Listening

As we grow up, we spend an inordinate amount of time learning to talk.

As someone who has been a student of storytelling for almost three decades, that has been my focus.

But with the help of AI, it is incredibly easy to tell your story.

Today, you can create blogs, write newsletters, record podcasts, and make videos, all with great large language models.

And they're not just good, they're very good.

So, it's easy to forget about the other part of the metaverse - human-generated content.

That content is incredibly valuable to business leaders.

And it can also be a useless distraction.

Sorting through user feedback, comments, and reviews can be painful, disheartening, hurtful, and a complete waste of time.

Today, I will explore the topic of social listening and provide my perspective and a list of best practices.

Raw Reviews

In business, you learn quickly that Google and Yelp reviews are an extremely important part of success.

But when you talk to small business owners, you realize that almost all their attention is focused on managing bad reviews, not cultivating good ones.

One of the secret hacks of digital marketing professionals to grow a company's search engine optimization, or SEO, is to simply start asking for reviews.

In most successful businesses, customers are happy with the results, but there's just not enough motivation to take the time to leave a review.

Pain is the great motivator, and when people are happy with their results, they just lack the push needed to go online, logging into a platform and writing a review.

But if you're angry or unhappy, well, that's a different animal.

There the motivation is clear, and because of the often anonymous nature of reviews, users are free to say pretty much anything they want.

And sometimes they are just plain stupid.

One of my colleagues owns a bakery and recently had a two-star review because a pastry was "raw in the middle".

It was a bagel filled with cream cheese. It wasn't raw - that was cheese!

They even posted a photo of the cheese in the bagel.

We at Hill Country Chocolate have been blessed with a lot of raving fans who have left 5 star reviews.

But that's not always the case.

I recently went back and looked at all the reviews and found something very interesting.

Most of the reviews that were less than 5 stars were left by people who had written over 50 reviews.

So the average consumer, our average customer, was very happy with the product. But the professional reviewers often had a different set of standards and motivations.

So what do I recommend for raw reviews?

First, make sure you have a robust review management approach within your organization. And that starts with asking everyone for a review.

Everyone.

Sheer numbers will not only give you better data, but it will also create a lot of raving fan reviews.

Second, and most importantly, respond to every review. This does two things: first, it shows you respect the customers who left the message, and second - it dramatically helps your SEO!

You see, responding to reviews is a way to add extra content to your site, and Google loves it when you respond.

Last, learn from the reviews. If there are elements of the feedback that can improve your business, then embrace it and thank the reviewer.

Customers will respect that authenticity, and it will help your business overall.

Here's a quick tip: respond to all the good reviews with personal comments. But, use AI tools like ChatGPT to help you craft responses for bad reviews. This will help you be more empathetic and less defensive. Here is a sample prompt you can use:

You are an AI assistant specializing in customer service and public relations. Your task is to help draft a response to a negative review. Follow these guidelines:

1. Analyze the given negative review carefully.

2. Draft a response that is:
   - Empathetic and understanding
   - Professional and courteous
   - Concise and to the point (aim for 3-5 sentences)
   - Solution-oriented

3. Structure the response as follows:
   a) Start with a sincere apology for the customer's negative experience
   b) Acknowledge the specific issue mentioned in the review
   c) Provide a clear solution or next steps to address the problem
   d) If appropriate, mention any improvements or changes being made
   e) Invite the customer to contact you directly for further assistance
   f) End with a positive note or thank the customer for their feedback

4. Avoid:
   - Being defensive or argumentative
   - Making excuses or shifting blame
   - Mentioning specific details about the customer's account or visit
   - Using generic or copy-pasted responses

5. Use a tone that matches your brand voice while remaining professional.

6. If the review mentions a serious issue, include a request for the customer to contact you privately with more details.

Review to respond to: [Insert the negative review text here]

Draft a response based on the above guidelines.

Paid Reviews

People giving reviews today on social media are almost all getting paid.

This isn’t universal, but it almost is.

One of the worst business decisions I made in 2024 (I have a list of poor decisions, and maybe that will be a topic of a future essay) was to engage in the world of influencer marketing.

If someone is hawking lip gloss, a software product, a course, or really any product on YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram, then most likely the influencer is getting paid for either sales or content production.

If you want to see the dangers of affiliate marketing, check out this YouTube video that was just published and has almost 2 million views in the first 24 hours:

If you define the power of an influencer by the number of followers they have, then those with lower numbers may receive a product for posting a video.

Those with more than a thousand followers are likely getting a revenue share from sales or just being outright paid for the video.

(I won’t go into those celebrities and with huge lists because unless you are Nike or Adidas, they are beyond the scope of most businesses.)

The middle group represents most of the true influencers you see on social media platforms, and for many, this is their full-time job.

There are even agencies that represent groups of influencers who find paid gigs for their creators and feed them leads (they take a share of the revenue too).

For a practical reference, an influencer with a thousand followers could require payment of $300 to $3000 for a post, depending on the product and the creatives that were produced.

For a business to play in this market then you must factor in the ROI of paying an influencer for content, and the sales you think it will generate when making your decision.

And most of the time, the results promised by influencers just don’t materialize.

For many users of platforms like TikTok and Instagram, they just enjoy consuming content, even if it is an ad.

So just like advertising, if there are multiple impressions of the creative, then people are more likely to take action.

But paying for multiple influencer posts about your product can become extremely expensive, so one practice is to make sure you purchase the rights to the video review from an influencer and then run that as an ad on your own social media.

If you want to raise the bar even higher and be exceptionally creative, you can white-list the account of the influencer and run ads on their social media account to reach an entirely new list of customers.

But as with any social media marketing, this can be expensive. So tread cautiously.

Mass Comment

Of all the channels for getting user feedback, Reddit and X offer the best connection to customers.

Sure, users can be nasty, and even occasionally these comments can go viral, but the advantage of these platforms is simply the scope and scale of the data available.

And the beauty of social listening is that you can access this data in real time, as well as interact and engage with those who are creating it.

You can spot trends early, spy on your competitors, and see what messages are resonating.

The challenge with this kind of commentary is that there's so much data out there, it's hard to know where to start.

There are several services you can pay to do social listening, but they are expensive and often more than most companies need to make product decisions.

Here is my approach.

The best way to get started is to become a member of these platforms. If you are just starting out, join specialized Reddits about your niche or follow competitors or companies with similar products on X.

If you don't see a lot of conversation about your product or business channel, start the conversation with a question. This will almost always result in feedback.

Often there are too many or too few comments to make it worthwhile, so I use AI to get a quick understanding of the data.

I don't recommend paying for fancy tools; I use Perplexity instead.

I'll show you how easy it is in a short video:

The best practice for understanding mass comments is to follow these channels regularly. Trends and sentiments change quickly on social networks, so you need to create a process of continuous listening to stay on top of things.

Conclusion

I hope you’ve enjoyed my take on listening.

Let me know what you think in the comments.

Here's a quick bonus! If you would like to automate social listening for your business, industry or interests, then watch this quick video.