Through the barrage of endless tweets and Facebook comments, it’s easy to forget that customers are communicating important information to businesses via social media platforms.
However, you should be listening to what they’re saying.
By analyzing different forms of engagement on social media, such as likes, comments, and shares, you can gain key insights about your customers and business. And best of all, you can use these insights to grow your customer base and create a more successful business.
The question, then, is how do you improve your social media listening? How do you analyze that wealth of data on your business’ various social media profiles? And what do you do with your research?
Here are a few tips to help you get started.
1. Gather Your Data
First and foremost, you need to gather data from your customers. Start doing this sooner rather than later; you will be able to compare any future changes, such as a new product or other trends, to this historical data. Though you’re probably already paying attention to some discussions of your business, find out as much as you can and record that information.
Track your customers’ interactions with your business on your various platforms. See what they’re saying and sharing. Is it mostly positive, negative, or somewhere in-between? What content of yours are they interacting with the most?
Don’t look only at what customers are saying and doing, but also why. Did a customer disclose a negative product review that spread across multiple platforms? Did you release a new service update that customers really liked? Whether customers are singing your praises or deeply upset with you, try to find a reason behind their opinions.
2. Analyze and Plan
The next step is to analyze the data. Though it can be easy to get bogged down in small details and individual comments, it’s crucial to look at the bigger picture. You want to take notice of larger trends and movements.
What are your customers’ pain points? What kinds of content does your audience respond to the most? When and where did you post your most popular content? Are they talking about certain products or services more than others? If so, which ones and why? Is the tone concerning a specific product overwhelming positive or negative? Are customers comparing you and a competitor?
These are just a few questions your research should help answer. And don’t stop there! Your audience may be providing answers to completely different questions. Identify new opportunities to help your customers or improve their experience with your business.
3. Create and Share New Ideas
Once you know what your audience wants and needs, give them an answer to those questions, in any way you deem fit: fresh content and posts, new products and services, updates to existing ones … anything that your customers will respond to positively.
To maximize exposure and interaction with your content, be sure to post your content at the most active time of day. Different platforms are busiest at various times of the day and on different days of the week. Be sure you aren’t posting to Facebook during peak times on Twitter.
Regardless of how you approach this, your attempts to satisfy your customers may backfire. For example, if creating a social media campaign based on the use of hashtags, you should make sure you are not using an irrelevant or competitor’s hashtag. Be prepared to respond quickly to an unpleasant situation.
Keep in mind that this is not a one-time experience. Social media listening is a continuous process; work to fine-tune and perfect it. The larger your brand grows, the larger your need for social media listening grows too. You should be constantly looking for ways to improve user experience, address new pain points, and release innovative products to your customers.
4. Interact With Your Customers
Social media is intended to be just that: social. From Facebook to Pinterest and everything in between, your customers feel they have direct access to your company. They expect that businesses will listen to them on those platforms, to address everything from minor issues to major problems.
The worst thing you can do is ignore customers who reach out to you via social media. Not only are you letting them down, you are doing so publicly, which doesn’t send a positive message about your brand. Conversational commerce can be an effective tool to ensure that no one slips through the cracks.
Ohio University notes that conversational commerce “stands at the intersection of e-commerce and chat.”
Essentially, you can use chat, messaging systems, or social media to purchase products or receive help from businesses online. It’s become more and more popular in recent years and can help you address the increasing number of customer concerns on social media.
This can involve using an AI chatbot to assist customers, having an online representative ready to help, or some combination of the two. Either way, integrating conversational commerce into your social media presence can help ensure that no customer is ignored.
To stay relevant in this increasingly digital age, businesses will have to continue to embrace social media, not only as a marketing tool but also as a way to engage with customers. There is no right or wrong way for you to use social media listening in your business; every company and their customers have unique needs. It’s just important that you do it. Customers are always talking, and all you have to do is listen.
About the Author: Devin Morrissey has been a dishwasher, a business owner, and everything in between. It took him a while to settle on a dream, so he tried out everyone else’s to varying degrees of success. You can find him in Daly City or on Twitter, whichever is closer.
