"Hearing" good and bad comments about your brand? This tactic will help you provide better customer experience online!

Friday: Collaborate and Innovate FROM THE DESK OF MILES EVERSON: As an independent professional who’s trying to build a brand online, you should know that social media isn’t just a platform to display your products or services. It’s also a platform to connect with your target market. Are you aware about the myriad of ways you can use social media to promote your brand online? Aside from giving away discounts, setting up a referral program, and creating social media contests, there’s also what others call as Social Listening. Read more to know this digital entrepreneur’s insights about using social media to strengthen your brand’s online presence. CEO, MBO Partners Chairman of the Advisory Board, The I Institute

"Hearing" good and bad comments about your brand? This tactic will help you provide better customer experience online! “For every second you don’t see me talking, I am listening intently.” That is what digital entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk stated in one of his blog posts. According to him, listening is a part of everything he does―from the content he publishes on his website to the investments he makes. Is listening important in establishing your brand’s image and expanding your online reach? 100% ABSOLUTELY! In fact, Vaynerchuk coined a term for the kind of listening that must be done by businesses in the Internet world. He calls it… Social listening! Social listening is the process of checking various social media platforms and websites for mentions or conversations about your brand and using those insights to determine your next steps. Below are some information you can track with social listening: Your brand name and social media handles Your products Your branded hashtags and relevant unbranded hashtags Your slogans Industry-specific keywords Competitors’ brand names, handles, products, and slogans Analyzing these types of information will enable you to understand how people feel about your brand. Let’s dive deeper into a few social listening tactics that you and your brand can benefit from: Finding the most frequently asked questions (FAQs) about your business. In addressing FAQs and encouraging online users to ask questions about your brand, your goal is not only to impress, but also to gain information that will help you better serve your target market. Let’s take a look at what Gary Vaynerchuk does regularly on his personal Instagram account: This post on March 31, 2021 garnered more than 5,000 comments that contain questions from followers who’d like to know more about Vaynerchuk’s business. That means… Those questions might also lead to over 5,000 topics and ideas for future content that will help address the demands of the target market! By actively reading and responding to people’s queries, Vaynerchuk gained potential topics for his blog posts, podcasts, stories, reels, and more. … and when there are more types of content published online, there’s also a higher chance of people encountering Vaynerchuk and his brand!   Identifying your target market’s most common issues. From general pain points to specific frustrations about your brand, social listening provides a window into your target market’s biggest concerns. The more you listen, the better you identify their problems… and when you know what their pain points are, you’ll be able to address those accordingly through your brand’s products or services. For example: If your business is about providing a specific insurance package to young adults so they don’t have to depend on their parents too much, how will you make sure that your message resonates with your target audience? One way is through social listening! Before publishing anything online, you first have to identify the struggles most young adults experience. Once you’ve gathered enough insights, use them to form your social media or content marketing strategy. Doing this will help make your message resonate with your target market and compel them to like and share your content with other online users.   Monitoring brand health. One of the perks of social listening is it allows you to keep tabs on your brand’s overall public perception―whether positive or negative. Some business owners or marketers are quick to dismiss negative commenters as “trolls.” However, if your goal is to improve your brand and expand its online reach, you have to learn how to handle both good and bad comments. Sure, there are rude comments from people who are insecure about your brand or are simply looking to get a reaction, but there are also times when negative comments are actually constructive. You need to “hear” them all. One of the best approaches is taking the bad comments with the good and using both as inspiration to make your brand’s products or services better. Remember: The purpose of checking these kinds of feedback isn’t to stroke your ego as a business owner or marketer. It’s to extract actionable insights to further improve your customers’ experience with your brand.   Creating deeper connections with your customers. Social listening boils down to giving back to your customers. Think of it as living in a “Thank you” economy, where the best marketing strategy is to show that you care! Social media is a great tool to know more about your target market’s interests and build genuine connections. Talk to people. Find out what they love. Figure out how you can use those insights to offer value, solve a problem, or brighten a customer’s day. Who knows? Your kind intentions might move your target market and motivate them to post about your brand online, share your published content, etc. When that happens, you’re not only building good connections with customers but you’re also opening doors of opportunities to boost your brand’s online presence! According to Gary Vaynerchuk, we are living through the “humanization of business.” In his words: “It’s no longer enough to just say how much you value your customers―you have to actually live it by providing real value and utility. The question then becomes, how can you serve an audience if you don’t know them―their likes, dislikes, the stuff they think is amazing, and the stuff they think absolutely sucks?” Social media provides a convenient way for you to know your target market’s interests, online activities, favorite trends, etc. These platforms provide a huge amount of free market research available to you at any moment. All you have to do is pay attention. Social listening holds the key to knowing how well your brand is doing in the market, identifying emerging trends, and analyzing how consumers view your business. If you ignore this essential process in your online marketing strategy, you leave behind useful information. On the other hand, if you use social listening to your advantage, you’ll learn how to maximize your brand’s: Content creation Product development Customer service Other marketing strategies … so that your messages, offerings, and solutions appeal to your target market and encourage them to take part in strengthening your brand’s online visibility. Leave a mental note for yourself about the importance of social listening and use this as a foundation to execute your online marketing strategies well! Hope you’ve found this week’s insights interesting and helpful. Follow us on LinkedIn. Stay tuned for next Friday’s Collaborate and Innovate! Learn more about how Yelp Ads can help you grow your business on next week’s Collaborate and Innovate!