Social Listening! Why so important?
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In Likeable Social Media (2015), Kerpen discusses the benefits of listening via social media and what can occur if a company does not practice this important rule. When effectively listening, you’re acknowledging your customer’s opinions and thoughts, allowing them to know that they are heard (Kerpen, 2015). This is very important as it builds trust and strengthens the relationship between a brand and its customers.
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When a company effectively listens on social media, they’re able to analyze the data they gather to better plan product changes, marketing campaigns, and different offers or promotions (Kerpen, 2015).
Kerpen describes what can happen to a brand if they don’t practice listening, saying that a company’s brand reputation can be badly hurt by not responding efficiently to communication from customers on social media (p. 18). Doing so can lead to a level of mistrust and a greater risk of customers turning to the competition. Listening can be done as a low level of effort and can hurt a company's overall brand image when not taken advantage of.
Be Authentic!
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Companies will always try to make their processes more efficient, but this doesn’t mean you should compromise the ability to be authentic. Kerpen says the online social web is all about human interaction with one another (p. 104). It’s important to remember that not every response has to be the same.
Taking an improv approach and building a team that is able to be flexible and engaging to customer responses is one way to ensure you’re able to respond authentically (from an individual perspective) while being able to manage a higher volume of traffic (Kerpen, 2015). Another strategy identified by Kerpen is to develop a set of guidelines for the tone of voice that should be used and what is not ok to say (p. 107).
Sources:
Kerpen, D. (2015). Likeable Social Media. (2nd ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill Education.
Patel, N. (2015, January 05). How social listening can improve your marketing: Social media examiner. Retrieved January 30, 2017, from Social Media Examiner, http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/social-listening-can-improve-your-marketing/
Julia,
ReplyDeleteI hear you! Great job on the first blog post. Hearing your customers and what they have to say is the first thing I think of when I hear the term ‘listening’. Analyzing data is a big part of listening. Though, I would argue to call analyzing monitoring. I love the HubSpot example because it shows both accounts are speaking with one another. Additionally, the Support account on Twitter can better monitor their responses whereas the main account can field general enquiries and comments.
Your answer to the question about how to be authentic is well-developed. I like your tactic of identifying an authentic voice for the organization’s social media accounts. Drafting and following guidelines for the tone of voice is crucial to any marketing plan. Without defining a tone to keep the social media messages, customers and viewers can get confused. This may interrupt the authenticity of the organization’s social media presence. Heald (2015) provides five tips to identify a brand voice. The first one reminds me of our listening tactic. It is to gather and analyze content that relates to the brand, then create a voice around those findings. Of course, it should also align with the company’s overall voice.
Heald, E. (2015). 5 Easy Steps to Define and Use Your Brand Voice. Retrieved on January 30th from http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2015/10/define-brand-voice/
Hi Laura,
DeleteThank you! I enjoyed reading up on the important of listening and being authentic as these are two key components to any social media strategy.
I do agree, I think monitoring can refer to analyzing as well. The topic around what the difference is between the two is really interesting. Dan Neely refers to the analytics of both listening and monitoring when involving the tools that help a company to do both (2010). His article is a bit dated, but thought-provoking because his point of view is that monitoring tools help determine what’s happening or being said while listening tools can show the bigger picture of why. “To collect mentions of your brand around predetermined keywords, a monitoring solution may be appropriate. But if you want to fuel insights that will drive marketing strategy—if you value themes and patterns to make sense of the whole—you need the power of an analytical listening platform” (Neely, 2010). Both monitoring and listening are so similar, but are able to tell a company very different things. It seems important to make sure a social team is able to perform both in order to have a full understanding of who their audience is online.
Neely, D. (2010, May 25). Social-Media Listening vs. Social-Media Monitoring: Truly Connecting, or Merely Collecting? Retrieved February 01, 2017, from http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2010/3634/social-media-listening-vs-social-media-monitoring-truly-connecting-or-merely-collecting
Julia,
ReplyDeleteIn my reading I've seen the terms monitoring and listening used interchangeably. I like how you broke the definitions down. In my opinion I see listening as more communicative while monitoring is one-way. Monitoring can be collecting data for possible outgoing communication, while listening is used with the intention of two-way engagement.
Hi Julia,
ReplyDeleteI wanted to take some time to comment on what you shared around taking an improve approach “as a way to ensure you’re able to respond authentically.”
I really loved the improv vs. musical analogy from the Kerpen text and think it accurately describes how social media communication with customers should be done (Kerpen, 2015).
I ironically had an article from PR Daily’s show up on my Facebook newsfeed today on ways PR professionals can apply their rule of improve to their work. While most traditional forms of marketing, like PR, have focused on just dazzling and projecting at your audience (like a musical), the impact and consumer expectations of listening and interacting with brands have forced companies to rethink their approach (Smith, 2016).
I came across another article that expanded on the improve approach further and reinforced Kerpen’s thoughts on listening. The article’s author shared that, “One of the hardest things about improvisation is clearing your head so you can listen to your on-stage partner rather than thinking about what you are going to say next. Being present in the moment allows you to see opportunity and to react spontaneously. When you listen more than you talk, you hear what your customers are saying…This allows marketers to react in real time to situations…”(Guest, n.d).
Pairing this approach with some of the other factors you mentioned, can ensure your brand responses are authentic and effective!
References
Guest. (n.d). How Improvisation Can Make Us Better Marketers. Retreived February 02, 2017, from http://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-media-strategy/how-improvisation-can-make-us-better-marketers/
Kerpen, D. (2015). Likeable Social Media. (2nd ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill Education.
Smith. (2016, September 26). 4 ways young PR pros can apply the rules of improvisation. Retrieved February 02, 2017, from https://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/21453.aspx
Hi Julia,
ReplyDeleteI liked reading your post this week and the comments already posted. I agree that the way you broke down monitoring and listening were a great way to view the two as separate activities. As Laura pointed out, monitoring is more one-way and doesn't have the same interactive exchange as listening does as well as the policing element Kerpen discuss in the text. I think many companies began their social media presence with a monitoring approach and found out that it no longer serves them or their customers best interests. Today, I think that monitoring should be viewed more as a way to decide where to listen. As Vivek Patel (2016) writes "geo-specific social media monitoring tools help businesses engage with customers who are close to their brick-and-mortar stores". I think it could be viewed as more of a map of where your company is gaining traction or where it needs your ears currently.
Additionally, to comment on a company being authentic. I completely agree that "not every response has to be the same", in fact it probably sounds better to the audience or other customers reading reviews or scrolling the feed to see authentic real comments directed especially at the questions or concerns posted. It's so easy to spot when pasted from a company manual. I think that developing the tone, the vice and training personnel to be authentic always comes down to the fact that it is costly to train people to act on their own accord according to company values rather than work off a script. However they do need to weight the cost and effect of potential bad press and lost sales with training costs.
References:
Patel, V. (2016, January 13). 6 Location-based Social Media Monitoring Tools. Retrieved February 2, 2016, from http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/6-location-based-social-media-monitoring-tools/