Empower my brand
Empower my brand

Providing Digital Customer Service in the Online World

Good customer service is of utmost importance to any business. It is impossible for a business, big or small, to make headway without offering good customer service. That said, the face of customer service is rapidly changing. Customers are more interested in buying products and availing services from the comfort of their home or on the go. And the same is the case when it comes to availing customer service. People relied on digital customer service more than ever during the lockdown. A report by Harvard shows that the number of “tough customer calls” nearly doubled during this period. This presents an opportunity for companies to look with a magnifying glass into the problems arising and to fix them without any delay.

Providing Digital Customer Service in the Online World

Why is Digital Customer Service Important Today?

At a time when the entire world is going digital, sticking to traditional ways of customer care can become a drawback. A switch to digital customer service can be beneficial for your business in many ways, the primary ones being:

i. Customer Convenience

Customer satisfaction is essential for growth. Offering the best product or service to your customer isn’t everything. You must also guarantee customer convenience, both pre and post-sales. The best way to do so is to build an experience that shows your customer how much you care. This could involve offering pre and post-sales assistance. By answering queries and solving problems digitally, you are not forcing your customer to visit your physical store.

ii.Timeliness

Customer service is quite time-sensitive. You cannot expect your customer to wait for days to have their queries answered and problems solved. Today people are eager to get answers to their questions immediately. A physical customer support system cannot cater to that. Studies have shown that an e-care system allows the prompt and timely solution of customer support issues. Customers can have access to support any time they want. Moreover, quick responses create a better customer experience and help retain old customers and gain new ones.

iii. Cost-Effectiveness

By implementing a digital care system, businesses can also cut down on customer support costs. They can reduce several overheads. This includes physical customer care centers, unnecessary staffing at these centers, power bills, and more. A few employees can handle the queries/mentions dropping in. This reduces staffing problems. Using digital chat boxes, community forums, social listening tools, etc. can make it easier to manage customer support with just a small team.

How to Use Social Listening to Offer Digital Customer Service?

Of the many ways that businesses can use to offer e-care, social media is, for sure, an important one. Social media is not only important for business marketing but customer service as well. Social media users are on the rise. Along with that, the number of people who voice their complaints on various social media platforms has increased. Reports show that more people prefer to receive customer service over social media. As such, social listening has become important for customer service, now more than ever.

With social listening, businesses and brands can track what customers are talking about. This helps gain information about their brand’s performance on various social platforms. This will include posts, tweets, comments, @mentions, hashtags, etc. Monitoring these can help businesses know what people are complaining about or are unsatisfied with. This data can, then, be used to redress problems customers are facing. This proactive approach to customer service on a platform where the majority of the audience is present can go a long way in ensuring a better brand reputation.

Customer behavior has changed a lot in the last decade. Following traditional methods alone can drag you back in the race against your competition. That is why it makes sense to upgrade your physical customer service to a digital one. You may need some time to shift to digital customer service, but tools like Auris make the transition easier.


3 Brands that Deliver the Best Customer Experience

The e-commerce space has become very competitive and most brands are struggling hard to find a foothold. Under such circumstances, it makes sense to focus on creating the best experience for customers. Wondering why? Well, a good experience can retain customers and easily get you new ones. A poor experience, on the other hand, can cause disengagement and scare away new ones. Offering the best customer experience can go a long way to ensure brand popularity and business growth. What’s more, people are ready to pay more for a better experience. 

3 Brands that Deliver the Best Customer Experience

Top Brands that Offer the Best Customer Experience

Creating a unique and impressive customer experience isn’t new on the block. Yet it is an aspect unexplored by many. The majority of businesses and brands fail to understand the importance of creating an unparalleled experience for their customers. Yet it is the one thing that consumers want. Reports and studies have shown how consumers respond better to personalized experiences. But for those that want to know how some of the top brands in the world do it, here’s a rundown:

Apple

Everyone knows how Apple has retained a loyal customer base over the last many years. That’s despite the high price tag that Apple products are known for. How does Apple do that? Well, the high quality of the products is one reason. But that isn’t all that Apple offers. Apple has been connected to its loyal customer base. The company has been listening to their demands and responding well to their needs.

Take iPhones, for example. They are fast, sleek, and high-end. But what happens when it dies or malfunctions? Customers have to rush to the service center for help. No! That’s not the Apple way. With the Genius Bar on iPhone, experts at Apple solve problems remotely. So, expert help is always at hand, even if the customer is far away from a store. 

Disney

Disney isn’t all about pretty princesses and fancy castles. It has built an empire out of its stories and characters and does the best to offer visitors an immersive experience. Disney has been making use of behavioral analytics to deliver on people’s demands. And although being in Disneyland may feel fantastical, a lot of effort and research goes behind it. 

Disney has been studying their audience demography since the beginning in 1960. Based on these insights, their staff is thoroughly trained to be the character that they play. From demeanor to accent, from greeting visitors to being the characters – the young women learn it all. Why? Because Disney doesn’t compromise on the experience that visitors look for – a day with their favorite princess or character. 

Disney has also responded well to the changing preferences of the newer generation who prefer to be online rather than visit the place physically. Disney has moved beyond the theme-park into the digital world with online games and more.

Netflix

We have spoken about Netflix in the past and why not! They may be new on the block, but they surely know how to prioritize their consumers. Netflix didn’t only change the way users consumed content, but they actively upped their customer experience play.

Netflix actively uses social listening and engages with its audience online to gauge their interests. This OTT platform has seen success even in niche markets. With the help of consumer insights, they were able to gauge what their audience likes and dislikes. In India for example, Netflix saw an opportunity to infiltrate the market with shows in vernacular and casting local actors. 

In the past, Netflix has used consumer insights to come up with inventive solutions like “Netflix Socks”. 

How Social Listening Can Improve Customer Experience?

It can’t be denied that most famous brands have created brand excellence through customer satisfaction. And there are many ways in which brands can enhance their customer experience. But to know where to start you need to start listening to your customer. In an attempt to do so, brands have been using social listening. As a brand, it is important to know what users are talking about in connection to your brand and competitors as well. This will allow you to understand what your shortcomings are or what you can do to improve the user experience. This will not only please your present customers but also attract new customers. 

Customer experience is an important aspect in the current competitive market. Offering the best customer experience is imperative to gain customers and propel business growth. That’s why brands must base their strategies on creating an all-around immersive experience for their customers. This will keep them ahead of their competition and nurture a loyal customer base.


Is Marketing Automation Critical to your Brand’s Success?

People tend to link the term automation with major industries and big businesses. However, in the modern scenario, every business needs automation, small businesses more than anyone else. As a solo entrepreneur or startup founder with limited team members, you can’t expect to be doing everything manually. Moreover, building a business needs you to think strategically and plan for future growth. You can automate the data analysis and customer acquisition bit. Here’s why marketing automation is critical for your business and how to get started. 

Is Marketing Automation Critical to your Brand's Success

Why is Marketing Automation Critical for Your Brand’s Success?

Every marketer wishes to increase the effectiveness of their marketing efforts. Automation is a smart way of doing it. Here’s how marketing automation can benefit your business operations. 

1. Quality Leads 

Any business needs a constant supply of quality leads. Everyone knows quality leads can only be attracted by targeting the right people. Targeting the right people requires studying consumer behavior, their interests, buying patterns, etc. 

Marketing automation tools help you to gather such information and analyze data points like customer sentiment, buying patterns, etc. 

2. Time Efficiency 

It is quite evident from the previous bit that market research and implementation of the strategy is a time-consuming process. For a business owner time is money! Automating repetitive and mundane marketing activities like social media posting, media monitoring, etc can save a lot of time. 

3. Improved ROI

Marketing automation tools like social listening have really made it easier for modern marketers to forge relationships. Listening to chatter online helps you gauge public sentiments, user behavior, and more. This allows you to reach out to the right people with personalized content and to nurture a strong bond. 

4. Happy Customers 

Marketing automation tools help you listen to online conversations around your brand keywords. This in turn helps you understand your customers. Armed with such information you are better able to serve them. Happy customers are your brand advocates. Positive word-of-mouth from them will bring in more business. 

Top 3 Marketing Automation Tools for Any Business

Picking the right automation tool for your business is as important as any other part of the process. Here are the 3 most useful automation tools which allow you to streamline most of your marketing activities. 

1. Social Listening 

Market research and social media marketing are essential for any business trying to grow. But tracking information on social media is an impossible task given that over 69444 million posts are uploaded every minute on Instagram alone. 

Against such a scenario, automation tools like Auris can help you take care of multiple marketing tasks like:

2. Video Marketing 

Video marketing is one of the hottest marketing trends in recent years. Surprisingly, only a few brands are utilizing it to its full potential. Perhaps it is because of the tedious creation process. However, it doesn’t have to be difficult for your brand. Video marketing automation tools help you render a video within seconds. 

Everything is automated from data-backed research to pre-made video templates. Simply put in your logo, content and click publish!

3. Sales, CRM, and Email Marketing

With advanced analytics come advanced sales and CRM tools. These tools help you reach out to leads via SMS marketing, email marketing, etc. The dashboard allows you to manage massive lists of leads and broadcast to them. 

Marketing automation tools have become a savior for most businesses. Targeting, and segmenting the right kind of audience manually has always been a puzzle. The process doesn’t end there. Your leads still have to receive the right content, the right offer, and then convert. With first-hand statistics and data from social media, the process becomes much more efficient. If you don’t believe us, give Auris a try!


How to Improve your Marketing Strategy in 2021?

Businesses are getting back on their feet after facing very tough times in 2020. Everyone is eager to make up for the losses incurred due to the pandemic. But how? You could rejig your marketing strategy. To keep pace with changing times, businesses must adapt to new ways of marketing. Consumer behavior changed significantly during the pandemic and analysts believe that some of them are here to stay. So, it’s time you rewrote your marketing playbook.

How to Improve your Marketing Strategy in 2021

5 Ways to Improve Marketing Strategy in 2021

Prioritize Social Media

Social media marketing was already gaining momentum before the pandemic hit. As an aftermath of the pandemic, SMM became significantly more important. Wondering why? The lack of physical interaction during lockdown forced people to go online. From medical advice to education, everything happened online or on social media platforms. What started as a necessity has now become a practice. With more people on social media, it would be silly to ignore social media marketing. Businesses need to up their SMM strategies for 2021 and beyond. 

Update to Google’s Algorithms

According to Google, the next update to its algorithms could be here as early as the first half of 2021. This update will add a new metric named Core Web Vitals and will measure the user experience of every site. This will depend on factors like visual stability, responsiveness, and speed. A drop in the metric’s value will directly impact search results on Google. So, to maintain SERP rankings, further optimization based on Core Web Vitals will be necessary. 

Offer Personalized Experience

Going forward, businesses must focus on creating customized experiences for their customers. Relying solely on mass marketing techniques alone will not yield satisfactory results. People are keener to interact with brands that are ready to personalize the customer experience. That can be as simple as sending a custom push notification or discount offer to something as powerful as sending a birthday wish. 

As such, businesses should develop marketing strategies that can target each user individually and not the entire audience base. Social media listening can help marketers analyze what their audience members like or dislike. These insights can come in handy while planning personalized content. 

Review Analytics

How you formulate your marketing strategy depends to a great extent on the results of your past campaigns. Unless your goals have changed, the results could be a point of reference for your future strategy. If results from the strategy yielded promising results, you can continue using the same for your business. 

However, if results are poor or not impressive, you may have to turn to analytics to help determine the root cause. You can easily obtain these from platforms such as Google (Google Analytics), Facebook (Facebook Insights), etc. Businesses can also use social listening tools like Auris for an in-depth analysis of what went wrong. 

Use Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization may not be new but it has been evolving. It’s no longer about backlinks and content marketing. There is more to it now. Mobile-friendly designs, long, informative posts, local SEO, brand SERP optimization, and more contribute to SEO. To keep pace with the changing scenario, adopting new techniques and strategies is vital. 

Every business must determine its goals before formulating a marketing strategy in 2021. No one formula will serve all. What clicks for your competitor may not work well for you. So, analyze your values, targets, strengths, and most importantly, your customers. Create a strategy that will work well with all parameters.


Strategies to Build a Strong Brand Identity

A strong brand identity is crucial if you want to elbow out the competition. Focussing on other business efforts without strengthening your brand identity would be like filling fuel in your car when there’s a hole in the fuel tank. Having a strong brand identity helps you increase your credibility to such an extent that you can sell sand to an Arab.

Strategies to Build a Strong Brand Identity

Why is a Strong Brand Identity Important?

Your brand identity communicates your business personality to your clients. Without developing a consistent personality both online and offline; you can never be relevant to your target audience. A strong brand identity helps you win loyal clients and encourages better conversations with your leads.

It further helps you to:

  • Shape your client’s perception of you. 
  • Create a differentiation between you and your competitors for your audience.
  • Influences your audiences’ purchase decisions positively.

This is why smart marketers put some strategies in place to achieve this with ease. Let’s take a look at them. 

What are the Strategies to Build a Strong Brand Identity?

Here are some tools and techniques to help you get started:

Influencer Marketing

If your brand has been in the market for some time now, you’ll have a few followers who love your product/brand. These are your brand advocates. You can engage with them, make them feel valued, and thereby encourage them to spread positive word-of-mouth. 

 

Another way of spreading awareness and building a brand image is by partnering with social media influencers.  Influencers usually have droves of loyal followers, and they can advertise your products and services to their followers.

If you are wondering how to choose the right influencer for your business, you can use social media listening tools. Social media listening tools come with a social influencer feature. This feature allows you to find influencers based on their influence score. It makes it easier for you to find the right fit. 

Some influencers will lend their names to the brand for a long duration; this will involve the brand and influencer growing together. According to recent research from Forbes, influencer marketing helped the company to reap more profits in 2020.

Customer engagement through trending topics and regular posts 

Posting witty content on social media around trending topics can quickly catch your leads’ attention. It would help if you were also more frequent with your blog posts to keep your clients engaged. 

But, researching trending topics can be a tedious manual experience. You can take the help of social media listening to search for trending topics. Use social media listening to search for what your clients would be interested in. Use these insights to curate content that easily cuts through the noise.  The more your content is visible, the more followers/converts you’ll receive for your page/website.

Utilize Hashtags

Hashtags can be an effective way to boost sales as well. Dunkin’ Donuts used #mydunkin to boost their sales considerably. Hashtags act as a search engine for social media sites. Once you familiarize yourself with one trending hashtag from your industry, you can track it to discover more hashtags and trending content around it. 

Promote your Profile 

Go beyond social media to promote your profile. You can go for print advertising, broadcast advertising or direct mail advertising to promote your products and services. You can utilize social media listening techniques to find out what your customers say about you and use the information to boost your profile beyond social media.

Consistent Monitoring

Are you working your fingers to the bone building yourself a strong brand identity? Your hard work will not be fruitful unless you monitor your progress daily. Constant monitoring is essential for achieving success. If you follow the above strategies, building a strong brand identity will not be an impossible dream.

Monitoring your campaigns, industry keywords and brand mentions will tell you a lot about your potential customers. It will help you assess the effectiveness of your strategies and what customers expect from your brand. 

All brands are businesses but not all businesses are brands. Building and maintaining customer trust is key to reaching that stage where your business is a brand! Social listening tools help you understand your audience and bond with them better.


Social Listening – An Effective Alternative to Focus Groups

In today’s day and age, there’s hardly anyone not on social media. Statistics show that social media platforms are gaining users at an average rate of 7.2% per year. With such massive growth, social media has become an important source of information and insights. Brands and marketers are extensively using social media intelligence technology to dig into the deeper industry insights. Among the many methods used by brands for acquiring and analyzing data, social listening has the top position. Thanks to the reliable and quick results, social listening now offers an effective alternative to focus groups.

Social listening - an effective alternative to focus groups

What are the Traditionally used Research Methods?

Business research has always been important. Whether it’s about a new product launch or user feedback, research plays an important role. Market research has come a long way from what it used to be. However, some traditional methods are still in practice. 

1.      Surveys

User surveys have always been a useful technique. Whether in the pre-digital era or after it, surveys haven’t lost their importance. The medium has just changed. Instead of using paper forms, surveys are now served online, sent over email, or even via phone calls.

Surveys can have any number of questions depending on the extent of information that a business requires. With the right questions, surveys can offer a truckload of information to be processed.

2.      Focus groups

The next most commonly used market research technique is the creation of focus groups. As the name suggests, these groups include a few people (usually 6-10) and a moderator who leads the group. Marketers choose participants depending on factors like demographics, purchase history, and others. 

The moderation asks the participants a number of questions. These can be about a particular brand, their product(s)/service(s), their positive and negative aspects, and so on. These discussions provide details about user experience, satisfaction, needs, and more.

3.  Interviews

User interviews have always been useful in market research. Marketers contact users over the phone, email, or any other platform. Then, they interview them about their experience with a product or service or the brand itself. One-to-one interviews are quite personal and promise to offer insights directly from the customer. However, this is neither cost-effective nor time-efficient.

4.      Public data

Brands and marketers can use public data that is available. This is referred to as secondary research. Data is available from

i.Government databases like Data.gov, UNICEF, etc. set up for public consumption

ii. Research papers and results published by other institutions or groups like Pew Research Center, NHS Digital, FDA, IMF, etc.

iii.  Business directories like Glassdoor, Yelp, etc.

iv. Marketing sources like Graph API, Google Trends, etc.

v.  Miscellaneous sources like Kaggle

This data, however, may not be available the way you want it but is free.

How Social Listening is a Better Focus Group Alternative?

Market research has changed with social listening. Results from social listening data surpass those obtained with traditional digital market research techniques. Let’s take a quick look at how social listening fares against other methods of data collection and analysis:

 Better Research

Social listening paves the way for better market research. There is no need to restrict the number of participants like in focus groups. Social listening tools can track, collect, and analyze data from thousands of people with ease. More participants mean more data accuracy and thus, better results. Also, social listening tools offer unbiased data which is useful for better brand management.

 Real-Time Data

Social listening keeps you updated on everything that’s happening on social media. You can collect a variety of user-related data from social listening tools. This helps in making quick changes to brand messaging, curbing negative sentiments, etc.

Social listening ranks higher as it brings in unbiased information when compared to traditional methods. This is because the interviewee may become uncomfortable in a live focus group or an interview. Social listening helps to track genuine feedback using what users are expressing online without having to directly question them or influencing them in any manner.

 ROI Measurement

Social listening can help to measure the success of your marketing campaigns. Coupled with other techniques, social listening offers businesses a better estimation of their ROI. This is very important when we want to understand the success of any marketing campaign and create new ones.

For many businesses, social listening has proved to be the best alternative to focus groups and other research methods. With much fewer resources, brands have successfully edged past competitors with the right use of social listening.


The Ultimate Social Media Metrics Roadmap

Social media has become much more than a tool that connects people with family, friends, and acquaintances. It also connects businesses and brands with clients and customers. As such, social media marketing has become an integral part of digital marketing. Big or small, businesses and brands try to harness the potential of social media to increase revenue and market share. However, without social media metrics, it’s impossible to know if your campaigns are working.

Actionable data from social media and its users can help you create effective marketing strategies to make the most out of your campaigns.

Social media metrics

Why is it Important to Track Social Media Metrics?

An understanding of social media metrics can have an impact on your overall business. If you’re still wondering about the benefits, here’s how it helps:

Measuring ROI

Campaigns are launched on social media with an expected return. You could be running campaigns to generate leads or gain larger visibility. But how do you calculate ROI, exactly? Apart from the traditional measures used to estimate ROI, adding data from social media campaigns is also important. By incorporating these metrics with other measurement tools, nearly 85% of businesses and brands are able to measure their ROI accurately. 

Understanding Performance

Every business or brand must know how it is performing. Performance doesn’t only mean counting the number of likes. It includes measuring factors like customer satisfaction, user engagement, grievance redressal, and more. All these factors must be considered while measuring performance. This is possible only when you take into account what users are saying in response to your campaigns. 

Making Decisions

Social media metrics go beyond helping you understand the result of social media campaigns. Tracking metrics using tools like social listening can help you identify complaints and growing dissatisfaction amongst users. The metrics will help you analyze the source of negative sentiment. The sooner you do this, the better it will be for your brand’s reputation. You can utilize user input to make changes to products and services for a better user experience. 

Understanding Efficiency

It is crucial to audit the efficiency of your marketing team. Whether you have an in-house team or outsource your marketing campaigns, a regular audit is essential. You can use the data obtained from the metrics to do this. If multiple campaigns have failed or given poor results, something isn’t right. Your marketing team might have to revise some of the strategies being used. 

Identify Influencers 

Metrics tell you a lot about your ardent followers. If an individual or brand actively follows and promotes you on social media, you may want to add them to your circles. This will ensure that you have people outside your marketing team to promote your brand or business and act as your brand ambassadors.  

Metrics that Matter the Most to You

When social media marketing was in its early stages, the metrics were very simple. The number of followers, likes, subscribers, views, comments, shares, etc. was all that mattered. The higher these stats, the better a business or brand was. But with time, things changed. It became easy to boost these numbers using inorganic means. These simple metrics have lost their value over time and now we have a more complex way of tracking campaign efficiency. But there’s nothing to worry about. Most automation tools like Auris do most of the analysis job on your behalf.  

Let’s take a look at the most important metrics:

Reach 

The very first metric to track is the overall reach. The more people you reach out to, the better it is for your brand. Each social media platform has tools to measure reach and you can use this. 

Audience Growth Rate

A brand must track how fast its audience (followers, subscribers, etc) grows within a stipulated period. A faster growth rate will give you an edge over your competitors. 

Engagement

User engagement is important for every brand. Engagement usually comes in the form of likes, comments, shares, retweets, etc. You can even post content or activities that invite users to engage with your brand. 

Social Share of Voice

All mentions that your brand receives count as the Social Share of Voice or SSoV. Better SSoV percentage indicates better relevancy in the market. 

Brand Sentiment

It is impossible to succeed without understanding brand sentiment. A positive sentiment indicates user satisfaction while a negative sentiment indicates the need for improvement. 

Social media metrics are only a way to analyze the data. Most social media platforms have a native analytics tool that will help you understand the basics. But to really understand customer behavior, and customer expectations you have to dig deeper. Sophisticated AI tools like social listening are leading the way in bringing out actionable consumer insights to marketers. Data-driven campaigns will always help get better ROI and performance. 


Solve Marketing Problems with Social Media Listening

“Talk a little less, listen a little more and you will be a lot wiser.” – Eric Gibbons

Active listening can do wonders, especially for brands looking to amp up their marketing strategy. Brands often struggle to engage in thoughtful communication which can boost their online presence. If you are looking for a smart way to strengthen your marketing tactics online, engaging your target audience is a must. And it all starts with social media listening.

Solve Marketing Problems with Social Media Listening

Why should You Care about Social Media Listening?

Before we get into the technical aspects, let’s understand why you need social media listening through a simple example. Let’s say you own a famous bakery and one fine morning while you’re baking some delicacies, you overhear two of your customers. 

“I love the chocolate chip donuts here.”, one says, and the other one replies, “Yeah, I love them too, but I don’t like the protein crunch bars. They are hard as rocks!”

You begin to wonder if every customer feels this way about your protein crunch bars?

So you make some attempts to gather more customer feedback about these bars. You start to ‘listen’. Based on what you hear, you implement changes that people love! It works. 

Soon you see your clients queuing up in your store to buy the new product you made. They are talking to others about how your bakery made a crunch bar based on their recommendations. 

And this is just a small example showcasing a small business. Depending on your size, people could be talking about your brand or your service or your organization’s work culture, and your customer handling! Social media has made it easy for people all across the globe to discuss you. Social media listening could help you understand these sentiments and comments. It helps you find the right marketing solutions for each problem. 

How does Social Media Listening help Solve Marketing Problems? 

The example in the previous section offers a little insight into how social media listening works. It helps you track and analyze brand mentions. The analysis of the data gives you insights into the complex issues surrounding your brand image.  

This concept is different from social media monitoring. The latter deals more with numbers, while social media listening is looking beyond numbers into your clients’ online mood. If you fail to acknowledge their pain points, you are running the risk of becoming a forgotten brand. 

Here’s a look at the different marketing problems that social media listening can help you with:

Drives Engagement

Customer engagement is the magic key for boosting your ROI. Learning about your target audience, the trends within their demography, and engaging with them is the best way to build a relationship. France-based cosmetic company Clarins Group used a social media listening technique effectively to improve customer engagement. The result? They generated over 450 consultations in the first month itself. 

Better Customer Service

Most brands struggle to understand customer needs and meet their clients’ requirements. Indulge in social media listening to analyze user reviews and assess audience sentiments. These methods will help you to know about your customer’s preferences and give them what they want. The customized Detroit style pizza by Pizza Hut was a real inspiration and this concept enhanced their sales to a considerable extent.

Boosts Brand Value

Building a robust online persona is essential to see a spike in your sales volume. Lays used social media listening to engage with their audiences in a way in which they encouraged them to vote for their favorite flavor for Lays. And it worked like magic and boosted their sales. #DoUsAFlavor campaign of Lays became quickly viral and boosted their brand image. Such campaigns are only possible when you know your customer, their age group, the kind of campaigns they respond well to et cetera. 

Market Research and Competitor Analysis

With social listening, you can track mentions which do not tag your official page. It could be on a blog, a social media account, or a news portal. Social listening tools like Auris also have the provision to listen to mentions for your competitors and do a comparative study. 

This helps you gauge your share of the market and note your weaknesses and strengths. You also learn about your competitor’s weaknesses and their strategy. 

Advertising and Content Personalization

Striking the right conversion and at the right time is a daunting task for most entrepreneurs. The use of social media listening can help gauge public sentiment and trending keywords. This can help brands fine-tune their messaging or advertisements to match the insights received. 

Social media listening strategies effectively spruce up your marketing plans. Use the right techniques to build your digital den and cut through the noise.


Top Social Media Trends for 2021

Social media marketing has become the hottest marketing trend, especially since the lockdown. Popular brands use multiple social media platforms to reach out to their target audience. If you don’t want to get lost in the digital shuffle then you must have your social media strategies up to the snuff. The top social media trends for 2021 listed below will help you build a robust social media strategy to eclipse the competition. 

Social media trends for 2021

What are the Trending Social Media Trends for 2021?

The number of Facebook posts shared each minute was 2.5 million back in 2013. It increased by 22% to reach 3 million posts per minute in 2016. Is there a way you could stay ahead of your competitors in this blitzkrieg? Here are the most important trends that will help your brand content stand out in the noise of social media.

Customer service

Smart entrepreneurs make use of social media platforms for customer service. You can gain a lot of information about your users from popular social media channels like Facebook and Instagram. The use of social listening tools is on the rise so you know what your audience members like.  Customer service and the experience get better when you know your audience – and their demographics, interests, etc. Flex your intuitive muscles and think of smart strategies to improve your customer experiences. Real-time consumer insights are your superpower.

Content personalization

Personalization has become a trendsetter, and this trend will continue this year. If you are still wondering how then think about the last time you browsed for a product online, and how the ads for the same items were shown to you the next moment on Facebook or Instagram? In fact, according to recent research conducted by Accenture, eighty-three percent of consumers are willing to share their personal data to have a more personalized experience. Knowing your customer has never been so essential. Listen to your customers to deliver or advertise to them according to their needs and wants. This also increases the chances of conversion. 

Ephemeral content will be popular

Whenever you open social media, you can see a plethora of ephemeral content. A recent report from CNBC talks of how Instagram stories alone have 400 million daily active users. This year the ephemeral content that disappears in 24 hours will keep gaining popularity. 

Memetic messaging 

We have all seen the rise of emojis. Memes are the new emojis. So much so that big brands are using memetic messaging in their campaigns. Memetic messaging has gained popularity, and this trend will continue to soar this year. According to the latest social media behavior survey by Ypulse, around seventy-five percentage of people aged between thirteen to thirty-six years share memes regularly. 

Demands for video content will increase

We all appreciate engaging content and videos are the best when it comes to that. Video marketing has been on the rise. And it is expected to grow this year too. According to Hubspot, 81% of businesses already use videos as a marketing tool. Don’t know what should be the content of your upcoming video? Research and find out! Social media listening will tell you what your consumers see, engage with, and talk about. 

Smart social media strategies can elevate your marketing process and can improve conversions. Listening to the trends and what the audience is reacting to will help you make that smart move. Hopefully, this guide for the top social media trends for 2021 will help you.


Ways to Create a Strong Social Media Plan

Every business should mark its presence on social media in today’s day and age. If you aren’t on the bandwagon yet, you’re not doing it right! Putting a strong social media marketing plan in place helps you deliver better results with higher efficiency. However, the real challenge lies in creating a plan which is concise, realistic, and dictates a clear path to attain goals. 

Social media plan

Why do you need a Social Media Strategy?

Gone are the days when social media was simple and straightforward to use. With advancements in AI, even social media algorithms are changing now and then. And keeping up with all this might seem a little overwhelming but it is important. 78% of salespeople are able to outsell their peers with the help of social media. How? 

Here’s a look at how a solid social media plan can help you achieve similar results. 

Ways to Create a Strong Social Media Plan

Here’s a comprehensive step by step plan to help you get started. Consider the following points to create a winning social media marketing plan:

Establish Strong Business Objectives

The primary determining factor for the success of any business is to set up goals and objectives. You cannot measure your success rate without having attainable goals. Start by listing at least 3 goals for your marketing team. Work on these goals one by one and implement them as a part of your social media marketing campaign.

One way to go forward is to stick to the S.M.A.R.T way. That is by adopting specific, measurable, attainable, and time-bound goals. For example, you could have goals like “Getting 20% more traffic to your landing page within the next quarter”.

Know Your Target Audience

Knowing your audience and their preferences are vital for a solid social media marketing strategy. Knowing the likes and dislikes of your target audience helps you understand what they react to, and how they engage. This in turn helps you understand their buying behavior. Taking a lead through the customer journey requires some planning on your part. 

  • Know their demographics, interests, average income, age group. Promoting funky content for a wireless headset to an eighty-year-old gramophone enthusiast would not be of any use. 
  • Make use of social media analytics tools to get valuable information about your followers. AI-based tools like Auris help you delve deeper into the chatter online. Read into the sentiments of the public and formulate your strategy accordingly. 

Choose Your Social Media Networks

Finding out which social media platform is the right fit for your business is also a critical part of your social media marketing plan. You don’t necessarily have to be on all social media platforms. Choose the ones that best suit your business type and strategy. You can do this by evaluating each of the platform’s demographics.

Let’s take Facebook and Instagram as an example. Gen – Z is mostly active on Instagram, whereas baby boomers are more likely to be on Facebook. Depending on your target market, choose one that can yield the most benefit.

Make sure you optimize your social media accounts with the right photo and cover images, bio, URL, etc. Analyze your competitor’s profiles and create an optimized profile for your business.

Curate Compelling Content

Content is king, and this saying never gets old. Engaging content in the form of images, videos, blog posts, infographics, and so on is what holds on to your audience’s attention. You don’t want to use too many irrelevant pieces of content that do not sit well with your brand message. 

To help you in all of this, you can opt for a social media listening tool. Listening to what your audience members are saying or what’s trending can help. A look at your competition can also help you get inspired. And automation tools help you with market research, competitive analysis, or actionable consumer insights. 

Track and Analyze Your Data

Last but not least – the most crucial step in determining the success of your social media marketing plan. As basic as it may sound, tracking and analyzing the data and then making tweaks is important. 

If you miss out on this step, you’ll probably lose all the hard work you’ve done in the previous steps. Social media analytics help you keep track of your online performance. You can also opt for real-time analysis with social listening. This in turn helps you prevent any PR crisis situations in advance. 

Additionally, platforms like Auris help you understand your performance across varied platforms and give you a comparative study. Use data like this to build an integrated social media plan.

Social media is a significant marketing tool for businesses of all sizes. Businesses cannot succeed in social media marketing without a well-documented strategy. And now with all the help available through AI-based platforms, you can really hit it big.