Develop a strategic approach ：
In the video, Martin said business should have a pipeline of some new ideas for the products or some services the customers will love, otherwise, the business will fail pretty quick. Customers are everything of the business, if they are not satisfied and then the company would make money. So, their opinions are very important, people need to listen to the customers and get some feedback from them, try to improve the parts that are not good enough yet. Ones way can get the feedback from the customers is listen their voices from the social media. Customers will write some feedbacks on the websites or their own account or the company account, marketing people need to read all of these and have an idea how was the products. After got all the comments and feedback, the business knew how to do next. In marketing, understand the customer needs is the key. Only if people know what the customers want, they can provide the products fit their needs and they the company can make money. As long as people need some products, they will pay for that, because they need to have them.
How to get started:
In online activities, 93%of them begin with search. “Search results are like the new front page”. (Martin Waxman, Social listening for marketers) If we want to get some results from the social media, we can search the company’s name, the products’ names and the competitors’ names, search by using the keywords. Searching in the website like Bing and Google by inputting phrases or products names and company names also can get some related resources, which is also a practical way to get information. We can do the same thing when we search on those social media softwares.
Martin believed that some companies post the news on the social media for people to see is not an efficient way, he suggested to use Hootsuite to manage the account. He used Landon’s hotel as an example and showed how to use the Hootsuite to build and manage the social media account for a company.
Social listening in action:
Some companies in the market just focused on their own business, they ignored the outside world. The outside world means the customers, their competitors, also the market. A company need to focus on both internal and external of the company. Company needs to what others are doing too. If there were some other companies had provided the services that this company didn’t have, then if customers need this service, customers will choose other companies. In this situation, the companies had more services and had a lower price will have more chances to get more money and attract more customers.
Customer service was very important, got some comments from customers after they bought the products or services. Good customer services can help the company to build good reputation and image in front of the public. And also, customer services part is responsible for helping customers with any issues they met. Social listening skills can help company get through the crisis. For examples, if there was a company that sold some bad quality products to their customers, and all the news and social media were taking about this, the leader of the company can post something to show their attitude on the social media, to make people know the company will refund the money or exchange some good quality ones for their customers. The skill of managing crisis in a business was significant, if a crisis made a company lost the reputation and they couldn’t handle it properly, then the business was in a big trouble.
Conclusion:
Social media is a powerful and effective tool in the modern society. Social listening is a necessary process of running a business. Knowing the customers’ feelings, business competitors’ behavior was very important, it helped the company to improve in a better way.
Examples: I used to buy an eyeshadow platte from Sephora, it was so popular so there was no stock in the store, I had to buy it online. So I ordered it and waited for about a week. However, when I finally received the eyeshadow platte, it was broken, the powder went everywhere when I just opened it. I called the Sephora customer service, they said it was their fault, they will send me a new one right way. The attitude was really good, and they helped me to deal with it as soon as possible. I also post it in the social media, at the official eyeshadow brand account, I put the picture of the broken platte too, and then the account sent me the private message to apologize and gave me a coupon. After it was solved, I posted the good comments again let people they were a good company, if customer did receive a broken product, they would exchange or refund, solved the problem in a positive way.
Reference:
https://www.lynda.com/HootSuite-tutorials/Welcome/546104/621980-4.html?autoplay=true
https://cdn.lynda.com/course/546104/546104-636319181228373389-16×9.jpg
http://greenbookblog.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Social-Media-Listening-Image-two.png
Chang's dream park 
