How to use social listening to build your brand

Brands - put down your megaphones and put on your headphones.

Instead of shouting your brand message through a megaphone. Put on the headphones to listen.

It's time to listen to the conversations going on on social to propel your brand forward. And not just the conversations happening with your customers. Valuable insights can come from non-customers - and even haters too.

Over my career, I've built several enterprise social media strategies from scratch and one component that I never miss is a social media listening strategy. It's important to have a social media expert map out how to track, analyze and respond to discussions on various platforms. Just like treasure hunters mapping their way to gold, brands can uncover invaluable insights by navigating the landscape of social media conversations.

On the human side of the equation, I've trained social media teams on real-time response, consumer psychology, and customer service, and on the tech side, I've recommended specialized software to continuously collect and analyze data from various platforms. By blending human analysis and software insights, brands can effectively map their path to valuable information.

I've however seen a lot of brands lump social media listening into crisis communication which does not capture the full transformative impact a social listening strategy can have on your brand.

Below are 7 ways to propel your brand with social listening: 

1. Brand reputation Management: Monitor social media mentions and sentiment to understand how your brand is perceived by those both inside and outside of your target audience.
2. Customer Feedback Loop: Unearth nuggets of product/experience improvement through feedback, opinions, and suggestions from customers. This type of social listening improves customer loyalty and retention over time.
3. Competitor Analysis: Stay ahead of your competition and track competitors' activities, campaigns, and customer interactions. Identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats and respond in real time.
4. Trend Analysis: Recognize emerging trends, topics, and discussions relevant to a particular industry or market. By leveraging trends and inserting yourself into the dialogue, you can enhance your brand's visibility and engagement.
5. Influencer Spotting: Identify key influencers or advocates who can promote a brand or collaborate on marketing campaigns. Or simply explore how influencers are working with competitive brands.
6. Lead Generation: Unlock potential customers, prospects, or sales opportunities through social media conversations. Social media conversations are a treasure trove of potential customers.
7. Proactive Crisis Management: Detect and respond to potential crises or negative sentiment on social media platforms in a timely manner. As we saw with the Booking.com fiasco, monitoring and responding in real-time is paramount for a crisis.

Go beyond crisis management and unlock the transformative power of social media listening to gather valuable insights and understand the brand sentiment, opinions, trends, competitor landscape, and preferences of your target audience.

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