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From social media to blogs, discussion rooms and advertising messages, users are constantly reacting. How they react and react, or social listening, plays an important role in digital marketing and in creating user-generated content for B2C (business to consumer) companies.

According to certain reports, 4 million posts are uploaded to the various social media networks every minute, not forgetting the 2.6 billion daily social media users. The digital space is always full of users and all of their daily activities.

What is social listening?

Social listening is the process that brands or companies use to measure and monitor the various social media platforms. Social listening in digital marketing helps track mentions and conversations that are focused on the brand. Then analyze them and plan if action can be taken.

The whole process can be broken down into two steps:

• Monitoring of the various social media channels, brand names, competitors and keywords that are relevant to your company.
• The analysis of the information is then carried out in order to take further action if necessary. The action that follows can be as small as responding to a happy customer, or as big as changing the overall social media marketing strategy based on audience responses.

Social listening should not be confused with social media monitoring, as the former go deeper into the psyche of the audience to understand their moods, while the latter are based on metrics like engagement rate etc.

Reasons why social listening is important in digital marketing

When it comes to maintaining a brand image and moving with the times, social listening becomes extremely important. Some other key reasons why social listening is necessary in digital marketing are listed below:

Increases customer loyalty

Social listening helps you engage actively with your customers and discovers ways they may have reached out to you. For example, when some customers tweet how much they liked or disliked your product, or when they contact customer service through another platform.

In either case, you need to be aware of their message and validate it. You can thank them for their positive feedback, reassure them that you are working on any issues, and help them connect with your company’s customer service team.

Helps you overcome crises

You also need to be prepared for negative feedback so that you can engage in crisis management. Using social listening in digital marketing, you can see in real time how people are reacting to your products and take appropriate action.

If the feedback is good, find out what exactly works for the audience and memorize it for future use. However, if the feedback is bad or bad, you need to review your social feedback to understand where exactly you are going.

If it gets too bad, you need to make changes immediately. It could do this by pulling down on something that the audience deeply disapproves or simply posting a tweet with an apology for insensitive comment.

These types of things need to be done and contained as soon as possible as they can damage your brand image and affect your sales.

Helps keep track of your competitors

You don’t just get to know what the audience is saying about you. Social listening in digital marketing can also help you learn what they are saying about your competitors. These insights can be of great help when it comes to improving your own work.

This is because by analyzing your competitors’ likes or dislikes, you can make appropriate changes to your content. What exactly is going wrong with your marketing strategies or how do they arouse the interests of your audience?

By studying your competitors and your social listening, you can answer such questions and use the answers to advance your strategies and plan for potential mishaps.

Finds pain points

You can learn a lot by keeping your ear to the ground and listening to what is going on in your industry. The strategies that work and that fail, how companies deal more with the heat and get out of it, and much more.

You can discover a wealth of information if you pay attention to it. Based on your newfound knowledge, you can make changes to your product to better serve your customers, boost the marketing of a particular product that you previously had doubts about, and so on.

Not only the work of others, but you can also find out exactly where you are wrong with your products by listening to your customers’ frustrations. After learning about these vulnerabilities, you can work on solving the problems.

Discover new leads

Social listening in digital marketing helps to attract new leads. Everyone knows that people like to be heard. This means that you connect with them by acknowledging their problems or responding to their positive feedback.

By reaching out to them, you make them feel heard and help them by sharing helpful information. This will establish your company as a great resource and ensure that customers think of you every time they make a purchase.

Discover influencers and advocates

Influencers, as the term suggests, are very influential digital personalities in their respective niches. By getting to know them and connecting with them, you expand the reach of your brand.

The followers of these influencers trust their judgment very much. So when they review a product or service and provide positive feedback, it affects their purchasing decisions.

In addition to influencers, you will come across those who are actively saying good things about your brand or products and are referred to as brand advocates. You can also work with them to increase your reach through the use of social listening in digital marketing.

Conclusion

Social listening helps in digital marketing by going beyond numbers and superficial factors designed to understand people. It helps you go below the surface and decipher what their moods or feelings really are when buying or looking to buy products or services.

Therefore, it’s a great tool that can give you deep insights into every aspect of your business from your audience’s perspective.