We all know that important conversations happen on Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks – but are you listening to them?
If you are not paying attention, your competitors might be taking advantage of what you are missing. If you are not listening to what your customers are saying, you may be giving your competition too much power.
But how do you determine whether they are using their social listening better than you?
Take a look at their social media and search rankings. Do they have more posts or tweets? Are customers talking about them more? Are they engaging with customers in more ways?
If yes, then you may need to do some catching up.
The good news is that social listening is effortlessly easy. You are already doing it on some level. But, the bad news is that it takes time to pay attention to what your customers are saying and then find a way to analyze the reports and act on that information.
But it is worth it!!! – if you want to be an industry leader, you have to keep your eyes and ears open to what others are saying about you in the market.
Here are a few vital signs that your competitors may be using social listening better than you and what you can do to bridge the gap:
✅ Their crisis management is excellent
It is no secret that people turn to social media to vent, and most of them get a reply quickly. That’s thanks to social listening. Today, any good brand relevant in the digital space uses social listening to its full potential. If your competitor is consistently dealing with negative comments effectively, the chances are that they, too, are listening.
Effective crisis management is an integral tool for building customer relationships and defining brand messaging. If you see your competitors consistently replying to comments, managing relationships with disgruntled customers, and offering quick resolutions, it shows that keeping their customers happy is an important priority. And, it signals that to their customers too.
So, it’s time for you to do the same. You must prioritize taking measures and ensuring that any negativity directed at your brand is detected and dealt with quickly and effectively. Additionally, when you quickly resolve a customer’s query to satisfaction, they are also more likely to recommend your brand and talk about it in a positive light next time.
✅ They have better influencer relations
In the digital space, influencers signal word of mouth, and word of mouth is the most decisive purchase influence even today. That is why it’s crucial for brands to develop strong relations with influencers in the same field and are a direct match for your ideal target audience and customer.
Choosing influencers your audience will listen to, and trust is the key in developing influencer marketing campaigns. If you see your competitors doing that, they are likely paying attention. Observe whether they actively listen to their customers, watch how they engage with influencers, and keep a track of how influencers talk about their brand. Is it all in a positive light, in a way that bolsters brand building and customer relations?
Use social listening to determine which influencers have the strongest hold over your audience, and then develop campaigns that your customers can relate to. If you do it well, you can even gain as much as 6X your influencer marketing spend.
✅ Their social media is booming
Two main things determine social media success – follower growth and content engagement. If you see your competitor leading on both accounts, you have a thing or two to learn — and that is a good thing.
Monitoring content posted by your competition can give you valuable insights into how they run their campaigns. You can use that to your advantage by learning and comprehending from them, also applying the way they approach their target audience, learning their strategies and techniques in your campaigns, setting you up for success.
By running a competitive analysis and research breakdown, you can understand their content conversions, quality of engagement, and even their churn rates. This will give you great insight into what works and what does not.
✅ Their customers speak their brand language
The most crucial metric of digital success is when your brand and its customers talk the same language.
That is because the true sign of a successful brand is when other people can relate to it — when you build a personality and a brand language that the audience can relate to, you know you have engaged them successfully.
If you notice that your competitor’s customers speak their brand lingo and constantly converse with them, your competitors have likely got one foot in the door. They have practiced social listening, have a sense of what works for their audience and what does not, and have acted on that information.
How can you learn from it? If you have not already, define your brand. Build a unique character to your brand personality and determine the lingo your audience relates to. If you want to bond with your customers, gain their trust, and brand loyalty, you need to know how to speak their language and get them to speak your language.
✅ Their brand has a positive influence online
We don’t need to tell you how important it is to have a positive influence — especially in an online ecosystem. It helps you connect with key personalities, build strong relationships with customers, get more opportunities for your brand, and even increase your brand revenue. If you see your competitor covering all this ground, chances are they are using social listening to their advantage.
By monitoring the conversations around their brand, they build positive engagement and improve their brand’s online reputation. They are also likely using the data from these conversations in their brand messaging to influence their target audience.
In such a scenario, it is recommended that you follow the same pursuit. Conduct competitive analysis closely to see what channels your competitors are using, what messaging their customers approve of, and how you can include that in your brand strategy.
✅ They do smart targeting
Using social media monitoring and social listening your competitors can learn about all the conversations relevant to their brand and industry. What are the buzzing trends? What conversations are trending? How are the conversations – positive or negative? How to leverage them in the upcoming marketing strategies, all this can be done in real-time.
They can do personalized targeting by understanding the data and how well their campaigns are performing. Are they reaching the right audience? How they should be improving their strategies? All this can be figured out by using the social listening tool in the right way.
✅ They hook on to future opportunities
Social media is a place where people discuss everything from their lives to what products and services they use. They are excellent opportunities to grab if you are “listening” at the right place and at the right time.
Brands should answer all the queries or conversations they are mentioned in nevertheless of whether they are positive or negative. You need to be quick as whatever conversations you might be listening to are also listened to by your competitors.
People tend to post on social media about the products are services they have purchased, there the potential buyer will be looking out to decide on they should become your customer or not. Here you being a smart brand utilize all these conversations and provide what your customers are asking for. Be swift on it and encourage them to become a part of your company.
✅ They analyze their campaigns
Your competitors are constantly listening to their customers and analyzing the data to improve their marketing strategies. Before going live with a strategy, they listen to their target market and analyze them. They will develop specific and relevant content. They will set goals and objectives for their campaigns and lastly, they will onboard genuine influencers or brand advocates to build trust for the brand.
The work doesn’t stop here, they will now collect all the web and social data from the campaign to analyze their future strategies. They’ll analyze what performed and what not? How well was the campaign performed? Understand how the target audience responded to the campaign? Examining the campaign analysis with the objective of the strategy and providing actionable insights for your brand’s future strategy.
Final Takeaway
It’s not too late for you to leap ahead of your competition, as it’s said, “It’s better late than never”.
As we have seen above, social listening is an important tool. It helps bridge the gap between your brand and your audience, build omnichannel relations with your target market, your customers, influencers or brand advocates, and key stakeholders – ultimately increasing the brand revenue.
As you analyze key conversations and trends, you can better engage with your audience and leverage word-of-mouth publicity to help you build consumer awareness of your brand.
From better brand awareness to more qualified leads to a stronger customer relationship, there are many ways that social listening can benefit your business. As long as you take the right action on the information you collect through social listening, it can be a precious tool in your marketing arsenal.
However, social listening can be complex and often requires external expertise. It is best to seek such services and we Konnect Insights are at your rescue, we will help you build a unified customer experience for your audience.
Tags: Analytics Tool, Competitor Analysis, Social Analytics, Social Listening, Social Listening Tool