Great article Zoe. Couldn't agree more with #1 and #2. We did this extensively at our startup the past few months and that's led to very actionable leads. Even better, these leads were already very far along in their purchase cycle that we didn't have to do much customer development to get them to convert.

One word of caution is to not be too pushy or intrusive when jumping into someone else's social conversation. As with most interactions, coming off too aggressively can be a turn off and deterrent to making the connection.

Hi, David. That's right! You need to know when and how to jump into someone else's social conversations to avoid being pushy.
The best method is to make sure you have something valuable to say. You don't necessarily have to engage in each and every conversation on every platform or website. It's more productive and beneficial (for everybody) if you participate only when you can offer real help.

Hi, Zoe. Nice article. It summarizes neatly all the different ways a brand can leverage social listening for growth. In addition (and as you’ve also touched on within the article), I think social listening is also key to some slightly more intangible aspects of customer engagement relating to how he thinks, what triggers him, why some things appeal whereas other don’t. This is critical to being ahead of the pack and in sync with customer needs. Incidentally, the omnichannel marketing automation tool I work on called Resulticks, has a module dedicated to profiling customers through social listening and ORM. We find that this customer engagement insight is resulting in a lot more traction among brands vis-à-vis the usual social media analytics

Cheers,
Manoj

Hi Manoj. Thank you for the comment! Indeed, being ahead of the pack and in sync with your clients needs is crucial to your online success. Of course, this is only one of the many marketing strategies that, used together, will take your business to the next level.

Social listening doesn't actually have to be a time consuming thing. There are several tools out there ( ours included ) that will essentially let you specify what you want to monitor and then just visualize it up on a big screen in your office. Sort of like a stock ticker for the social activity you're interested in. In fact, a couple of the digital agencies we're working with are using it exactly for this purpose.

Thank you Michael! Indeed, there are many managers that overlook social listening when building their brand. Most of them, don't really know the real benefits of this strategy. They might say it's because of the lack of time. But these days there are so many tools that do almost all the work for us, we just have to know how to interpret the results. I do hope that people will start seeing the benefits of social listening and do something about it.

The takeaways i like the most in this post is this...

"With social listening, you don’t have to ask people what they want; just listen in on their conversations and use these insights to figure out what they need."

This is spot on and we can use this in our social listening activity to leverage our business' brand, reputation, conversion and sales. The number eight "Drive Innovation" is the smartest tip for me.

I also agree that it’s often easier for people to comment on something that is in front of them than to imagine something that doesn’t exist.

Thank you, Metz! Glad you enjoyed the post! I remember something Steve Jobs said: "People don't know what they want until you show it to them". It's better to listen and find out what people really want than actually ask them and end up with misleading information.

"#8: Drive Innovation

Asking your customers what they want, as tempting as that might be, can result in skewed answers, misinformation, and potentially, failed products.

Henry Ford famously said, “If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said a faster horse.” It’s often easier for people to comment on something that is in front of them than to imagine something that doesn’t exist."

Thank You Zoe.

This one is so effective, it amazes me how it's under utilized. By listening to what they complain about, you can now create a possible solution.

Very nice article Zoe.

I really like the monitor terms idea, never thought about that. Makes SO much sense. Could be a great way to scoop up new customers.

And some great tips about improving customer care, with again monitoring

Social mention is cool.. “Searching across the universe…” lol

Like Fords quote as well. Very true.

I use to get Google alerts for at least some parts of my biz, but have not gotten them for along time. Wondering if I turned them off or something. Odd now that I think about it.

Also, thanks for the resources you listed, some awesome tools.

Hi, Ron! Glad I could help with the listed resources.

Regarding the Google Alerts, the folks at Google added several improvements lately. For example, you can choose when to receive the alerts (if you want to receive them at a certain time of day) or you can choose to receive them only once a day or once a week. Maybe you just need to play with these settings a bit.

One other thing you can do is to find new keywords: get suggestions with the Keyword Tool for example and add new alerts based on them.

Very good article, Zoe! If this doesn't persuade companies that social listening is important, I don't know what will. I also noticed that there is a trend for companies to use social listening for recruitment as well, just like you mention in #7. My colleague from Brand24, Natalia, wrote an article for our blog about this. If anyone needs initial guidelines, here is the post: http://blog.brand24.net/5-e... I hope it helps. I think more and more companies will be using these techniques to find future employees who have always loved their brands and are actually top talent. :)

Great article and very nice tips!
Social listening and Internet monitoring become a standard nowadays. It's it important to tell how powerful and useful it is.
We have tools, like Brand24 which I love and recommend, which is a great help with social listening.
It gives instant access to every public mention, allows to join and engage conversations, manage online presence, find new audience and get leads, check who is natural ambassador of our brand, monitor competitors and news from industry etc. It also gives some interesting analyzes of reach, sentiment and influence. So many features in one, time-saving and easy to use tool.
It's a must-have for every kind and size of company.

You should have mentioned buzz bundle!