“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning”- Bill Gates
Yes, this is very true. Your unhappy customers are those who show the wrong path you took in your right way of work. But most of times these complaints go unnoticed or are just between the people who actually can’t bring any result and as a result you just lose your customers even without knowing what actually went wrong and where!
So, what can be done? Well friends, technology has advanced way too much and now you have solution for everything possible under the sun! Gone are the days when you used to give a feedback page, with only some of them your customers actually bothering to give you the correct feedback. Now there are ways to get feedback of almost all the people who are a part of your product family.
You may ask us how? Well, have you heard about ‘Brand monitoring’? That’s the thing! Brand monitoring also known as ‘Social Media Listening’ is an effective way not only to curb this problem but also to strengthen your relationship with your customers.
So what does this do?
It helps you collect information, monitor them and put them to productive use to increase the effectiveness of your business. It gives you an idea about the potential threat(s) which your business might have to suffer and also the positive reviews which your product/commodity/service has garnered from across the internet.
While running a business, there are many rules as to what you should follow and what you should not, these social media tools helps you identify them and act accordingly. So here, we bring to you 4 most effective social media listening tools both free and paid.
1. SOCIAL MENTION
This one listening tool is found to be very attractive due to its visual format. It collects data from various sources across the internet like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, photobucket, etc. and presents it in an aggregate form; both the positives and the negatives. It finds your brand strength as to how often it is being discussed, its popularity and its reach; how many people could it attract. You also know about your top keywords, hashtags, users and sources which are very useful for you specially during marketing.
You can also filter your results by types, say if you want to concentrate on your brand mentions by microblogs and blogs, you can do that.
It is one of the best social media listening tools for the people who are new to these tools as firstly, its free of cost; all you need to do is just type the keyword and secondly its user friendly.
2. SYSOMOS HEARTBEAT
This listening tool gives you unlimited and immediate access to all social media conversations about your brand from across the web sources. This is good for day to day information in contrast to the in-depth market researches. It tells you about the day to day activity surrounding your brand name and also helps you identify your customers. You can gain insight about the driving force of your discussion based on their age, gender and geography. The best thing about using this tool is that you can indulge in conversation with your key influencers.
3. HOOTSUITE
Do you think all who talk about you will use hashtags or would tag you? No right! At times like this Hootsuite can be an effective social media listening tool. It helps you to manage your chatter in real time on social media platforms like Facebook, Twiter and linkedIn.
All you need to do is select a stream (Facebook, Twitter, etc.), then add a keyword, then add the account under which the listening needs to be done and you are done. Your search will begin and end in a few seconds. Hootsuite has for you free accounts as well as pro and enterprise accounts available. So, try your hand at the free one and see if it’s worthy of being updated.
4. TALKWALKER
Talkwalker is another effective social media listening tool. It makes use of key metrics such as number of buzz, potential reach, engagement and also the sentiments of the users for all social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, etc.
It offers some 100 odd search queries which helps to narrow down the data according your conveniences. Apart from this, it also offers custom filters based on themes, sources, channels, custom filters, demographics, geographic, devices, etc. To make your process even easier they have graphical representations in the form of pie charts above a world map to mark the origin and sentiments in the concerned nations.
Thus, it can be said that making use of the social media listening tools can be an effective way to get in touch with your consumers and thus understand their views about your product which will in turn help in the betterment of your business.
It should be used very frequently to get the best possible results. Take out time to know what is going good and what needs some improvement in your business. But, while conversing with your clients make sure not to lose your calm and follow business and media ethics. Accept constructive criticism from across the globe customers. Using these media tools is one of the most effective and easiest way to indulge with your clients on a daily basis and thus a “step to your success!”
