Why Is Social Media Listening Crucial To Your Small Business?

Small companies rarely have a leg up in the cutthroat industry that is business. While big companies seem to have the upper hand when it comes to resources in the form of a full-fledged research and marketing team, employing strategies like social media listening evens the playing field for small businesses. And it does not require an entire team by your side.  

Social media listening can help companies determine what people are saying about their product, service, or brand. It is not to be confused with social monitoring, which only focuses on what people are saying. Social media listening takes it a step further by understanding why people are saying what they’re saying and what they can do about it. 

It is vital to small businesses seeing as it can help them make better business strategies and decisions. It also helps them gain a deeper insight into what drives their audiences and helps them connect with them. 

Read on why social media listening is crucial to your small business to know more. 

See How Competitors Stack Up Against Your Business

Social media listening can help you establish benchmarks against your competitors for small businesses. With tools like a financial browser extension, your team can scope out where your company lacks compared to other companies. For instance, you’ll be able to identify how well brand A is doing in terms of its revenue, and you can use it to set your company’s future goals. 

It is also a great way to determine the areas your company is doing well in. For example, is your startup unparalleled in express shipping or handing out discounts? Does a specific product keep selling out? Knowing this and your competitors’ can help you craft strategies to make the business thrive. It can also help you improve on aspects the company is lacking. That way, you can gain a competitive edge that will make your business stand out.  

Boost Customer Engagement

Given the technology-driven world we live in, small businesses need to establish an online presence. It is how you’ll gain brand awareness and boost customer engagement. After all, your company could produce the greatest thing since sliced bread, but it won’t matter if people don’t know your company exists. 

Marketing campaigns have used the information from social media listening to create a business strategy. For instance, if you’ve heard about people complaining about your product, the company can interact with the people who mentioned it and tell them about the company’s steps to correct it. Customers will also appreciate how a brand listens to them instead of sweeping them under the rug and it will also build your social media personas as something that’s familiar or approachable to customers. 

Develop Social Media Marketing Strategy

Not many people realise the power of social media. With social media, you can instantly connect to many people, which would prove rather difficult if a business were to stick with traditional marketing promotions. However, utilising social media is not just a one-and-done deal where you post about a product and leave it at that. Social media use is free, which is something small businesses should take advantage of. 

Social media marketing can be more strategic with social media listening. For instance, you’ll have to determine what type of media you’ll use, the contents you’ll be posting, and which social media platforms you’ll release it to. The content should also be consistent across all platforms and must appeal to your intended audience. In short, it will let the company take a more focused approach that caters to your audience instead of releasing random content and hoping one will stick.  

Improve Customer Experience

Social media listening is a handy tool for conducting after-sales services. Companies could employ customer experience metrics to assess how customers feel after purchasing a product and their overall experience while buying it. Simple surveys like customer satisfaction score (CSAT) and net promoter score (NSP) could quantify their feelings and produce numerical equivalents of whether the customer was satisfied and how likely they are to get people to buy from your brand. 

Nowadays, people are demanding authenticity from brands. For companies, that means a customer’s experience is just as valuable as the product they’re selling, if not more so. When customers are satisfied with their purchase and their overall experience with the company, they are more likely to return. Going that extra mile and listening to their feedback lets people know you care about them, whether as simple as refunding a defective product or something more significant such as recalling an entire product lineup. It humanises the brand. It lets people see there are real people behind the company.

Protect Your Company’s Reputation

Nothing kills a brand’s reputation faster than negative customer reviews and experiences. You can be sure that even if a brand has glowing reviews, people will still seek out the negative ones. It may not be much of an issue for larger businesses, seeing as they already have an established customer following they can fall back on. However, negative feedback for startups can make or break your reputation, especially given how prevalent social media is. 

With social media listening, you can be on the lookout for what people are saying about your brand, both good and bad. You can troubleshoot any problem before it snowballs out of control. Remember, social media goes both ways; just as you can promote your company, a customer can also narrate their negative experience with it.  

Conclusion

Social media listening helps companies take a proactive stance in growing their company, whether it is crafting focused content, fine-tuning social media marketing, or improving customer experience. 

Many analytical tools can help measure SEO and a company’s searchability. But all of that won’t be very meaningful if a company doesn’t act on the gathered information. Ultimately, utilising social media listening helps small companies improve their business, keeping customers happy and coming back for more. 

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