6 powerful ways to listen on Social

Social listening is an art that gives brands the opportunity to conquer the core value of this channel, and takes engagement to an all new level.

From brand sentiment to consumer loyalty and retaining, once mastered social listening has a lot to offer.

Here are some quick tips for you to channel your listening skills in the right direction.

1. Don’t just listen to complaints

Social listening is often perceived as listening to complaints and queries only. Approaching complaints is great but listening should extend to understanding consumer behavior, purchasing patterns, creating social research as well.

For instance if a fashion brand wants to research on what women want during the summer season, they should search for keywords like summer fashion, summer cloths etc. and understand what their consumers are talking online.

2. Invest in listening, not just on ads

Advertising costs money and so does any activity that is attempted with a serious attitude. Listening needs resources, tools, time and might be an investment that you want to achieve a goal out of.

Social listening ultimately gives you access to insane amount of data – which helps you gauge the general sentiment about your brands on social media.

Social listening can also get you access to intricate details of your TG.

3. Read between the tweets

Sentiments play a huge role within twitter conversations. Listening without taking sentiments into account will not lead to a reasonable response.

For instance, when you put up a certain post, a number of comments and tweets will pour in. Follow all the comments; see what your consumers feel about that particular post and your brand.

Create an analysis of what your consumers expect from you and address their requirements accordingly.

4. Sales and marketing funnel can fuel listening funnel

The sales funnel requires client feedback and this feedback can be passed to the listening funnel. Within the online space, the sales department can use social media to understand gaps within the market and bridge those with company offerings.

Similarly, the PR department can use social media to keep a tab on the positive and negative graphs, take immediate action when required.

A number of times, customers consume stories from traditional mediums such as print and speak about it online. PR folks can keep a tab of such comments and address to them accordingly.

Social business can therefore fuel the listening funnel as a whole.

5. Understand the purpose of listening

Don’t listen to respond. Listen to understand and interact.

Social listening ultimately helps you build relationships. Create social ambassadors who will ultimately speak up for you and penetrate the core TG.

There are times when certain mentions lead to an argument, deviating from brand voice. At such times, the brand’s purpose of listening changes to acting with spontaneity.

P.S. – None of your responses should have undertones of marketing.

 6. Use technology, don’t be a superhero

Social listening tools will help you a keep a tab of conversations around your brand. Customizing responses basis tonality and query group is a refreshing break from the present state of social conversations.

Akosha OneDirect helps: analyze conversations, create word clouds - which help you track keyword search and what people associate with your brand, judge sentiment on conversations and majorly, handle responses from within the tool.

The workflow becomes extremely smooth.