Listening is a critical part of communication. Smart companies realize it’s not about what they want, it’s about what their customers want. And what their customers find valuable. How better to find out what your customers think than to ask, and more importantly, to listen?
But the traditional methods of gathering information have come and gone. Paper surveys and phone interviews are a thing of the past. Listening to customers today means being present in the spaces where they talk, share and interact, and with the digital space growing at an exponential rate, that could be anywhere.
So, how can you listen to hundreds of digital conversations all at the same time? By implementing a social media listening program. Yes, they have an app (and programs and tools) for that.
Here are 3 things to consider before setting out on a social media listening journey:
Define your objective
Monitoring conversations in the social sphere is challenging, for many reasons. It’s difficult to keep up with all the complex, unstructured conversations happening across a variety of channels, and discern what’s valuable and what’s noise. Clearly defining your listening objective (i.e. product or company mentions, competitive news, customer support complaints) will help keep your program on track, and will help you define your success metrics going forward.
Determine the key social channels
New social channels are created every day. How should a company go about choosing which ones to monitor and which ones to ignore? Where you focus your listening efforts will depend on your objective and the audience you’re targeting. When in doubt, ask your customers about their social media preferences, or use listening tools like socialmention.com or Google Alerts.
Identify the right person or team to analyze the information
Your listening program could be mining the most useful information in the world, but unless there’s someone to actively analyze the conversational data, it’s an exercise in futility. At this point of the process there should be two types of people involved: the folks who listen and gather, and the folks who use the data and respond. It usually works best when the ones listening are also the ones taking action, i.e. a customer support group who monitors and responds to customer inquiries and complaints.
Let’s review. Listening to customers isn’t a revolutionary practice. Listening through social media is (though it’s becoming common practice). How can a company listen effectively? By clearly defining the objectives, focusing on the most relevant social sites/channels and by routing the information to the appropriate team for action.
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