Because I talk so much, people often think I don’t pay attention. The truth is that I am listening intently every second I am not speaking.
Everything I do, from the content I create to the investments I make, is informed by listening, and I take my cues directly from the source: consumers.
Whether in business or throughout everyday life, I have a certifiable interest in people and what really matters to them.
I’m always trying to figure out what people are focusing on and why. I know the real magic is in the trenches with real people doing hand-to-hand combat — reading and learning as I respond to comments, direct messages, emails, tweets, and text messages — whereas the majority of brands and businesses are drowning their audiences in self-serving messaging and content.
MMy business career has been built on “social listening” ever since I started working at Wine Library.
The business world is becoming more human. It is no longer sufficient to simply state how much you value your customers; instead, you must demonstrate this value by providing actual utility and value.
If you don’t know your audience, how can you serve them? — their favorite things, things they don’t like, things they think are amazing, and things they think are awful.
Online entertainment gives you an immediate line to the entirety of the abovementioned. This means that if you are willing to pay attention, you can access an unprecedented amount of free market research at any timek.
What is social listening exactly?
Allow me to paint you an image. Envision that you’ve strolled into a bistro and plunked down close to a couple. They just happen to be discussing your brand.
How likely is it that you would remain silent there? utterly none. You would, without a doubt, introduce yourself, congratulate them on their business, and participate in the conversation.
The advantage of social listening is that it presents this equivalent definite open door, however on the web and at scale.
Each Twitter notice, hashtag, Instagram remark or DM is one more bistro discussion you get to join.Social listening is the method involved with mining online entertainment stages and sites for notices or discussions about your image, items or administrations, industry, or contenders, and utilizing those bits of
knowledge to approach your following stages. You can learn everything you need to know about your brand, product, or service, as well as emerging trends and how customers actually feel, by listening.
Overlook it, and you abandon important data. If you make good use of it, you’ll learn how to make the most of your marketing, product development, customer service, and content creation so that it reaches your intended audience.
Some of the data you can track with social listening are as follows:Your products, your branded hashtags, your slogans, relevant unbranded hashtags, industry-specific keywords, your competitors’ brand names, handles, products, and slogans.
By analyzing this data, you can learn about social sentiment, or how people feel about your brand. Most importantly, you can understand it in real time thanks to it.
The significance of this cannot be overstated, but allow me to contextualize.Where is the primary spot individuals regularly go to look through something? Google, surely?
If you were to ask me, the improved response would be Twitter. When it comes to social listening, Twitter search is the cheapest option. Simply visit Twitter.com/search, enter a keyword, and you’ll be able to see exactly what people are saying about your brand at any given time.
Even better, you can reply!
Although Google is fantastic, it does not permit you to construct real relationships with the end user or create context. Assuming you need to up your social listening game, Twitter search is the key.
My favorite method for obtaining consumer insights on a large scale is real-time search and listening. There are a lot of resources available, such as this list of the best tools for listening to social media, but you can also do a lot on your own. Simply dive in.