Most of us have had our two minutes of fame on social media and then we’ve had those unforgettable moments. The ones that turned you from loving a brand into adoring it! Remember that? Well…

Here’s how you can turn your fans/followers to loyal advocates forever after through social media listening as well as two cases straight from the UAE!

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Listen

Brands need to do more listening and less speaking. Too many brands are too busy posting/tweeting too much and forget to listen to the things that matter: their fans.

There are many tools that you can use to do social media listening. Some are paid such as Meltwater Buzz and Sysomos while others are free and simple such as Twitter Advanced Search and TweetDeck.

To be able to successfully listen in on conversations, you’ll need to develop the correct keywords. Start by listing the most important words that reflect/represent your brand such as your brand name, the items you sell, the services you offer, etc.

Filter

You’ll most likely find that there’s a lot of conversation going on, but what if it’s not relevant to your brand or your target audience? All you need to do is FILTER!

The first thing I always like to do is start off by setting the languages and location filters to English, Arabic, and the country my clients brand is in.

After that, you’ll most likely notice that there’s a lot of conversation going on that isn’t relevant. It could be from specific people that you’d add to a blacklist or it could be spam accounts or certain words that you’ll need to exclude using the NOT function of the search.

Engage

My most FAVORITE part of the entire process – engage with your audience!

I know I said most brands need to listen more, which they do and that’s important but what’s even more important is engaging with your audience. It’s a make it or break it part, an art that only few have conquered and many seek to master.

When engaging you can either:

  • Engage with tweeps about something related to their tweets!
  • Engage with tweeps just for the sake of engaging – you don’t need an excuse to say Hi!

When engaging with your followers be sure that your reply is:

  • Humanized – Nothing is worse than seeing a brand listening to conversations then sounding robotic when they engage!
  • Personal – Personalize it as much as you can, the more details the better!
  • Relevant – be sure what you’re saying is relevant to the person. Don’t talk just to talk!
  • Timely – the sooner it is the better and more powerful impact it’ll have!

Social Listening Done Right – Examples

@IKEAUAE

IKEA is one of those brands that are for the many people even on social! They’re human, friendly and have engaging/animated conversations with their customers.

Earlier this year, they picked up on a tweep debating if he should go to Armenia for holiday or IKEA for furniture! (Quite the tough decision if you ask me! – I mean I’m a neat freak and want the house to look pretty but who says no to a vacation!!)

 

They immediately engaged with him with a light-hearted tweet shown below.

 

He then chose IKEA over Armenia!

 

No, it doesn’t have to be complicated. It just has to be light-hearted and genuine and your customers will appreciate it. They might even choose you over a vacation!

While @IKEAUAE were able to get fellow Tweep Brett Debritz to choose them over a vacation, @dutweets were up to something similar when they heard that @BalqeesFathi was facing issues with her mobile carrier. They were ready to jump in and propose to steal her heart forever after and turn her into a Du customer!

Something this cute and simple generated over 800 RTs and 200+ mentions last time I checked!

Thumbs up IKEA UAE and Du for these amazing cases.