Social listening

One part of social media marketing people overlook or don’t see the value in is actually listening and not posting…

By listening to people on social media you can:

  • Find new clients;
  • Find new JV Partners;
  • Find out what issues your competitors are having;
  • Use it to preempt potential customer service issues.

So how do you listen?

Here at the main three platforms you can use to listen to social media.

Twitter

Twitter is not dead and nor should you ignore it. You can listen in real time to conversations being held on your industry, competitors, keywords and more.  The beauty of the search on Twitter is you can search all of it in realtime.  Just head over to search.twitter.com. And type in a brand name or keyword. You will see all the people talking or mentioning that brand or keyword in date order.

This gives you a huge opportunity to listen and then use that knowledge to either:

  • Get in touch with the person discussing or complaining about a product or competitor
  • Use the question or comment as a basis of your own blog story or social media update.

LinkedIn

Listen to your connections, listen to conversations going on in groups.  We see a lot of people asking questions or for recommendations of their connections relating to Finance and Insurance requirements.  If you are concentrating only on putting out your own content, you are missing out a huge opportunity in listening to other people that actually have their hand up saying help me….

Facebook

Listen to your connections status updates and questions. Also visit the groups and pages you are member of and read the types of issues people are discussing.

Facebook is a great place to join groups and follow competitors and then see what questions they are being asked, see what support or issues they are having with their product of service.  This gives you an opportunity to make sure you don’t suffer the same fate.  Don’t use social media to put down the competition but use it to learn your potential customers pain points… and solve them.

Summary

In all of these platforms you will be able to search and listen to what people are talking about relevant to your business or industry.

In this way, without even having to build your own social media platforms you can follow others and listen to what is happening out there are react to it.

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