How to Connect with Your Customer Through Social Monitoring
Many companies are realising the value of connecting with customers on social media. However, the number of messages sent daily across social media platforms can make it challenging to develop real connections with customers.
To form real connections online, you need to find a way to stand out. With time spent on social media daily now averaging at 2 hours and 22 minutes, reaching customers on social media is important for business. This article explores how social media monitoring supports improved online reach and powers real connections with customers.
Social Media Communication
Developing strong social media communication skills is crucial to standing out and holding your customers’ attention. One straightforward way to develop your communication skills for business is to attend negotiation seminars.
What Is Social Monitoring?
Social monitoring (also known as ‘social listening’) is a smart way to listen to your customers by tracking what people are saying about your brand online. Social monitoring tools are a great way to easily keep track of this online communication.
Consolidate Your Social Media Apps
Keeping up with all the places and people online that could be talking about your business can be difficult. However, social media monitoring tools can help you to bring your social media accounts together for viewing on one platform.
Social listening tools can be set to highlight certain keywords or phrases online and tell you when and where these terms are used. In this way, you can know what is being said about your company (and your competitors) online.
Make Real-Time Connections
According to an article by Jay Baer, host of the award-winning ‘Social Pros’ podcast, 42% of the customers who complain about products or services on social media expect a response in less than an hour.
A dynamic social monitoring program can relay messages and comments in real time and give you the chance to respond quickly. A quick response can assure your customer that you are listening.
Listen Effectively
Effective listening is one of the best communication skills you can develop. Indeed, listening can be even more important than speaking during a negotiation.
If you attend practical negotiation seminars on how to boost your active listening skills, you can learn how to communicate more effectively online and offline.
Effective listening in social media means focusing on cues that indicates tone, like punctuation and emojis. You can also apply other active listening skills, like summarising, just as well in the written form of communication as in the spoken form.
Identify New Customers
Social media can give you access to new potential customers. Monitoring conversations on a wide range of platforms allows you to step into discussions that promote your business. And remember, whenever you respond to your customers’ messages on an open forum, there will likely be other people watching your interaction.
You can also identify new potential customers by monitoring keyword searches relevant to the products or services you offer. When you use social media monitoring tools to identify new potential customers, you can save valuable time and resources by targeting customers who are already in need of your products or services.
Negotiation Skills Can Enhance Social Monitoring
Social monitoring only provides you with information about what people are saying. What you do with that information is a totally different matter. You can add value by using the data for learning how to better at communicating with your customers.
Understand Your Customer Better
Advanced social monitoring tools can provide you with automated analytics that makes social media engagement easier to understand. Graphs and charts that highlight customer complaints and queries can help you to understand your customers’ needs better.
According to the G2Crowd, an online business analysis platform, social monitoring data can be used to generate social sentiment analytics graphs. Sentiment analysis is useful in determining how your customers feel about your products and conversations. In effect, understanding the areas of dissatisfaction can help you to identify where your customer service needs improvement.
Negotiation seminars on how to create value when responding to customers can help you to improve your products or services. You can also learn how to relate better with your customers and engage in conversations that can lead to sales conversions.
Seek Mutually Beneficial Outcomes
Your negotiation style is visible in the way you communicate with your customers. Whether your customer has left positive or negative feedback, you can seek a win-win outcome with your response.
Responding to customer comments in a negative or aggressive tone online can damage your customer relations and give your company a negative image. Your comments may remain in customers’ minds and be used to shape public opinion about your company for years to come.
Unique Marketing Opportunity
Connecting with your customers through authentic conversations can be an effective way to market your company. Practical negotiation workshops use roleplay and negotiation simulation of real-world situations to teach you ways to create authentic connections with your customers.
Round-Up
In the business world, many of the conversations you have with your customers are negotiations. It’s useful for your customers to leave the conversation feeling better about your relationship. By consistently adding value to your customers, you can build a loyal customer base and surpass your competitors.
Social media listening is an important facet of modern business, and the influence of social media on today's economy is too strong to ignore. Social media monitoring tools enable you to access the information that is circulating concerning your brand, market, and competitors in an easier way. Once you can hear what your customers are saying, authentic connections are easier to form.