How to Listen to Your Customers Online

You know how when you’re eating in a restaurant and you don’t like the food, and the waiter asks you “How is everything?”

What do you say? “Oh, everything is fine, thanks.”

Your customers are doing the same to you — they’re not telling you what they don’t like about you to your face.

But with the rise of social media, they’re going home and sharing their negative (and positive) experiences with their online connections.

What if you could overhear what your customers were saying about you?

How could that improve your business? What would it highlight that you’re overlooking? How much power would that give you?

Yes, this is possible. It’s called social media monitoring.

Simply put, social media monitoring is using technology tools to identify what people are saying about your company online.

Social Media Monitoring Tools & Resources

Here are a few free and simple ways to do this:

1. Twitter Search

Click here and enter keywords relevant to your business, particularly your company name.

2. Google Alerts

Click here and enter your relevant keywords. Google will email you any time in encounters those keywords online, based on your preferences. (You need a Google account to set this up.)

3. RSS Feeds

Set up a Google Reader (or other RSS reader), then set up RSS feeds from social media sites as generated by searches.

4. Facebook Page

Set up a Facebook Page for your business, then simply check the wall daily for comments.

Read this introduction to Facebook for business.

5. Free Monitoring Platforms

There are a number of free social media monitoring platforms to take advantage of, such as Addictomatic, Socialmention, and Tweetdeck.

There are also tons of companies who offer social media monitoring services, such as Spiral16, Radian6, and Trackur, but I wouldn’t recommend these for most small businesses; it’s simply unnecessary.

This social media monitoring solutions wiki lists every available tool.

Here are a few more great articles on the subject:

• How to Monitor Your Social Media Presence in 10 Minutes a Day
• 10 Steps for Successful Social Media Monitoring
• The Problem(s) With Social Media Monitoring Technologies