For a business to exist in the contemporary world, it’s crucial to have an online presence. Enterprises that lack an online identity are invisible to the world of business and a massive online audience.
However, I believe apart from access to high-speed internet and a chic logo, there’s far more that goes in for a business to become successful online.
Similar to traditional businesses, digital businesses also require customer feedback and response. However, sustaining the reputation requires the use of social listening tools and a lot of brainstorming before measures that lead to the success of an online business are taken.
What are Social Listening Tools and why does it Matter?
Let’s be honest, the internet is a great place to access. Especially if you have high-speed internet and undivided time to spend online; a multitude of benefits can come your way through this medium.
From your daily dose of news and gossip to the goodness of wholesome memes, the internet blesses an individual with more than he/she expects.
However, for online businesses internet has become more than just another place to sell their products or services. The medium provides effective platforms to channel and market a service or product. Through the internet, businesses can reach an entirely different audience that is more targeted, diverse and responsive. The good part here is that even the mightiest social media sites, like Facebook and Instagram that were essentially created for social networking, have updated their respective platforms in ways that benefit online businesses immensely.
And apart from all this, the internet also facilitates businesses with tools that encourage the seamless functioning of an enterprise. An example of this is social listening tools. Social listening tools not only make things easier for the business in terms of customer engagement and brand strategy but provide businesses with guidance on undermentioned aspects.
Social listening tools allow businesses to analyze, track and even respond to comments that are about your business or the online business industry as a whole.
To understand social listening tools more, consider it as a competent supervisor of a traditional set-up business who keeps an eye on everything happening at the workplace. Nonetheless, from keeping an eye upon how your business is functioning to receiving feedback from visitors and customers, social listening tools are more vigilant than an average human supervisor.
Now that we better understand how social listening tools basically work for online businesses, we shall address the part which must be very obvious by now.
So here are some of the reasons why social listening tools matter to online businesses:
1. Essential for Customer Engagement
The aforesaid benefits of the internet only presented the bright side, quite oblivious of due acknowledgment of its dark or downside. The internet might be the greatest place for entrepreneurs, small business owners and of course, for well-established brands and enterprises too, but what’s troubling is its ability to tarnish the well-built reputation of a business concern literally overnight.
In recent times you might have noticed the power of a single tweet or a Facebook post that’s accusing a brand of its poor customer service or below par product quality. Such content takes rounds on the internet while the brand’s award for great customer service or its efforts to boost revenue cry in the corner.
It is because of these horrifying days that a business needs to take all possible measures to maintain a good business reputation. And social listening tools come most handy in this regard. Social listening tools help businesses in identifying possibilities that allow them to engage in conversation regarding their brand, product or service.
2. Perform Action According to the Requirement
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, an online business doesn’t achieve success with only fast online connectivity and a stylish logo, a mammoth effort is required. Luckily because of social listening tools, these efforts have been rendered simple for smart entrepreneurs.
More than just a tool for customer engagement, social listening tools present a medium that helps observe and analyze social sentiment.
Social sentiment is known as an online response a business gets from customers. Social listening tools allow a business to keep an eye on the factors that trigger social sentiment in – positive or negative – in the first place.
Positive social sentiment can either be the result of a successful brand campaign or a powerful product marketing strategy. In any case, a business must keep into consideration all kinds of social sentiment that come its way. Because this is what symbolizes and presents, in a nutshell, the ultimate signals that tell how a product or service is impacting your existing and potential clientele.
Moreover, via analysis of collective response or customer feedback, social listening comes to help a business with altering brand strategy as per the requirement at any given point in time. As a result, an enterprise may come to understand how it should mold its brand strategy in order to work effectively at any appointed time.
3. Tells You More About Your Competitors
Social listening is one of the greatest tools that facilitate gain of information about how your competitors are working.
Business is all about having maximum knowledge about your competitors. Especially if its an online business, even the slightest information about a competitor is equivalent to a treasure.
Social Listening tools can help a business in knowing whether or not their business competitors are launching a new product; whether they are opting for a new marketing strategy or calling a press conference etc.
All this information about competitors assists a business in going one step ahead and eventually bagging more opportunities for success.
Final Words
In conclusion, social listening tools let you analyze data to find out what people are thinking and saying about your business and what you can do to improve the performance and reputation of your enterprise. Also, in case you came here looking for the best social listening tools, we will for sure mention a few you may find advantageous: Hootsuite, HubSpot, Buffer, and TweetReach are some of the best from the lot.
