Opinion makers and influencers in the social Web realm play a significant role in marketing as well as branding, just like the countless Facebook ‘Likes’ do. You cannot operate in isolation and expect to be successful on the social Web. Remember, social media marketing is not solely about you, your business and your needs. So you cannot and should not ignore what the people expect from you as a brand owner, even while taking into account your own business priorities. Let us fathom why a company must listen with intent to its customers.

1. The reach and power of Internet, especially networking platforms, does make it possible even for smaller entities to reach out to prospects irrespective of financial and geographical barriers. These no more act as deterrents to explore new business opportunities. In other words, new communication channels have democratized the process of owning and handling ‘problem spaces’ of your customers. Social media lets businesses become customer-centric, prompting them to take an outside-in view rather than inside out mode. This is imperative to identify new opportunities.
2. It is necessary to align your marketing initiatives with the end user’s needs. Social media helps businesses evaluate their offerings to find out as what the prospects want, like or expect from a particular product; the kind of improvements they seek; and how receptive they will be to a new idea. Once marketers are able to grasp their expectations, it will be easier to position a brand accordingly.  Proactive engagement leads to a proper understanding of the mindset of the people so as to fill the demand- supply gap.
3. Seeking feedback is critical to solve specific complaints and ably address grievances. Keeping your core customer groups in the loop will elicit the much desired insights about your products and services. Forums, blogs, review sites etc make the exercise more focused and purposeful. By seeking customer inputs, you can deliver added value to them. Listening to your prospects present in vast numbers on an array of social channels will help you amass vital competitive intelligence, critical to fine-tune your product development/ distribution.
4. A dynamic marketing strategy should blend your core strengths and customer needs. It can be developed through a sustained interaction and engagement on social media.
5. Your well-cultivated social presence must be capitalized on by fostering an interactive and engaging stance. It’s not going to work if you sit back and simply wait for the interaction to fructify on its own. It’s you who have to set the ball rolling. Ultimately, the true potential of a ‘Like’ or ‘Follow’, a Facebook ‘share’ or a tweet lies in the marketers’ ability to harness the collective insights to customize the brand message and campaigns to promote their products and services based on the user demographic, geographical profile, tastes, preferences, their needs and aspirations.

Why don’t you share all your ideas and experiences in this regard with us for the benefit of other users? That will be great; after all social success is more about interaction and active participation – so let’s get started!