Key Takeaways:
You’re not a mind reader, so don’t act like you already know what your audience thinks of your product. At best, you’re making a bold assumption that will land you flat on your face.
There’s only one way to know if your product or service fizzles or sizzles. You have to keep your finger on the customer feedback pulse – it’s what matters more than anything.
It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in or who you’re targeting. Buyers want a product that hits the spot – they’re not going to stick around if they think you’re selling something subpar.
In a perfect world, customers would tell you how they feel. In the real world, you hear from a barely engaged vocal minority. One company’s research based on data from 1,400 apps shows that most brands that don’t specifically engage hear from just 1% of their audience. Yikes! That’s a lot of crickets.
But don’t sweat just yet. Sure, being passive gets you nowhere, but who says you have to wait for the customer to talk to you?
This is the age of social media. You have easy access to your audience, so don’t waste it! There’s never been an easier way to tell your customers you want to hear from them. And chances are, they’re itching to speak up.
Today, people expect to reach their favorite brands on social media. Not only is social media where they go to reach you, but it’s also where they go to talk about you.
That’s why you can’t afford to skip social listening, a top tactic for scoring customer feedback. According to the 2019 Sprout Social Index, 63% of marketers think social listening is growing more important by the year. (Psst… they’re right!)
Social listening means you monitor your social media channels for feedback or mentions – not just direct messages and tags, but any mention of your brand or product.
It’s not all that common for a buyer to direct message you with what they’re thinking, so you could miss out on useful feedback if you don’t monitor closely. It’s way more common for a pensive buyer to fire out a tweet or drop a Facebook post with their opinions directed at other buyers, not necessarily at you as a brand.
When you monitor for those mentions, you get inside the buyer’s head – which opens up a valuable opportunity for you to respond to their thoughts or even improve your product.
In fact, 83% of customers appreciate it when brands respond to questions on social media.
Why is it so important to show you’re listening? The bad news about bad news is that it reaches twice as many people as praise. It can take a whopping 12 positive experiences to make up for just one unresolved negative experience.
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Once you point your eyes and ears in the right direction, it’s time to turn up the dial to persuade buyers to tell you what’s on their mind.
Customers (and potential customers) follow you on social media because you’ve found a place in their worldview. Don’t be a stranger!
Followers want to know what your brand is doing, so make it a point to show up. That said, you probably aren’t the only reason they decided to check their social media feed, so don’t be afraid to go for the ask. You’ll hear from way more followers if you actually ask them what they’re thinking, so pepper your updates with thoughtful questions.
Asking a question triggers a human reflex called instinctive elaboration. That is, they’re questions that basically hijack your brain and invite an authentic answer.
To get the best answers, ask questions that:
Even if you ask the right questions, you won’t get a good answer from every single person who sees your queries. . If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em by giving them a quicker way to respond.
That means posting surveys and polls along with your open-ended questions. That way, people who don’t have the time to leave thoughtful comments can still put in their two cents.
The most popular platforms make this easy, and they even offer creation tools. Facebook’s Polls for Page creator, for example, takes you from start to finish – even offering video assistance on how the information can help you analyze the results.
Plus, social media users appreciate not being dragged away to another website, and they appreciate that you’re respectful of their time.
Many of the integrated poll and survey tools used by social media platforms offer a form of instant gratification by showing participants how their answer compares with the majority. Consider adding an incentive to increase poll or survey response rates.
Contests are a proven way to increase participation, especially when people have extra chances to win by sharing the post in their own circle.
People are more willing to give you feedback when they’re confident that you’re attentive and responsive. In fact, 82% of people say that an instant response is critical when they reach out to a brand. So don’t keep them waiting – let them know you hear them and thank them for taking the time.
It can be tough to respond fast enough with all the other demands on your plate, so consider using a chatbot to keep your responsiveness up.
Like poll and survey tools, the major social media platforms offer this functionality, making chatbots more accessible than ever. In 2022, Fortune predicted that chatbots would reach a $77 million global market valuation.
Social media makes it pretty much guaranteed that you’ll get feedback from customers – but be careful what you ask. Customers have higher expectations for brand interactions than ever, so you can’t just ask for feedback and then go radio silent. You have to actually act on that feedback, whether it’s what you wanted to hear or not. (That’s why you asked, after all, right?)
The good news is that the improvements you make based on that valuable feedback help get you closer to a perfect product-market fit. The more you can fine-tune your product to what the customer actually wants and needs, the better your brand can perform.
To get great feedback on social media, you have to start with great social content.
Every social media post you publish needs to have as much thought and strategy behind it as your blog posts, gated content, email drips, and all the rest. Don’t spend five seconds on a Facebook post and call it good. It’s not!
Lucky for you, ContentBacon knows perfect content inside and out, so don’t struggle through this alone. When you partner with ContentBacon, you get social media posts (and more) that tell an honest story, build real connections, and deliver kickass results.
Let’s talk about how ContentBacon can propel your social media strategy to new heights. We’re waiting!