How Social Listening Helps You Manage Your Online Reputation
When you have a business, a brand, or an image to protect it is important to keep an eye out for what is being said about your brand online. Now, it’s important to understand that the internet is always full of negativity so you can’t hyperfocus on the negative, but you can listen out for ways in which you can improve your brand. This can help you anticipate any bad PR or help you position yourself in such a way that you can be the first to respond to big announcements in your industry. Either way, this is a very effective way to manage your online reputation.
What Is Social Listening?
Social listening is simply the act of monitoring social media and the internet as a whole for any mention of your brand, your competitors, or your industry. Social listening is something that you, your team, and your marketing team should be doing regularly to see what kind of things your customers and competitors are saying about you.
How Social Listening Benefits Your Brand’s Reputation
When you take a moment to pay attention to what others are saying about your brand, you then have the possibility to take that feedback and do something about it. But that’s not all. When you take part in social listening, your brand has the opportunity to:
Improve Understanding of Any Potential Disruptors
It doesn’t matter which industry your business serves, there will always be disruptors whether they are competitors or new rules and regulations that dictate how you do your business. When done correctly, social listening monitors not just your brand but others in your industry to see what is being said. This can help you anticipate any disruptive announcements that could affect your business.
Create Better Content
When you know what your audience is saying about your brand and your industry, you can tailor the content that you produce to meet your audience’s wants and needs. Through social listening, you may find out that your audience really cares about a specific idea or message within your industry. This is the perfect way to create content that hits the mark for what is relevant to your audience.
Improve the Customer Experience
Part of social listening involves looking out for any complaints or suggestions that your audience and customers may have. Often times customers won’t go directly to you with feedback, they will go to social media and tell their followers about their customer experience. This is a good time to take notes of what is being said about your customer experience and make any adjustments that you need to make.
How Else Can You Manage Your Online Reputation?
The best way to manage your online reputation is to use an online reputation management tool like brainer.
Brainer is an online reputation management tool that allows you to request more positive online reviews from customers while giving you a second chance to make things right with unhappy customers.
How? It’s quite simple!
When a customer completes a transaction, our system will automatically send them a custom text message or email asking them to leave you an online review. By catching customers immediately after making a purchase, they will be more likely to leave reviews.
When a customer leaves a positive online review, they will be able to instantly post the review to Facebook, Google, or Yelp!
What happens when customers leave you a negative review?
Negative reviews are sent directly to your inbox where you can then reach out to customers and offer to make things right. Because we all could use a second chance sometimes.
The result? More positive online reviews, and more happy customers who will feel valued because you took the time to make things right with them.