What is your experience with social listening?
Recently, I heard about social listening as a marketing technique. You let a tool listen for you on social networks, forums, etc. where your audience hangs out. When certain keywords or phrases are being used, you get a message. You can then go there and answers people's questions, or help them solve their problems. You make friends and recommend them to use your product.
Does anyone here do that? What does it take, and how successful can it be?
I don't use a tool. But I think if you have the time or can afford a tool, you should invest in social listening. Finding out what real consumers are saying about your product, your competitors and their general pain points in your niche will give you amazing insights.
You can even use what you learn to shape the surveys or questions you ask your customers when asking for direct feedback.
If you watch some of the niche Reddit forums, you can see examples of responsive social listening. I often see people answer questions on email-related subreddits that answer a question to build the responder's credibility and/or drop a link. (You have to be very cautious about pushing too far too fast, though!)
Answering questions on Quora as a marketing strategy is an entire sub-industry. ;)
Thanks for sharing this! I will do some experiments in that direction.