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Create a Listening Strategy to Build Competitive Advantage

30/8/2014

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Is your organisation missing out on that vital online resource; Business Intelligence? Have you created a formal Listening Program in your company?

The online conversation is going on 24/7. Are you taking advantage of the online conversations to build competitive advantage?

Here’
s what you may be missing out on!

Reputation Management

In today’s viral online community word spreads faster than ever in the history of man. One person with a smart phone who has just taken a picture of one of your staff berating a customer can send it to all his friends within minutes. Uploaded to YouTube or sent across the social networks and you have got a potential viral customer service disaster on your hands.

What could this cost your business? The answer is you will never know because you simply cannot calculate the results of lost opportunities, potential customers turned off your business or existing customers not wanting to trade with you again.

What cost?


Your Latest Product/Service

You may just find that your latest product which you have just spent the last year developing is receiving indifferent views across the social networks, or the online community might love the product but are very unhappy with your after sales service. Being able to get to grips with this immediately will solve a potentially damaging problem in real time instead of allowing it to go unnoticed and creating a perception of your business that produces good products but has lousy after sales care.

Answer that Question!

We are all swamped with thousands of marketing messages on a daily basis, pushing out yet another marketing message on Facebook or Twitter will have little impact. However engaging with your customers and prospects in a different way is much more likely to bring success through loyalty and positive word-of-mouth reactions.

You will add much more value to your customers and prospects when you solve a problem for them. Imagine a scenario where a user on a social platform is having a real bad time with a product and getting no response from the original supplier, (one of your competitors!) given that you have the knowledge, how do you think they would feel about you and your business if you solved the problem, especially as your help was free!

They are going to be putting out positive tweets and posts on their platforms about your business, say someone has around one thousand friends on Facebook, how good would it be if your name was mentioned in glowing terms on all of their friends newsfeeds?


Market Needs and Threats

To be able to respond to the needs of your market you must be in tune with its needs. Monitoring what your market is saying about preferences, new trends and wants is vital information. Having a formal system in place to capture, analyse and respond to what is being said is fundamental to your social media program.

This is real-time information where you are able to detect sentiment towards your products and services, your competitors’ products and services, and market trends. All of which will help you to improve your products and services in the future and identify new opportunities in your market.

Imagine the scenario of you not having a formal listening strategy in place, but your competition has. Just visualise for a moment their staff using their listening tools to capture and analyse information on a daily basis and acting upon that information to deal with any immediate crisis and to develop their products and services for the future.

But you are doing nothing?



























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    Former MD.Passionate about supporting SME's and helping them to grow their business using a practical hands-on approach.

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