4 Benefits of Social Monitoring and Social Listening

Listen up! Social media isn't just for spreading the word about your brand. It's a monitoring and listening tool. Social media is one of the only marketing platforms that involves two-way communication, which means you get the opportunity to connect with people on a completely different level and have a conversation. How many times have you driven past a billboard or watched a TV commercial and a question about it immediately popped into your head? On social media, if they have a question or comment, they can just simply say so. As a brand, if you aren't monitoring and listening what your followers, potential followers, users, customers, etc. say about you, you aren't using the platforms to their full potential. Social media is a great tool to up your marketing, customer service, and overall customer-company relationship management, if you monitor and listen effectively.

Social monitoring is when you actively look at the conversation surrounding your brand. It can be about your company, employees, products, services, competitors, and customers. Anything that mentions your brand should be of interest to you, whether it's negative or positive. Social listening consists of how you analyze and respond to those conversations about your brand. But what are the benefits of doing this?

Here's why you should invest your time into social monitoring and listening -

1.) Gives you a chance to measure your content strategy's effectiveness

The question we all want an answer for, is our content strategy on the right track? We want to know our audience through and through, to develop content that speaks to them and makes them feel the sense of connection with us. You'll find your answer when you closely watch how they are talking and interacting with your content.

2.) Allows for reputation management

Because of it's two-way, direct contact, social media has a large element of customer service and reputation management. When negative situations arise, people quickly go to social media. Whether it's for a customer complaint, company crisis, or bad press, you'll probably find it across social media. But, as social media managers, we have the tricky job of managing our reputation online when issues strike. People want to feel heard, especially in times of distress. Take the opportunity to change the person's negative viewpoint of the situation and your brand into a positive one through great reputation management.

3.) Can help you develop new ideas or ways to improve your product/service

Consider your social media a case study for your product or service. You should want to hear the issues about it, the best parts, the questions that arise, the new ideas. Not only that, but you should take those back to the rest of your team and act on it. Say you're getting many questions about a statement on your packaging. This feedback can be tracked and taken back to your team to analyze if the statement is misleading or confusing, so you can alter it moving forward. Or I'm sure you've seen it somewhere on social media, "I wish they had the (flavor, version, option)." Could that be a new lead or idea for your R&D team? YES!

4.) Helps you convert sales

Perhaps the most important part and end-goal of your social media presence. Of course you want to see that relationship forming and maintaining with your community of followers, but you also want to see the results! If you can convert at least one person from a follower to a customer, it makes it all worth it! Showing that you’re listening and acting on what they are saying is probably that extra push they need to purchase.