While chatting with friends and clients about my main business service, I’ve often been asked “What is social listening and how can it assist me with marketing my business?” Social listening is the action of paying attention to your current and potential customers across social media platforms with the purpose of generating new leads. I’ve illustrated this topic with an African elephant to help you to remember these key points:
- Size matters – African elephants have large ears, unlike their Asian cousins. Accounts with a large following can have the best outcomes because the listener will hear a wider range of views.
- Hear what your competitors will miss – Elephants have good hearing. They detect sounds at frequencies beyond the range of humans.
- Multipurpose – Elephants use their ears for many things: hearing, temperature-control, and communication within their group by flapping. Social listening can help many tasks in the marketing process. It can be used to: identify, anticipate, and satisfy customer needs profitably. It is due to this universal relevance to every part of the Marketing process that I believe it is a service which every business which wants to grow should use once it knows its strategy.
- Find your group – Elephants form herds around a dominant matriarch. Social listening can help you to find groups in social media which fit your target audience.
I hope that you’ll agree that I’ve explained the topic “What is Social Listening”, and will consider it to be an important part of your Marketing toolbox.
I have been fortunate during to learn about the advanced techniques for social listening from a tutor who I admire called Luan Wise
Actions to help you to LISTEN to your customers, here’s A short list of suggested tasks:
- Set aside some time each day to monitor the social media feeds where you might expect to hear your customers or find new ones.
- Note what you learn from them about your dynamic marketplace. Are their needs changing?
- I believe that social listening is so fundamental to business success that it should be included in my business resilience series