The importance of listening 

when telling your brand story

We know the importance of social media and responding to customers concerns in a timely manner. But what about finding creative ways to create great brand experiences that have nothing to do with a sale or a complaint? These are opportunities to extend you brand in the social space and help amplify it.

Why bother? Well there are a few great reasons:

1. Speaking to someone on a personal level helps reinforce your brand. While some still feel social media interactions are not “real”- they do build relationships. Put your own opinions aside and recognize the opportunities that exist to connect in those channels.

2. Most users are flattered that anyone noticed their post and typically will share brand interactions with their entire network. Which means your brand story is amplified.

3. When you think of brands you love and are loyal to, it isn’t always about the product; it’s about the connection we feel to that brand that influences our decisions. Positive connections can generate future business.

Listening and interaction done right

One Revolver recently had such an experience, and it provides a case study to see how a great social media interaction can not only provide a great brand experience for one customer, but generate shares to their social networks and beyond.

Our social media savvy Revolver happened to tweet about a burger she had, how great it was, and that she’d like another. The almost immediate response from the burger chain was the invitation, “See you soon?”. It was timely, clever, and most importantly showed interest in the consumer. When our Revolver replied, maybe later, the burger chain provided an inspirational picture of the product to “tide you over.”

So why is this kind of interaction different? The burger chain is listening for mentions of their product and responding. The original tweet had only referenced the brand and the product and had not linked to the brand’s Twitter account or contained any hashtags.

You might be thinking, “I cannot afford a listening service for my business. It’s too expensive.” You are wrong. You can do this very thing for free using the tools available to all users; and it is simple. Using the advanced search in Twitter (https://twitter.com/search-advanced) you can easily look for references to your products or topics relevant to your business.

When you find tweets that are appropriate, simply reach out to those users in a friendly and meaningful way. Stay true to your brand voice and story. Don’t focus on converting a sale, or even promoting yourself. It is about how you make a positive impression for your brand with that user, in the context of their particular moment.

If we follow the entire thread of the burger tweets, we see that another user actually jumped in and asked the first user if the burger was good.

This is where we can immediately see the benefit of the first interaction. The first customer responds with a positive review and includes the price of the product. The burger chain didn’t have to do anything.

At this point you might be saying, “I don’t sell burgers. This isn’t relevant to me.” I’m willing to bet that your business solves something for someone. It is references to those challenges that you need to be looking for in social media. It is those opportunities that you can leverage to build lasting connections to your brand… but only if you are listening.