Having an online presence is becoming almost inevitable to perform and that’s why social listening has gained a lot of importance in the last few years. Consumers like to feel heard and considered on your pages. According to a study by Sprout Social, 46% of consumers believe that engaging with audiences on social media is what differentiates the best brands online.

Social listening is an exercise of active monitoring, research and analysis. Thanks to the data collected, you will have a better idea of your strategic positioning in addition to knowing what users are saying about you and your competitors. 

When performing this audit, it is necessary to look for several types of relevant information.  

First, all types of interaction mentioning your brand. To do this, it is necessary to create a list beforehand to be able to find all mentions that could be interesting to collect and analyze. This plan should include a list of interesting themes such as your company name, your slogan, your brand, and the names of your various products, including frequent spelling errors. 

Since this work also allows you to carry out a competitive analysis, it is important to include the names of your competitors as well as their slogans, their brand names, and the names of their different products. With this information, you can learn more about what consumers think of your competitors. 

It is also important to include the names of important people in your organization and those of your competitors to deepen your understanding of your competitors’ perceptions. Spokespersons, for example, are key players for an organization and often represent the attributes that the company is trying to convey with their brand.  

Your report should also contain relevant information about your industry in general. This means including all the words that can be related to your business. This is how you will be able to identify relevant opportunities or trends to consider. 

Your list of information must finally consider several keywords associated with your brand, your advertising campaigns, your competitors, and your industry in general. The objective is to determine the best practices and the worst practices in order to build a relevant and efficient strategy. 

You launch a new product on the market that targets a different market segment that has never been exploited by your company before. You are now looking to find out if the product has been well received and then evaluate customer satisfaction with it. After creating your list of items to be tracked and analyzed, you notice that there is some irritation raised by consumers. 

Before this inconvenience becomes a major issue and affects the perceived quality of your product, you will quickly have the tools to rectify the situation. Since the information is collected in real time, you will be able to ensure that you offer a compensation to the people concerned and rectify the irritants as quickly as possible. This will improve the perceived quality of your customer service, a success factor for your business.  

This is an excellent way to better understand consumer expectations regarding your products and your industry and to improve or modify your offer in a quick and personalized way to your target market. 

Social listening is also a way to recognize your good efforts.  

Do your users find your website intuitive and easy to use? 

Perhaps they are satisfied with the way you have responded to their needs or questions. This is the time to congratulate your teams and show them that their efforts have paid off. Social listening promotes employee retention by increasing their sense of accomplishment.

The interest of “social listening” is also the reactivity it gives to organizations. The precision of the audit carried out on social platforms allows you to draw up a portrait in real time of your positioning and your competitors in your sector of activity.  

The important thing is to understand the results obtained and to act on the analysis made. Listening to the specific needs of these consumers is the key to making your products perform and reaching your sales objectives. Social listening is a tool of choice to know the real impact of your brand in comparison with the perception desired by your organization. 

In addition to passively collecting information by analyzing the data mentioned above, you can also actively collect it by engaging consumers. For example, you can create surveys or leave a question box or a dedicated space for complaints to make sure you cover all the desired aspects. For more tools to maintain a relationship with your audience, visit this article.

• Do my consumers feel included? 
• Would it be relevant to increase their satisfaction levels?
• Do I apply the information I have gathered in a concrete way?