Why Your Online Business Depends on Listening to Social Media

One of the relatively new online marketing tasks is listening to social media. Many of you are probably wondering “What is listening to social media?”

Social media listening is the process of monitoring your social media channels for any news or comments that refer to you or your brand. This has become more and more important to online marketers for several reasons. Shouldn’t we want to hear how others are responding to our content marketing campaigns?

Think of it like those Google alerts that we used to set up on our Google accounts that lets us know about online conversations that are taking place about a specific topic. In this case, you are setting up an alert on social media to make you aware of any online conversations that are taking place about your brand.

Your social listening plan should comprise not only of social monitoring – which is monitoring the social media activity – it should also address what actions will be taken upon hearing each type of specific activity.

Let us look at 4 reasons why listening to social media is so vital to your online business:

1) Customers want quick responses. Study after study has told us that more and more people prefer to interact with brands through social media. Furthermore, they are expecting brands to respond quicker than most of them do. This is especially true with the up and coming generations.

2) You can find new opportunities. Social media is a place where people feel very free to express their opinions and feelings. While you will hear many complaints, you will also discover new needs that your target audience develops over time. This is an amazing opportunity.

3) You can demonstrate empathy and build rapport. While it is not pleasant to deal with angry customers and complaints in a public setting like social media, do not forget that many people are sitting silently on the sidelines watching how you handle these complaints. If you are honest and fair with people, then those silent observers will develop trust in you and your brand – and they will become customers over time.

4) You can protect your reputation. These days, there are businesses out there that make their entire living repairing the bad reputations that companies and brands have developed online. In most cases, these bad reputations started with a few unhappy customers whose stories gained traction online. If they had dealt with these few customers quickly and properly, their reputations would be fine today. A proper social media listening program will prevent such a thing from occurring in the first place.

Here are some more listening to social media resources:

What Is Social Listening & Why Is It Important?

https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-listening/There’s often some confusion around what social media listening is, and it often gets mixed up with social media monitoring. While they are somewhat similar and work best together, the two shouldn’t be used interchangeably. Social listening goes beyond monitoring and replying to incoming questions or comments about your brand. It’s about extracting key insights from social conversations that you can apply to your overall strategy. What Is Social Listening & Why Is It Important? | Sprout Social

7 social media monitoring tools to check out in 2019

https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/02/04/social-media-monitoring-tools-2019117809/The beginning of a new year is as good a reason as any other to try something new: a different lifestyle, a new hobby, a brand new marketing strategy. And, of course, a new tool, since it’s both exciting and rewarding to discover awesome software that helps you deal with work and, sometimes, with life as well. This is a list of social media monitoring/listening tools you should check out next year. 7 social media monitoring tools to check out in 2019 – Search Engine Watch Search Engine Watch

The Best Free Social Media Monitoring Tools

https://www.brandwatch.com/blog/top-free-social-media-monitoring-tools/The key to making the most of social media is listening to what your audience has to say about you, your competitors, and the market in general. Once you have the data you can undertake analysis, and finally, reach social business intelligence; using all these insights to know your customers better and improve your marketing strategy. The Best Free Social Media Monitoring Tools | Brandwatch