Welcome to the final installment of our three-part blog series about online listening. Last week, we talked about the insights you can gain from online listening. Once you’ve found important key trends, you can put those insights to work by incorporating them into your business strategies.
Marketing & Content
Incorporate the insights found into your content strategy. Insights illustrate what people are looking for and talking about. By bring those trends in your own content – blogs, videos, print and marketing materials – you can tailor your message to strike a chord with your customers. Insights can tell you what channels generate the most activity about your brand or industry, so you can target marketing efforts to the right media channels. Online listening insights can also be used to determine the impact of marketing campaigns and events, before, during and after.
Your listening insights can help you understand what people are responding to, so you can tweak your content to make the most impact. Use your knowledge to influence your marketing plan, marketing messages and delivery methods.
Human Resources
Online listening insights reveal trends in employee online activity (for both current and previous employees): though these insights you can find out who your brand ambassadors and detractors are within your workforce. Online listening insights can help you protect your brand and ensure that employees are adhering to company policies regarding social media and brand representation. These insights can also reveal where employee communities are built online and what topics are important to your workforce, so you can adjust HR policies and work conditions appropriately.
Online listening tools also make it easy for employers to conduct social media audits and background checks. Reviewing the online resume footprint for current employees and potential candidates can help employers determine the engagement, expertise and influence of present or potential team members.
Sales & Business Development
Once you’ve discovered untapped online leads, incorporate them into your sales strategy: qualify them and build relationships. And once you’ve mastered the art of engagement and built a solid web presence with valuable content, sales leads will come to you. Using online listening insights, you can bring your influencers into your strategy, and network and build relationships with people who have clout in your communities.
Customer Service & Training
Online listening insights reveal pain points and disconnects between the customer and the service team, and using those insights, you can begin to address any problem areas. Combine your online reviews and feedback with your CSAT scores to get a fuller picture of your customer service landscape. Use online customer feedback to build a better customer experience. Your online listening insights can pinpoint areas where employee training can be changed or improved to enhance skills of front-line employees.
Product Development
Themes in online conversation can reveal unknown customer needs and requests for new products or product enhancements. Once you know what these ideas are, you can act on them and develop products that fit the lifestyle and desires of your customer base. Trends online can also project the direction of consumer tastes and preferences. In turn, online listening insights become predictive: you can develop the right products and services prior to the customer’s request, and satisfy their potential needs and wants before they even ask.
Are you listening online? If so, what insights have you derived that influence your business strategy?
Jennifer Muñoz is Director of Operations & Strategy Analyst with Social Strategy1. She contributes blog posts weekly and can be found on Twitter @getaJenny. Want additional strategy insights? Follow us on Twitter at @sstrategy1.
Did you know that Social Strategy1 offers a total media listening platform and a team of strategy analysts that can help you discover insights to build your business? Contact us for additional information, or to schedule a demo, call 877-SS1-DEMO.