Big Brands Making Improvements Based On What Customers Say Online

Today, I received further proof that social media is becoming even more sticky among businesses. The Wall Street Journal reports that major brands like IBM and Harrah’s are “sifting web chat for marketing inspiration” and channeling it back into their advertisements and website content. 

According to the Wall Street Journal article, IBM used web searches and social media tools like YouTube and Twitter to unearth what their customers were saying about their brands.  In the article, Jean-Philippe Maheu, chief digital officer at Ogilvy attributes real-time technology as a major factor to why big brands are monitoring social media conversations more frequently.

Harrah’s Entertainment has also been monitoring conversations happening about their casinos on review sites such as TripAdvisor; the feedback, provided by real travelers, has already been utilized to adjust Harrah's site images and site copy.  Even though most of the Las Vegas Strip has fallen under economic hardship, Harrah’s has reported an increase in bookings online. The Wall Street Journal reports that after they updated their website with content and iconic images responding to what they heard on social networks, their profits jumped “by a double-digit percent.”

This should be very exciting news for any company currently watching  (and maybe even interacting with)  customers having conversations about their industry and brands online.  However, it should also be a call-to-action if you have yet to implement a daily social media regimen for your business. 

My advice is this: Don’t just focus on the negative things people are saying about you online. Companies tend to implement a social media strategy primarily for PR and crisis management.  Focus on the positive conversations and questions, too, and use them to make your product and website better. Harrah’s was able to really tune into the things that differentiated their brand from every other on the strip. Their listening skills won them more business and leads because they found a way to feed the conversations back into their pages and attract Las Vegas visitors to them.

Customers of HubSpot can use our social media tool to monitor conversations important to their brand and industry in real-time. We filter out the noise and point customers to conversations people are having based on keywords, competitors, and brand names that they’ve identified. 

Even if you’re not a customer of HubSpot, you can still start listening and feeding what you hear back into your content online.

Start Listening Today:  Examine Your Social Media Strategy Using the Following Questions

1. Do I know what words and phrases customers are using to describe my brand online?
2. Do I know what my users are saying about my competitor’s brands? Am I using this information to differentiate myself from my competitors?
3. Do my customers and prospects know where I’m at online? Do they know I’m watching and listening?
4. Do I have a 10-minute a day social media plan in place that helps me monitor my conversations and find out what people are saying about my brands across the web?
5. Do I have a way to compile and save all of the relevant information I’m reading and feed it back into my website?

 Video: How to Use Social Media to Attract More Customers

Learn how to use social media to attract more customers and monitor the conversation. Download the free video and learn how to generate more business using social media.

 photo by sarajea