If you’ve never heard of social listening, you’re not alone. This powerful tool is widely used by social media experts, but not their clients. When social listening is leveraged correctly, it puts investors in a dominant position of being in-the-know about important trends, allows them to snoop on their competitors and enables them to pivot quickly. Read on to find out three ways to leverage social listening. 

According to the experts, the average person spends 2 hours and 22 minutes per day on social media. During this time they may be posting photos of their day, or memes to spark laughter. They are also using social media to discover what’s new among their friends, family, and community. 

Why Does This Matter?

Whether it’s a solicited or unsolicited recommendation these social updates are the times that they will talk about the companies they like and use. 

The majority (96%) of these conversations is unbranded — meaning your business might have gotten mentions all over the internet from Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and others that you’re completely unaware of. Most of these mentions won’t appear in your notification box because you’re not officially tagged.

This is where social listening comes into play. It shows you what’s being said on social media, without you having to go looking, and without having to get tagged in the conversation. Social listening is like a dedicated virtual assistant working 24/7 doing searches on keywords that are meaningful to you. Keywords can be anything you want to know about like your company name or industry news.

Here are three amazing ways you can leverage the power of social listening:

1. Find Out What’s Being Said About Your Brand

It’s easy for real estate investors to be misunderstood. In our business, we hear “no,” a lot more than we hear “yes.” So, wouldn’t it be great if you could find out what was being said on social media that may be impacting your close rate? You may find out that you’re not being perceived in the way you thought. With social listening, you’ll have an opportunity to pivot the conversation and adjust your approach to influence your public image. 

Curious about other investors in your area? Use social listening to find out who’s talking about them as well as what they’re saying about themselves. 

With social listening, you can:

• • Find out what you’re doing that other investors aren’t so you can stand out
• • Discover what sizzle features are a hit with end buyers so you can do the same
• • Keep tabs on their social media accounts and post similar high-engagement posts

2. Stay on Top of What’s Happening in the Real Estate Industry

There are a lot of moving parts to real estate that can affect our businesses positivity or negatively from mortgage rates to the median home price in our key markets. We’ve covered how social listening can shine a light on untagged brand mentions, but you can also use it to stay on top of industry news.

Staying on top of these changes means that you can react immediately to them whether that means giving a higher or lower offer, or utilizing optional money sources. When you know about important fluctuations ahead of others, you can be one of the first to report these changes to your audience. This puts you in a position to become a trusted authority and be viewed as a leader in the industry.

3. Prevent a Potential PR Crisis

It goes without saying that a PR crisis is something you want to avoid.

It’s reported that 96% of unhappy customers won’t complain to you directly. Don’t think that they’re not talking about their experience on social media. These upset sellers won’t tag your company, and without social listening, you may never know these complaints are out there. 

These are exactly the type of situations where social listening can save the day. You’ll receive a notification whenever your company name is mentioned on a social media post whether or not your business is tagged. This gives you the opportunity to respond quickly before it has a chance of going viral.