Gone are the days where you could broadcast a message in Social Media and call it Marketing. Now Customer is the King and Social Media Listening is vital for every business.

SproutSocial’s research reveals:

“83% of consumers like when brands respond to questions

68% like when brands join conversations

48% of customers make a purchase with a brand who is responsive to its customers and prospects on social media”

What better proof would you need to start thinking about Listening to your audience in Social Media ?

In this article we are discussing how Salesforce Social Studio can help you to actually listen to your customers on Social Media

We will cover:

1. What is Social Media Listening?
2. Benefits of Listening to customers
3. How to conduct Social Listening using Salesforce?
4. Salesforce Social Studio Use case

What is Social Media Listening ?

Social Media Listening is the process of monitoring social media channels and understanding what people are talking about your brand, followed by acting on those feedback.  

Social Media Listening is confused with Social Media Monitoring, but there is an additional step involved in Social Media Listening.

Step 1 : You will have to track all social channels for any customer’s feedback, mentions or conversations about your brand or product.  

Step 2: You will then analyse the data, understand the sentiment behind and then taken an action  

Social Media Monitoring stops with Step 1, companies track their Social Media Metrics like Engagement rate, reach, mentions, etc. Social Media Listening is a long term game, you take suggestions from users over the Internet and use it for improving your brand, product, etc.

Now that we know what is Social Media Listening, we will dig into why a brand should use Social Media Listening.

Benefits of Listening to Customers

Social Media Listening is a great way for a firm to become customer-centric.

“Truly Listening is hearing the needs of the customer, understanding those needs and making sure the company recognizes the opportunities they present. – Frank Eliason”

Here a few benefits of using Social Media Listening

1. You could understand what customers feel and talk about your brand, product and improve Customer Experience accordingly
2. You can engage with your customers and find new sales opportunities
3. You can listen to customer’s complaints and fix the product glitches
4. You can keep track of your brand’s performance – both growth and crisis
5. You could find collaboration opportunities – see if there are any micro-influencers or critics who are constantly writing about your brand and reach out to them
6. You could track your competitor’s social sentiment and create social media posts accordingly
7. You could get reviews, social proof from listening and engaging to customers. This inturn will improve customer acquisition and retention

How to conduct Social Listening using Salesforce ?

Salesforce Social Studio is a part of Marketing Cloud. With Social Studio, you could capture and analyze information from Social media. It doesn’t stop here, you could respond to Social media posts within Marketing cloud as well.

If you want to read more about generating leads in Pardot instead, check out our article here.

You could get started with Social Media Listening in Salesforce in the following way

1. Get started with Social Studio Basics
2. Summarize Data with Dashboards
3. Analyze Data with Workbenches

1. Get Started with Social Studio Basics

Salesforce Social studio helps marketing, sales and customer service teams to come together and manage a brand’s social media presence. You could create, listen and engage with customers all at one place.

“A brand is no longer what we tell the consumer it is. It is what consumers tell each other it is – Scott Cook”

Navigating Salesforce social studio is an easy task, you could manage social media from one place, it is called a Workspace. Also there are predefined reports within Social Studio it is present under the Performance tab.

You could create a workspace according to your needs. It might be based on location, teams, campaigns, etc. Once you create this workspace you could add members and straight away connect relevant social media accounts.

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Next step is to create Topic profiles and add them to your Workspace. Wondering what a topic profile is ?

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When it comes to Social Media Listening, choosing right keywords, channels, location and language is important. Topic profile combines all this information into one profile according to your needs.

When you complete the above step, you could merge all information in a single place and monitor it from time to time. For the same purpose, you could use either dashboards or workbenches.

2. Summarize Data with Dashboards

Social Studio Dashboards provide a high level overview of social media performance and sentiment.

Here are different types of Dashboards you could use to monitor social media and listen to customers

• Engagement Summary – You could view engagement data for upto 50 social media accounts

• Social Account Summary – You could get activity summary for upto 50 social media accounts

• Social Listening Summary – You could get summary of what’s happening around a topic profile – i.e., a combination of keyword and social media sources

• Instagram Hashtag Summary – You could understand performance of Instagram hashtags from this dashboard

• Google My Business Summary – You could track reviews, rating and location information for Google My Business accounts

• Persona Group Summary – Customer Service Representatives can create and track which Persona group has issues, open cases, etc

• Blank Custom Template – You could use this dashboard to create your own dashboard and do Social Media monitoring, listening at same time.

3. Analyze Data with Workbenches

Workbench is helpful to dig deeper into social media information and gain insights. Workbench consists of customizable datasets or cards. These datasets can pull information from any topic profile or social accounts.

While creating a workbench you could add a dataset and choose to create cards which drills down further from the dataset.  

Salesforce Social Studio Use Case

Social Studio is the one stop shop for publishing, listening, analyzing and engaging back with your customers.

Here’s a few use cases or scenarios of Social media Listening  that you could consider before using Social Studio

1. Track conversations about your brand, product, industry or a competitor and develop strategy
2. Act on customer service complaints by tracking conversations
3. Track competitor’s conversations and sales can pitch your product to potential customers
4. Analyze trending keyword and see how your brand is performing
5. Get content ideas by monitoring industry conversations
6. Fix product glitches and add new features by listening to customer feedback online

Let us also dig into an interesting customer success story by Salesforce.

ABS- CBN a media and entertainment company in Philippines. They used Social Studio to monitor and analyze their social media accounts and maintain brand image.

“Social Studio has helped us become a leader in social media and set a new industry standard for how brands and brand influencers should mutually benefit when engaging audiences — Donald Lim | Chief Digital Officer | ABS-CBN”

Stellar – ABS-CBN’s celebrity social media marketing agency manages around 300 influencers. They connect brands with influencers and drive more awareness and engagement.

Read more about how to become customer centric here.

Let’s Get Started

Social media is used by every brand as it is a low-cost and high-return marketing channel. If you are serious about becoming a customer-centric brand, driving conversions from Social Media you need to listen, analyze and engage with customers online.

For building engagement and brand image genuinely you would need a tool like Social Studio.

You may already use Marketing Cloud in your company. If you are, well and good. Tap on Social Studio benefits.

If not, that’s okay. Better late than Never.

Your brand could become a leader in Social Media too.

Talk to CloudIdeas Salesforce Experts, we are happy to answer your queries and help you get started.

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