you may want to listen for mentions of food truck festivals and other food truck events. You can also listen for mentions of conferences and other professional events that relate to your industry. By listening for these types of mentions, you will find the influencers who attend these events.
Now is the time to utilize social media listening to increase customer advocacy!
The Best Practice Approach to Social Listening
Now let’s look at how you can use social listening to improve your business.
Step 1. Identify your Market
First of all, you need to identify your market through social listening strategies. This should be fairly easy as you are already in the industry and you will probably have a good idea already. You’re probably already aware of the types of people you are trying to target and what they are saying about your industry.
Step 2. Identify your Customers
You need to identify your customers. This is where social listening comes in. You need to find out what your customers are saying about you, good and bad. Are they saying good things about your business through positive social posts? Are they saying bad things about your business through negative social posts? It’s important to know what people are saying about you and your business.
Step 3. Create a Listening Plan.
Now that you have identified your market and the platforms they use you can put together a listening plan. In this plan you should identify the following. Who are you listening to? What are they saying? How often do they say it? Where are they saying it?
Step 4. Create a Response Plan
Now that you have scheduled the times you will listen and know what people are saying about your business it is time to create a response plan. There are several different types of response plans you can create. Here are three different types of response plans you can create:
- Action Plan
- Observation Plan
- Customer Care Plan
Step 5. Implement your Plan
Now that you have scheduled the times you will listen, know what people are saying about your business and created a response plan it is time to implement your plan by creating your own social listening strategy. Make sure you are listening to your market. Don’t wait for word of mouth to reach critical mass, you can be the one who creates it.
Step 6. Monitor Your Results
Finally, after implementing your listening plan, it is important to monitor your results. Here are some ideas of how you can monitor your results and know about your brand awareness:
- Check the number of people talking about your business. If you know roughly how many people are talking about your business and its good, you will know if the plan is working.
- Check the sentiment of what people are saying about your business. If there is a lot of negative feedback, you might want to adjust your strategy.
- Check if the volume of comments, questions and compliments has increased over time. This will help you see if the plan is working or not.
Final Thoughts on How Social Media Listening Can Increase Customer Advocacy
There are many keys to successful customer observation and having a proper social listening strategy is an essential element. Social media listening is an essential part of your business, and it will help you identify the influencers who are talking about your industry and your business. The influencers might be customers, partners, or even competitors. From there, you can build relationships with these influencers and use them to your advantage. We hope this article has helped you better understand the value of social media listening. If you’d like help with your social media listening efforts, we’d be happy to assist you.
Growth Hackers is an award-winning digital marketing and growth hacking agency helping businesses from all over the world grow. There is no fluff with Growth Hackers. We help entrepreneurs and business owners by increasing their customer advocacy, driving targeted traffic, generating qualified leads, optimizing their conversion rate gathering and analyzing data analytics, acquiring and retaining users and increasing sales. We go further than brand awareness and exposure. We make sure that the strategies we implement move the needle so your business grow, strive and succeed. If you too want your business to reach new heights, contact Growth Hackers today so we can discuss about your brand and create a custom growth plan for you. You’re just one click away to skyrocket your business.
