7 Signs Your Competitors Are Using Social Listening Better Than You
It’s imperative for any business to stay ahead of their competition and, luckily, today’s technology allows us to keep an eye on them more closely than ever before.
If u want to stay ahead of your competition, you must understand the importance of using social listening effectively. You never know what you might find online. It could be a game changer and in case it is, you need to take action on it, pronto. You need to take it into account while building your own marketing strategies. Which is why you need to regularly learn by monitoring the success and failure of the competitor.
1)They have a more vibrant social media presence…
Look at how your competitors are marketing their brand on social media. Check out their social media pages like Twitter profiles, Facebook pages, Instagram pages, Pinterest pages and LinkedIn pages. For some industries the web channels like the media, blogs and review websites are more important. In that case your work becomes harder. Now you need to monitor the entire web for any mention of your competitors.
If you see that your competitors are earning more shares, likes and engagements than you are on social media, you’re losing. If you see that your competitors are earning a lot of positive reviews on various platforms and forums, you’re losing.
That’s a harsh truth, but it’s accurate
Polish your social media page with perfect profile pics cover and a bio that clearly indicates who you are. Post regular and relevant content to stay in your audience’s radar. Meanwhile keep track of the kind of content your competition is posting.
2) They understand prospects for smarter targeting better
By social listening your competitors can understand how the conversations around their brands and your brand are panning out. Where & how the brand buzz is going. How positive/negative are those conversations and how they can leverage them in their own marketing strategy. Through social listening these can be measured in very minute details. Not only can they understand where they stand with their audience but also how well their campaigns are going. How effectively their ads are reaching the right people and how these campaigns can be improved. Figure out the most crucial detail for your business and focus the social listening tools in that avenue to make the most of these tools.
3) They deal with negativity quickly and authentically
Through social listening, your competitors are able to keep track of any negative statement made about their business on any online platform, which help them give prompt replies then and there.
For example, if somebody post on Twitter that “I’m unhappy with my current network provider so I’m looking at other options.”, there should be a sales representative from your company reaching out their publicly on Twitter and responds to that tweet within minutes. This will not only help you retain a current customer but also acquire new one, when they see your prompt service.
4)Their content gets more engagement
Focus on quality, not volume. Some brands are famous for their witty replies on social media and this has allowed them to gain numerous followers on their social media pages.
Visuals matter a lot. They make your content more vibrant. Your competition knows this already and to understand what kind of visual content gets most response from their audience, they use social listening platforms. According to our search at Rank Me Online, videos on average get more shares than any other type of content. Each video gets around 647 shares while a photo can get 341 shares. However, while a typical photo gets as many as 2,982 likes, videos receive barely over 1,800 likes.
5)They find and work with better influencers.
Influencer marketing is getting more and more focus everyday and every brand wants to work with influencer who will help them get maximum ROI. It’s usual for brands to work with multiple influencers for each campaign and there comes the problem of fake influencers and measuring the efficacy of each influencer. This is where your competitors are leveraging social listening platforms. Not only to measure the returns received from each influencers but also to weed out the fake ones.
6) They don’t miss direct future opportunities.
It’s no secret that people use social media to discuss what they want in a product. These are great opportunities if you are “listening” carefully at the right place, at the right time. If your product is mentioned directly, you should respond, regardless of whether that comment is positive or negative. Based on the information the user provides, how they talk about your product and their intention, you should route the information to the right person at your company so they can engage. This process should happen fast because your competitors are also listening to these conversations and might develop and release the product faster than you can. This might prove very damaging for your business because you will be losing a lot of customers in the future to your competitors.
Help people who are looking for advice. People often post on social media to know what others say about the product or service that they wants to buy. If your brand fulfills that offering then just advise him and motivate him to be a customer of your company.
7) They analyse Pre/Post Campaign.
Your competitors are using the social listening tools to
Before Campaign
- Analyze target audience
- Develop content
- Get genuine influencers
- Define objectives
After Campaign
- Analyse what elements of the campaign worked well/ not so well.
- Learn how the target audience responded to the campaign
- Review ultimate effectiveness of the campaign versus objectives
- Provide valuable learnings for future campaigns
It is never too late
It’s not too late for you to jump ahead of your competition.
