Are you unable to understand how your competitor seems to have a better online presence and worried that you are missing out on something important? Then you may want to read on and find some answers, to help you take some control. Let’s talk about how social listening might be helping your competitors and how you still have time to reverse their winning streak.
Is Social Listening Really helping Your Competitors?
Social listening has plenty to offer. Are you already using it to your advantage or is your competitor racing ahead and leaving you way behind? Here are some definitive signs which tell you that your competitor is ahead of you using social listening:
- They respond quickly (response time is far lower than yours) to any negative chatter or social media crisis moment.
- They seem to know what the customer wants and present it to them on time. They also seem to know why your customers are dissatisfied and are trying to entice them away.
- They engage with their advocates and find influencers at the same time.
- They engage with their audience actively.
If any of this sounds familiar, it is time for you to step in.
Respond Quicker and Stay Ahead
If you’ve noticed that your competitors are quite active on social media it might be because they are vigilant to the social mentions of them. Many companies employ social listening tools to help them with digital marketing. The world wide web is a massive space with billions of active users, and it is a daunting task to track your social mentions manually. Social listening helps you track social mentions, gauge public sentiment and respond well in time.
Replying to your customer’s grievances or queries after a long wait time never leaves a good impression. Besides, if you are unable to respond in time while your competitors engage actively with them, it is easy to guess why your competitor would gain business, while you lose custom.
Sentiment Analysis and Other Strategic Insights
Even if you are not keeping an eye on your competitors, they might be keeping a constant eye on your brand’s health. The negative chatter around your brand helps them to lure your audience away. A key strategy to stop such poaching is to plan your digital marketing in such a way as to make your brand visible, trustworthy and relatable. A brand which cares enough would zero in on the pain points of their customers are facing and extend help both offline and online.
With social media being a free source of all the data you need, social listening gives you precise insights into its message. Which outlet is gathering the most negative chatter? Why is that particular outlet doing something different/weird? You do not have to dig too deep for the insights, you have to be vigilant enough to respond to the criticism and resolve the problem.
Sentiment analysis helps you gauge the overall perception of your brand. And provide you with deeper insights. Responsive actions can gain you serious fans who could actually promote your brand and endorse it for all the world to see. To identify these influencers/heroes, you have to keep listening to social media buzz to know who loves you. Marketing which happens through positive word-of-mouth is a foolproof way to rank high on a list of trusted brands.
Social Listening provides you with many key metrics that could help you avoid not just losing business to your competitors but also to stay one step ahead of the game. If you are looking for the perfect social listening tool, we can guide you.