Benefits of Social Listening for your Company
In this blog post, you will learn about the benefits of social listening for your company. Social listening is monitoring and collecting data from social platforms. It analyzes what has been said about your brand online.
In the past, communication was only through traditional media, such as TV, newspaper, radio, and billboards. With the digital transformation, interaction with your employees, community, and government has changed drastically. Clients are no longer a passive subject; they are well informed about your brand. They can recommend, criticize, and interact with other clients or prospects. Therefore, brand reputation is critical to the success of your company.
A positive brand reputation will lead your clients to trust your organization, know your core values, and be their first choice. Today, the importance of how clients perceive your company and its reputation cannot be downplayed.
Do you know how your company is perceived in the market? If the answer is no, then social listening might be an interesting tool for your company.
What are social listening and brand reputation?
Social listening is monitoring and collecting data from social platforms. It analyzes what has been said about your brand online. It provides an insight that can impact your business strategy, operations, and product updates. By collecting and analyzing this data, you will increase awareness of how your brand has been performing online and how it is perceived, which builds your brand reputation over time.
Here are four reasons underlining the importance and benefits of social listening:
1. Establish good communication with the community and your employees.
Whether you manufacture goods or retail them directly to clients, social listening gives you clear insight into where your company should focus its marketing efforts. You will also discover which platform you have the largest and most active audience for your social media.
Social listening enables you to communicate directly to your followers and listen to your employees’ and community’s insight regarding your products/services.
Using social media will allow you to reach a new audience and still interact with your client base. In our experience, maintaining good business practices, active communication channels, and interaction with employees and the community can help settle a crisis. It is also important to be vigilant and aware of how the clientele is perceiving your company.
2. Building trust
Clients tend to buy products and services from brands they or those around them trust. Fast actions in response to feedback create trust between you and your clients, showing:
- You value their opinion
- You are willing to go the extra mile for them
Therefore, monitoring your brand reputation helps your business to understand its perception amongst clients. Thus, with this benefit of social listening, you are working on your clients’ confidence in trading with your business.
Growing your business relies on attracting top talent, and that requires confidence among your employment base. These days, providing jobs is not enough for companies to qualify for their employees’ needs. Competition in the job market is increasing, and employers are battling to become employers of choice.
Engagement through social media is a key strategy. We frequently witness the importance of trust as a crucial component in the running of organizations. Employees should feel on a trustworthy environment for them to express and communicate effectively with their leaders.
3. Crisis Management
There is an idea that social listening should be incorporated into a business strategy once there is a negative review. But the truth is that active awareness is one of the main actors that will prevent and help tackle a crisis successfully.
Monitoring your company’s social media will enable you to stay tuned to positive and negative reviews and act accordingly to promote positive business practices. It is important to mention that the more prepared you are before a crisis, the faster your response will be.
4. Business optimization
Clients and top talent are vital resources for businesses. When it comes to products, clients are the greatest tool for pinpointing your business’s most valued features, some that you may not even be aware of. When employees are proud of your brand, their stamp of approval weighs a lot among their peers. Therefore, you should tap into their voice and optimize your business accordingly.
The greater the information you collect from your target market, the better you can understand how your business is perceived. With this insight, you can assist and identify how you can improve your brand image and reputation.
Social listening can be a useful tool to avoid the risk of affecting your business continuity.
About Prodensa
Prodensa is a consulting firm with 35 years of experience supporting start-up of operations in Mexico. We offer solutions related to Public Relations such as Community Engagement Analysis, Crisis Communication & Brand Resiliency, Digital Image & Social Media, and Social Responsibility.
For additional information about our solutions, contact us here.
About the author
Karla Guerra, Business Development Leader and Project Manager at Prodensa.
She has a degree in Business Management Engineering from Universidad de Monterrey, which included a semester abroad in Milan, Italy, at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, developing her business managing skills.
Karla has developed her career from the beginning with Prodensa, progressing into a leading role in the handling of Prodensa’s clients, focusing on improving their reputation by implementing a Public relations strategy and the content.
She has also proven herself to be proficient in the field of administration of the commercial area.
