Do you wonder what your customers are saying about your product or service across the web?
Listening effectively to your customers can be a very insightful experience. The better you are at listening; the better you can understand your customer's wants and needs.
With the rise, and seemingly universal adoption, of social media amongst consumers, businesses can now listen in on conversations regarding their products and services if they have the right tools. Although you cannot control these discussions, you can monitor them and respond accordingly.
Here are five free tools to include in your social media listening tool belt:
1. Social Mention - A site that offers real-time social media search and analysis. It's very easy to use and features the most common indicators of social media activity (strength, sentiment, passion and reach).
2. RSS Reader - An RSS Reader is like a magazine that you customize based on topics you are interested in. Sign up for a free RSS reader such as Google Reader. Then use Google to search for relevant feeds (there is also an option to search blogs specifically). You may also want to search specific blog directory sites such as Technorati and Blogcatalog for even more blogs that are relevant to your product or service. When you find what you are looking for simply subscribe by clicking on the RSS feed and adding it to your reader.
3. Search.twitter.com - Here you can search for keywords or phrases and view those mentions (up to two weeks) as they occur on Twitter. Once you find relevant keywords you can subscribe via RSS feed, add to your reader, and stay alerted when these mentions happen in real time.
4. Online surveys and polls - Survey tools such as Zoomerang can be an invaluable resource for listening. Embedding a survey or poll directly into your website or blog engages your audience and gives them a voice. You can also launch a survey or poll directly into Facebook and Twitter, giving your business a focused listening platform. (Zoomerang offers a free basic survey tool with options to upgrade for more features.)
5. Google alerts - Google alerts allows you to set up search queries for keywords which Google will then email you whenever it indexes those keywords. A good idea to start with is to set up alerts for your company name, relevant products, and your web site URL.
Once you get your "listening headquarters" all set up you will find it hard to turn off. It can be a real challenge to monitor everything at first so take it in strides and find what works best for you.
Listening to what people say can teach you a lot about what you are doing right, and perhaps more importantly, what you are doing wrong. In any case, your current and potential customers will likely appreciate the fact that you are indeed listening.
Which tools do you use for your social media listening efforts? What kind of insights have you discovered?