If you aren't listening on social you are serving your ego not your customer
If you are a network marketer who desire to build social influence then social listening is key to building a huge business and being influential in your niche. If you aren’t seeing growth from your efforts on social it is likely you haven’t been listening to determine how to serve your customers best. Satisfied customers tell their friends, so if you haven’t been having a steady flow of referrals then likely social listening can help you take your business to the next level.
Learning to listen on social is a step most people skip. Often we assume we know what our customers want and need without ever asking. Or worse we do exactly what everyone else is doing. This is a huge mistake, so put your listening ears on and implement what you will learn today to start creating highly engaging and juicy content that will get you more sales, leads and referrals.
- Who to listen to on social
- Why listening on social is imperative to your long term success
- Where to put your efforts when listening on social
WHO DO YOU NEED TO BE LISTENING TO ON SOCIAL?
YOUR IDEAL CUSTOMER & YOUR COMPETITORS
Here are 5 categories you want to be listening for from you ideal customer. (If you don’t know who your ideal customer is then get my FREE Ideal Customer Workbook here.)
- Opportunities: to connect, make a sale, or to serve
- Problems: Pains, struggles and frustrations.
- Values: What is important to them and their views on political and social issues
- Preferences: How they like to be marketed to and how they like to ingest social content
- Desires: What they love, what inspires them and what makes them laugh
Why you want to listen to your ideal customer.
There are people who are looking for what you are selling and you are missing countless opportunities to increase your income because you are not taking the time to go into groups and listen. They won’t know you are open for business if you aren’t showing up and answering their questions and serving them. Show up in groups daily to do your social networking and take action on the opportunities that are around you that you have been neglecting.
Most importantly above all is you want to listen for and know what their problems are so that you can help solve them. Their struggles, pains, and frustrations in your niche should be of the upmost concern for you if you want to serve them best. The way you add value and create a life long customer (that refers their friends) is by solving their problems and creating solutions to make their life easier and more satisfying. When you identify your ideal customers problems then you can,
- Position your brand and product/service as a solution for them
- Bring in an expert onto your social platforms to offer solutions to their problem
- Collaborate with someone that has knowledge that you don’t, to help them
It is important for you to know what they value so you can talk about their aspirational life and build the dream for them. Core desires are what directs their decisions so you will want to understand and listen for what matters to them. Have awareness of your ideal customers social, spiritual and political beliefs so that you can avoid conflict and division. It is not always necessary for you to have similar social, political and spiritual beliefs (it does make it easier) but you will want to understand the overall sentiment of your audience so that you can create content and social feed that will honor those beliefs.
You will waste less time if you know what their general preferences are for how they like to be marketed to, for instance do they like video, audio, written, or a combination. Will they ingest a long audio but need videos to be short and sweet. Do they like lives or prefer a recording that they can watch when it is convenient. Do they need reminders and like you to send an email to catch them up on what they missed or do they hate email?! These are all very important questions for you to listen for answers to.
You also want to know what their preferences are for social platforms. Where do they like to interact most and how often. Are they on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, or LinkedIn. You may want to double down on whatever platform your customer is using the most even if you have a personal preference because you have to show up where your customer is hanging out. You can then drive traffic to the platform that you prefer and eventually you will gain enough influence that they will come to you and your favorite social platform.
Why you need to be listening on social!
- Opportunities to increase your sales and generate leads. There are people literally asking for what you offer, it’s your job to find them and let them know you are there to serve and open for business.
- You can beat the algorithm on social by listening to what you customer wants and creating content that is highly engaging and will keep them on the platform longer.
- Listening is going to give you insight into exactly what people want, and help you create content they will love and engage with.
- Social Listening will help you discover gaps in the market, disruptors in the marketplace, and to predict future social and political impact. When you learn how to listen properly you are going to be able to protect your business, and keep your customers positive and feeling safe, so that they continue to buy, even when things like a recession hit.
- Listening help you to be innovative by watching for trends and the things that are new, it will draw people in because you will stand out, because your stuff is going to be interesting
Where to listen on social
Personal profiles of your ideal customer.
Pay attention to their bio and determine how they are describing themselves. Look at their feed and try to notice the language that they’re using. Determine what their Problems, Preferences, desires and aspirations to create content they will love.
Facebook groups
- Local & neighborhood groups
- Industry specific Groups
- Competitors groups, pages, and personal profiles
- Interest specific groups such as hobbies, faith, mom groups, etc.
- Any Groups that contain your ideal client
- Go into the Facebook groups and search for #ask in the search bar. This will give you insight into the types of questions that they have and give you ideas on how to serve your customers better.
- Search keywords for your niche in the search bar within the these different groups to see if there are conversations to read the threads and look for opportunities to send people helpful materials or answer questions where you can add value and be helpful.
- Look for complaints or frustrations that they might be having, again this is your opportunity to help solve the problems that they have.
- You are always looking for opportunities to serve, sell, and connect with your ideal client so even if you are connecting over a common hobby and it has nothing to do with your business you can have a DM conversation to qualify them and see if they are a good prospect.
How search engines can be an incredible resource to listen to for insightful information
2 Responses
Love this. “Pay attention to their bio and determine how they are describing themselves”.
So many ways to listen. Thank you
Listening is key and you are right that so often we think we already know the problem. Thanks for the great tips on best ways and places tonlisten!