Increase Customer Advocacy: The Role of Social Media Listening

Do you ever notice how top brands use celebrities in their ads? The celebrity will talk about or even use the product throughout the ad. Don't be fooled, though. This celebrity being present isn't a coincidence. Marketers and business owners understand the power of a familiar and trusted face in digital marketing.

According to research, 92% of people and consumers will always trust recommendations from family and friends. People feel better about buying a product or using a service if a friend or family member recommends it. Social media listening is the first step to turning your Facebook and Twitter traffic into customer advocacy.

The truth is- people look up to celebrities and trust what they say. That’s why influencers are so popular in marketing these days. As the term suggests, "influencers" have earned a large group’s trust. With this trust, they can affect customers' decisions, including what products or services they use.

People don't only listen to influencers, though. Did you know that over 85% of consumers seek product reviews online from people they don't know? While it’s great to have celebrities and influencers promoting your brand, you still need to consider everyone else's opinions.

So with at least 85% of consumers willing to trust what total strangers think, ensure that your customers only have positive things to say about your brand. How do you do this? It’s simple! You need to increase your customer advocacy efforts. Existing customers love to be heard and given attention. This will help you understand their pain points and needs and increase brand awareness. We will implore you to prioritize your customers' needs before anything else if you wish to have good social engagement.

You only need to listen to the opinions of your existing customers to improve their experience with the brand. Now, based on what they say, you can gain insights into improving your process or product. It’s great to see positive reviews. We all love that because positive reviews tell us what we’re doing right. Bear in mind, though, that we can’t neglect the criticism. The negative reviews show us what we can improve in the best way.

What can you do to make your customers happier? The best way to find out is through social media listening. How can this improve your customer advocacy? Keep reading to nerd out how!

What Is Social Media Listening?

Social media is a powerful source of information that businesses cannot ignore. Often, businesses gain more negative than positive feedback in real-time on various social media platforms. This negative feedback indicates that more work needs to be done to make the brand more appealing to online communities.

Social media listening can help you better understand what appeals more to your customers. This will help you better serve your customers and increase customer advocacy. Social Media listening is also key in expanding your company's reach and engagement. It is the first step to turning your social media platforms, Facebook and Twitter traffic, into customer advocacy. Fortunately, you can use social listening to expand your customer advocacy, allowing you to actively track customers' needs online.

The importance of social listening to your company's growth.

Social media listening tracks and analyzes people's conversations about your business. You track this information because you're curious about what people say about you so you can act on it. You then use the data gathered to ensure your business works better for everyone.

You will appreciate this, as will your customers. Think about it. It’s a win-win situation. Customers will appreciate their complaints being addressed, and you'll appreciate it when they give you positive feedback. But that's not all. The best part is- you'll even get a bonus. They now believe in your brand, and you can sell them nearly anything. As a result, you immensely expand your social network and target market.

Here are some of the benefits of customer advocacy:

• You can expand your customer base
• You can expand your product offerings even from your social media posts
• You can use a marketing strategy to save advertising and marketing costs
• You can multiply your profit long-term since customers would stick to a product they trust
• You can become the next big thing in the entire industry, thereby holding a large market share

… and the list goes on.

Hold on a second; I know what you’re thinking. This sounds just like social media monitoring. Right? You’re probably already doing that, but it's not the same thing. There’s a subtle but invaluable difference between social media listening and social media monitoring. You can dominate your niche if you find out what it is.

Social Media Listening vs. Social Media Monitoring: What’s the Difference?

Let's look at social media monitoring first. Social media monitoring checks different platforms and channels for general information about your business. Social monitoring is an easy way to learn and enhance your networking capabilities. By monitoring your competitors and your niche, you can gain valuable information to help you become a social influencer.

Social media monitoring gives you a good idea of user-generated data points to enhance your organization's competitive edge. Just like with any aspect of business, it's important to stay aware of what's going on in the market, and social monitoring is the easiest way to do this. You’re looking for relevant hashtags, mentions of your brand, or your competition. You’ll also keep an eye out for any developments, conversations, and trends related to your industry.

So you’re focusing on the impact of any marketing or engagement strategies you put out there. You’d focus on reach, engagement, and the growth rate of your target audience and customer experience to improve your customer service if needed.

When you look at social media listening, though, it personalizes the whole experience. Now, you’re focusing on what your audience says about you and your competitors. Social listening helps you learn a lot from your competition! Find out what people are saying about them, too, so you can avoid their mistakes while tailoring what works to suit your business or organization.

With social media listening, you’re focused on discovering what people enjoy about your competitors and what doesn’t work for them, positive and negative comments. Find this out and take action. If someone leaves a negative review, find out why. Contact such persons and develop conversations to fetch you information and customer needs. After a bad impression of your brand is corrected by providing a top-notch customer experience, such people become loyal customers.

We can easily track conversations about our brands using social listening tools. Several brands use these tools to see what people say about them. Listening to the tone of a conversation, understanding social cues and gestures, and figuring out how to respond accordingly is an incredibly complex task. With the advent of social media, there is an explosion of data, and social listening tools are the tool to keep up. As with any new technology, knowing how to leverage social listening can be hard.

Social media listening outlines the next steps to develop and maintain a great brand reputation online and improve brand awareness. As a result, your target audience will grow and increase your revenue.

So how can you use social media listening to increase customer advocacy in real-time? Let's find out.