What is Social Listening and How It Can Help Your Business?

Whether your business already has an online marketing strategy in place or if you are in the process of devising one, you may agree that pulling it all off is no mean feat.

From interacting with your audience to sharing engaging content, cultivating your brand over the Internet takes more than a single step. You need to follow a number of strategies in order to gain valuable insights into your market, and put together a credible image for your organization.

One of the most effective ways for achieving this objective is social listening, which lets you track key metrics over the web. But as important as this approach is, it is still somewhat unfamiliar to a number of entities who could actually benefit from it to a large extent.

If you have heard about this method but have not yet put it into practice, then this is as good a time as any to put your thinking cap on and learn more about it. Doing so will help you get the most out of your branding and marketing efforts, and allow you to hold your own against your competition.

What is Social Listening Anyway?

Simply put, social listening is the practice of tracking online conversations that pertain to your brand, your niche, or your target audience.

Whether you are looking for any mentions of your brand name over the web, or if you are looking for audience views related to the solutions you offer, this practice helps you keep tabs on related conversations that take place over popular social media platforms.

The practice is designed to obtain information about any mentions of your brand name as well as pertinent keywords over your chosen social media channels. When developed properly, a social tracking or listening software can also present large data sets from these insights to you in an easy to understand manner. This is evident in NetBase’s proprietary solutions, which help you make the most out of tracking your brand mentions.

How Can the Practice Help You Build a Better Brand?

From obtaining brand insights to understand customers’ needs, social listening can help you in a number of ways. The following examples highlight some of the most common uses of this practice.

It Keeps Things from Falling Through the Cracks

While tagging any available brand accounts over networks such as Facebook, Twitter or Instagram is easier than ever, most users simply ignore it by mentioning an organization’s name in simple text.

In some cases, they are not even realizing that the brand might not be able to get a notification or an alert. As a result, the practice often leads to things getting overlooked.

But by using a program that is focused on tracking social signals, you can obtain information through the most generic of mentions of your brand. This helps you know exactly what are people talking about in relation to your brand name. It also allows you to offer solutions via direct outreach to turn potential customers into viable leads, and eventually into paying clients.

It Improves Customer Service

This ability to know about your brand mentions without even getting tagged lets you address customer complaints right away.

As a result, this practice helps you resolve customers’ problems in a timely manner. By reaching out to your target audience right after they have mentioned your brand name, you can establish a rapport that strengthens your brand’s status as an entity which cares about its customers.

As a result, you are able to deliver a better customer experience to your target audience.

It Lets You Gather Valuable Insights

The ability to search for social signals through valuable keywords also allows you to obtain valuable insights from your market segment.

This allows you to improve your products and services, while also encouraging you to develop new ideas and better delivery methods by understanding exactly what your customers want from a business in your industry.

All in all, this practice leads you to improve your overall value proposition, and helps you develop solutions through the direct input of your target audience. As a result, you are able to scale your business more effectively.

At NetBase, our social listening solutions are developed to be easy to use yet highly effective for organizations of all scales. Through our intuitive software, you can ensure to obtain accurate insights from your target market and improve your brand in a way that leads you to generate more profits.

To learn more about what our solutions have to offer to your business specifically, please feel free to reach out to us. We will be glad to answer your questions and explain the effectiveness of our products in a detailed manner.