Do you know how to “listen” online? Why would you do it?
Well, with your business, you give your customers what they want, right? And you know sometimes they have constructive critical feedback to give you.
If a number of customers give you the same opinion, then it’s clear you should make a change. So, you make the change, and what do you get?
Happier customers and a healthier bottom line!
How do you listen to your market to find ideas for blog posts?
Check out some easy tips:
Social Media
It doesn’t matter which network you talk about. Social media’s greatest value may not be the ability for small businesses to reach mass audiences. The biggest benefit may be your ability to directly listen to your market and get almost instantaneous market research.
Two decades ago, companies would quickly toss away millions of dollars on similar research!
You can even use your competitor’s social media profiles. Watch for questions people ask. Take a look at their top complaints and rave reviews. Ask them questions directly on your own social networks.
Everything you find will make for a great blog post idea.
Think of Your Most Common In-Person Questions
When you provide your product or service, customers always have some questions. You find yourself answering the same ones over and over.
Those are blog post ideas. The added benefits of answering such questions in the form of a blog post are that most likely other people on the web search for the same answers, and you can direct people to your blog for answers.
So, you can cut your customer service costs by giving a brief answer and pointing people to your blog for additional information.
That also builds the relationship, earning you more sales later on down the line.
Surveys
These are actually very easy to do online – and you can even do them for free! This is another one of those tactics that took reasonably sized budgets before the internet.
It truly is amazing what marketing tools are available to you today!
There’s only about a million free online survey tools. SurveyMonkey is a popular one, and so are FreeOnlineSurveys.com and KwikSurveys.com.
For your surveys, just make sure you make them brief. Around 5-7 questions or so should do the job. Give your respondents at least one question where they can openly provide any feedback. The rest of the questions can be multiple choice about their satisfaction with your business.
Should you offer an incentive, like $50 off your service, to 3 random respondents? That’s a tough question.
Digital marketing leader Moz conducted a survey about their own business and battled with the idea of offering an incentive. On the one hand, it could cause respondents to be biased too positively, resulting in false data. On the other, it could increase the number of participants and give more reliable results.
Ultimately, Moz decided not to offer an incentive.
Competitor Blog Posts
Now, don’t just look at their blog and copy their posts. Look at their posts, and see which get the most social shares.
You should write about those posts because you know their audience loves them. Don’t spend your time at small blogs. Make sure the average post has 25-50 shares or so.
You should be able to find at least one competitor with that many social shares or more.
You’ll Never Run out of Ideas
Because Google forces every website to publish content, it’s so easy to find blog post ideas these days.
And the best part? None of these methods take too much additional work.
