Content Strategies that Leverage Social Listening for More Effective Results

People are continuously holding conversations directly about your brand, your industry, or your competitors. As a business, you simply have to keep listening and monitoring.

Further, it’s not enough to only listen or watch your audience grow, you need to use the insights to grow your business. Be proactive and take advantage of the tools out there to be a good listener.

Bottom of the Funnel Customers

Bottom-of-the-funnel consumers are continuously hanging around conversations about your brand, or a specific product. These people already know your brand and they are on the verge of buying the product — all they need is some questions answered.

Questions they might have include whether a certain feature is available or a product can help them with a specific need. If you’re keeping tabs on conversations in your industry, you’ll be able to pull these prospects into the fold. Send them to a product page, research that answers their question or feature list that can help make up their mind.

Refer Top of the Funnel Customers

On social media, top-of-the-funnel customers are also constantly hanging around. There’s always someone hearing about your brand for the first time or starting to engage in conversations about your product.

Unlike the customers at the bottom of the funnel, these prospects aren’t ready to buy anything. They typically want to learn more about the product, brand or industry.

When you see these types of prospects, you can serve guiding content that can help them get familiar with your product or industry, until they are ready to buy.

Reinforcing Positive Feedback

In the process of monitoring your social presence, you will also receive encouraging and positive feedback about your brand. This should not be shelved or forgotten, but instead should be showcased — for example re-tweeted on Twitter or shared on Facebook.

That’s one of the most effective social listening strategies you can utilize. Retweeting or reposting your customers’ positive feedback is a great strategy because it creates a positive feedback loop with your audience.

Turning Negative Feedback into Opportunities

At the same time, when you are closely listening to what’s being said about your brand, you will eventually come across users that have remained unhappy.

While this is inevitable, much of the damage from negative feedback can be contained. Moreover, working with complaints can be an opportunity to prove you really care about customers. Since these conversations take place on social media, everyone will see how you handle negative feedback.

The most important aspect is to find the issues your company can do something about and handle the situation with tact and in a timely manner.