Whatever happens on social media platforms can significantly affect your business. According to one study, it was revealed that 90% of small business-owners utilise social media to boost business exposure. In comparison, only 72% used it to steer more consumer traffic to their website. This means that only 72% understand the importance of driving traffic to their website. Our point is that all your digital accounts and assets should complement one another. Each digital platform should work together to enhance your business in the digital arena.
But, you should understand what is taking place on social media to engage with your audience members and have the significant impact you want. You can significantly impact your business’s reputation online by engaging in social monitoring and social listening, which most people use interchangeably but actually happen to be two different things.
In this guide, we look at the difference between social media listening and social media monitoring and how each of these strategies can be used effectively for your online business.
What is Social Media Monitoring?
Social media monitoring can be deemed as the customer support of a brand over social media platforms. Here, a team of customer representatives is responsible for monitoring the different social media platforms your brand is engaging in, along with responding to customer posts.
Social media monitoring aids your brand in tracking down and responding to mentions on websites, blogs, social media, forums, and review sites. This is applicable even when no tag has been used since most customers might name your brand without any linking.
By tracking these mentions, brands tend to effectively and efficiently respond to their customers to provide excellent customer service and prevent any issues from further escalating.
What is Social Media Listening?
Social media listening is a general category comprising both social media monitoring alongside several other practices.
It primarily involves extracting data from various social media platforms to see how customers are engaging and interacting with your products, brand, and industry. This includes your competitors too.
The ability to identify such conversations helps reduce risk and informs your company how they can strategize and respond to their customers’ needs in the best possible way.
Differences between Social Media Monitoring and Listening
You will often hear social media listening and social media monitoring frequently used as interchangeable terms. Still, the truth is there are many differences between the two. The two terms apply to the deed of interacting with all public social media posts for the benefit of your company, but this is just where the similarities end.
The initial step to properly execute social media monitoring and social media listening strategies is to understand what makes them unique. Thus, we are breaking down the most noteworthy differences between the two terms so you can polish up your strategy and build better customer experiences.
● Passive vs. Active
Social media monitoring is generally passive, such as binge-watching shows or movies on Netflix or bird-watching. Here, you become engrossed in the matter and deeply observe the conversation, maybe post a reply, but you don’t take any solution-oriented action.
Conversely, social media listening is generally active as it entails receiving the information and interpreting it continuously. These insights must be utilized to influence important and constructive business decisions that eventually enhance customer experience.
● Narrow vs. Broad
Social media monitoring has a relatively narrow focus and is basically just a tiny slice of the entire social pie. It focuses on a specific product, brand, company, or campaign.
In contrast, social media listening includes brand mentions alongside occasions, categories, industries, or even need states. It allows you to understand how people discuss you and your brand, your competitors, and the entire market landscape in general.
● Micro vs. Macro
Social media monitoring addresses buyers on a micro level, where social media managers and customer care representatives respond to all the inbound issues, queries, and comments. They simply monitor the flow of notifications coming in and refer the customer to the right person or department or provide an answer right away.
Social media listening is applicable on a broader scale. It takes a macro view of how customers are discussing your brand on various social media platforms. It collects data from customer interactions and social monitoring and pools it together to establish a thorough view of your customers’ opinions and how your brand can attend to their needs.
● Reactive vs. Proactive
Social media monitoring is reactive as it lays more focus on understanding the customer and responding to their concerns online. Here, customers make a move first and eventually reach out to brands on their social media platforms. As a result, the customer care representatives will dive in to resolve a problem or attend to their queries.
However, customer interactions should not come to a standstill here. This is where social media listening steps in, which is proactive. Rather than waiting to solve issues, social media listening incorporates online chatter to detect opportunities for meeting customers’ needs. It enables brands to take these temporary interactions and establish them to gather valuable insights as part of their long-term strategy.
This combined, birds-eye perspective also allows you to comprehend why social mentions firstly came to your customer representative. This way, you can begin looking for opportunities to make alterations that will proactively prevent such issues in the foreseeable future.
How Can Brands Use Social Media Monitoring?
1. Answer questions
Let us assume you run an airline. One of your customers tags your brand name on any social media platform to look up the cost of checking in an extra luggage bag. A brand with great social media monitoring practices will instantly reach out to a customer’s query and provide them all the relevant information and pricing data associated with it.
The customer might also have a few follow-up questions. Therefore, a brand’s customer representative should always stick around for some time and ask the customer if there’s anything else they’d like to know or need assistance with.
2. Resolve issues or complaints
Even though not all the customers’ questions are urgent, complaints and issues must be instantly addressed to help a distressed customer, avoid any further grievances, and prevent the situation from getting out of hand or becoming viral on social media.
Imagine a similar scenario where a customer later becomes upset because of the poor in-flight Wi-Fi signals throughout the plane ride. In the modern and fast-paced world, airlines and other service sectors need to learn how to cater to these issues spontaneously to defend their own brand.
Brands leaving issues and queries like these unattended is almost like opting not to attend the influx of phone calls at a customer support center, except the former is even worse since other users will also witness your brand is ignoring its customers.
Brands can avoid this by using social media monitoring to prioritize customers and immediately respond to their complaints. An instant reaction to such issues gives brands a chance to join and help steer the conversation in the right way before things spiral out of their control.
In addition, it’s vital to remain calm and respond appropriately and kindly even under certain circumstances where the customer is at fault. Based on the situation’s severity, a brand might be willing to offer enticing discount offers or vouchers. This can be a last resort to resolve issues with an angry or disappointed customer.
3. Thank customers for positive feedback
As a brand, you must always keep an open eye out for all the positive comments posted regarding your brand. According to the best social media monitoring practices, you must respond instantly to customers with some variation of messages like, “Please inform us if there is anything else we can do to assist you” or “We are happy to have helped.”
A positive review posted by your customers certainly e means a lot and makes a massive difference for your brand. You should respond with a personalized, timely, and genuine token of gratitude towards them for sharing their valuable feedback.
How Can Brands Use Social Media Listening?
1. Read content and conversations
Instead of only tallying mentions, look at what people are saying. Read all the content and conversations related to the entire industry and your brand in specific, so you’re aware of what your audience actually cares about. For instance, see if your audience members are constantly discussing something your business does.
If there’s positive feedback, see how you can replicate what is helping it do great in other business areas. If the feedback is negative, don’t run away from the situation. Instead, learn to face the situation by acknowledging the issue and apologize on your and the entire company’s behalf for the inconvenience caused.
Negative feedback can be challenging to tackle, but it also gives your company a chance to help somebody in need of assistance and create loyalty. In addition, social media listening can be used to identify essential conversations where you can be of assistance, even if your brand isn’t directly involved.
By providing valuable advice, you are actually exhibiting your experience and proficiency in your field and reflecting that you are approachable.
2. Track social mentions
A significant reason for using social media listening is to keep track of the mentions you get while responding to customer queries and including that information into an audience report.
In social media listening, tracking mentions where your business is not tagged on social media is incredibly important since the data is still significant even if you do not require a response.
You might even want to look at the entire industry’s and your competitors’ mentions, even if your business is not named. The whole point is to collect as much information about your audience as you can.
3. Find superfans and influencers
Social listening gives you a fantastic opportunity to identify influencers and superfans for your brand, which can be incredibly valuable and influential in driving and delivering your brand message.
- The term “superfans” refers to those who usually recommend your products to others, speak positively about your brand, and stand in your brand’s defense when your brand is in a crisis.
- Influencers are individuals who proudly own a large base of fans and followers, including most of your target audience.
In some particular cases, superfans might be classified as influencers, but not always. Superfans and influencers play a vital role in driving a brand’s message, which is why brands should always use social media listening to classify such people.
4. Implement changes based on opinions
The insights you gather will only prove valuable if you actually take your precious time to implement the necessary changes required to serve your audience better. For instance, responding to the same questions asked from various customers indicates an information gap that you immediately need to address.
Social media monitoring aims might provide you a temporary solution by responding to customer queries individually. Although, a better solution would be to use social media listening to identify the problem at hand and recommend adding the question to a self-service resource (like your online community).
5. Check out competitors
Social media listening is ideal for keeping pace with what your customers have to say about your rivals. Staying in the loop might help you capitalize on an area your rivals are struggling with, prevent mistakes made by them, or see what individuals like about them and try improving yourself.
Conclusion
When it comes down to choosing strategies, you cannot and should not favor one over the other. Social media monitoring and listening play a vital role in maximizing your online business reputation and creating an outstanding customer experience. It helps identify those individuals on social media who might be discussing your brand.
Similarly, listening to conversations on different social media channels can give companies an extensive overview of how customers feel about your company in particular and the industry as a whole. Together you can use both tools as part of an all-embracing social media marketing strategy and see a remarkable difference in your online reputation
