Atlanta SEO Consultant: What is Social Listening and How to Use it for Customer Service

From people sharing photographs, memories, and stories on Facebook to endless fashion ideas on Pinterest and Instagram, social media has influenced our everyday lives. According to recent reports, there are 4.2 billion active users on social media as of January 2021. This represents more than 50% of the world’s population. There is a significant amount of fresh data that gets published and shared every day online. Did you know every month, customers send more than 20 billion messages to businesses? A leading Atlanta SEO consultant says this information overload makes relevant and important social media messages inaudible for businesses.

Generally, having a strong social media presence is crucial for any business. More importantly, it plays a vital role in capturing the attention of your audience. But, imagine what would happen if you are not able to get access to these social media noises. Here’s where social listing comes into play. It allows you to track, analyze, and respond to conversations about them on social media. In short, social listening is a crucial component of audience research.

Atlanta SEO Consultant – What is Social Listening?

Social listening is a technology used to identify, analyze, and respond to what is being said on social media about your business. Moreover, you get access to this information without you having to go looking for it. It allows you to know what’s said about your brand, track mentions of your business, evaluate tone, analyze relevant data, create reports, and more.

Difference Between Social Media Monitoring and Social Listening – Atlanta SEO Consultant

Most of the time, people interchange the terms social media monitoring and social listening. But, are they same? Nope, there is a slight difference. The leading Atlanta SEO consultant lists the difference between social media monitoring and social listening.

Social Media Monitoring

Social media monitoring is all about gathering data such as how many times your brand is mentioned and more. It allows you to observe and record data but don’t have anything to deal with operation or condition.

Social Media Listening

Unlike social media monitoring, social media listening is about understanding and analyzing data. It helps you to identify and analyze who is talking about your brand, how they are talking about it, and more. In addition to this, it also allows you to identify the trends, how your brand compares to the competition and more.

Social media monitoring tells you what’s happening, whereas social media listening gives you an understanding of why something is happening.

The Importance of Social Listening in 2021 – Atlanta SEO Consultant

According to the leading Atlanta SEO consultant, managing a business’s social media account before ten years is not as time-consuming as today. Moreover, social media wasn’t taken seriously by your target audience in the previous years. So, it wasn’t playing any crucial role in your marketing strategy.

Today, social media has become a powerful sales tool. Additionally, your target audience expects your business to be on social media to answer their queries and stay connected. Most of the target audience is more active on different social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, and more. This makes it difficult for businesses to identify what their audience is talking about their brand. Fortunately, social listening tools are helpful in identifying the number of mentions about your brand. Moreover, it identifies your brand-relevant conversation even if there are no handles. It also provides you insightful reports in understanding the “why” and “how” behind any mention of your brand.

How to Use Social Listening for Customer Service?

According to a study published by American Express, when a customer has a poor customer service experience, they share that experience with 17 people. But, when they have a poor customer service experience on social media, they share that negative experience with 53 people. Yes, the poor customer experience on social media is shared twice. So, the Atlanta SEO consultant says, social listening helps you improve customer satisfaction rates and successfully grow your business. Here we’ve listed a few different ways to use social listening for customer service.

Focus on Limited Channels – Atlanta SEO Consultant

With a huge number of social media networks available, it would be difficult for businesses to decide on which channels to listen to. One of the simplest ways to decide is to choose channels in which your customers are more active. Look at your social media demographic data to prioritize the channels that you must focus on. If you are new to social media, start with one or two channels in the beginning to understand the best way to utilize it for your business. Again, don’t overextend yourself for better results.

Choose the Right Tools

Use the right social listening tools to determine and monitor the brand mentions for you. This saves you a lot of time and hard work. There are both paid and free tools from which you can choose the best one to track and monitor conversions. Some of the popular social listening tools are Google Alerts, Mentions, Falcon, and more.

Set Alerts and Notifications – Atlanta SEO Consultant

Set up alerts and notifications to get real-time data on conversions. You can create alerts for the brand name, brand slogans, keywords, industry-related buzzwords, and more. You can even set an alert for your competitors’ names to find out what your target audience is talking about them.

Increase Response Time

Based on recent research data, more than 60% of customers are using social media for customer service. Yet, only less than 40% of companies respond to customers on social media. So, if you find a question or comment from your customer, respond to it. More importantly, respond to it as quickly as possible. Speed is the key to responding on social media. The leading Atlanta SEO consultant says customers expect businesses to respond to them within 60 minutes of making a query. This is the reason why it is crucial to set up tracking to start social listening. Using the right social listening tools, get you notified each time there is a conversation about your brand. Luckily, this helps you to respond quickly to the customer query within 60 minutes.

Respond to Positive Feedbacks – Atlanta SEO Consultant

So, where do you think you can find the best feedback for your business? Social Media. If someone is sharing their positive experience or recommending your product, don’t ignore them. Thank them for sharing, and this opens up opportunities for engagement and recommendations. According to the Journal of Business & Economics Research, 42% of social media users have purchased a product based on a recommendation from someone they are following. So, it’s crucial to engage with your customers to encourage them to spread positive words.

The Bottom Line

Social listening is an integral part of customer service. Adding it to your marketing strategy is a wise idea to improve the success of your business. Moreover, it helps you to exceed customer expectations and increase the revenue of your business. Choosing the right networks to monitor using the right tools helps your brand in delivering great customer service. So, what are you waiting for? Get in touch with the professionals at Digital Marketing Strategies, the leading Atlanta SEO consultant, to create a valuable social listening strategy for you.