The customer is always right.
Really. The success of your brand depends on their good word.
That’s why customer advocates — those who shout their love for your brand — are worth their weight in sales.
Where to find these zealous patrons? Hint: Listen up.
We’re sharing how you can use social listening to increase customer advocacy, including six inspiration-worthy examples.
Bonus: Discover the best way to gather insights and intel from your audience, competitors, industry, and favorite aspirational brands in our complete guide to advanced social listening.
What is customer advocacy?
Customer advocacy is the practice of nurturing relationships with your happiest, most loyal customers with the goal that they’ll promote your brand and recommend it to others.
Why? Consumers trust what other consumers say over a brand’s own marketing.
In fact, 34% of consumers say “too much self-promotion” is a major turn-off in how they perceive brands on social.
By turning more consumers into advocates, you can boost your brand awareness and keep your sentiment on the incline.
The key: Social media listening (keep reading).
In 2024, social media platforms are the place for consumers to voice their opinions and influence others.
With a social media listening strategy (and the right tools), brands can track and analyze these conversations. Think: Consumer feedback, brand mentions, competitor mentions, industry trends, and more.
The result? Creating products and a customer journey that consumers freely rave about.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Here are some ways social listening and customer advocacy work together:
Surfacing customer (and prospect) insights
Your audience will tell you what they want from you — you simply have to listen.
From the good to the bad to the to-be-improved, social listening lets you collect and treat these conversations as real-time customer feedback.
Like Notion’s social media team acknowledging and noting product improvements on X:
That way, you can better your offering and relationship with buyers. Win-win.
Identifying (and engaging) brand advocates
Think of social listening as an amusement park fastpass — only instead of gaining front-of-the-line coaster access, it’s finding out the folks who repeatedly engage with or mention your brand, products, or services.
Whether it’s a shining review on X or a TikTok praising your latest product, the top tools make it easy to filter through the noise, so you can reach out to customer advocates and engage them in meaningful ways.
Brands like Knix leverage user-generated content (UGC) to break up a feed of traditional marketing posts:
Source: Knix on Instagram
Spotlighting this authentic content not only acts as a trust signal for prospective buyers — it’s the first act in a new wave of brand advocates.
Tip: Spot an influencer gushing over your brand? Teaming up with those who already love what you do make for the most authentic, impactful partnerships!
Building customer-centric strategies based on listening insights
Not only does social listening spotlight the volume of customer pain points and feedback, it’s top-notch insight into how your current processes are equipped to handle them.
If you’re sensing an overload of feedback or support requests beyond your team’s capacity, it’s a sign to develop your customer experience.
For example, tech companies like Slack involve customers in their product development process.
Source: Slack
Through Slack’s beta program, those who opt in get updates before they become available to the general public. And if they have concerns or suggestions, they can submit them to Slack’s team as feedback.
Your social listening insights will give you hints for what makes the most sense for you and your brand. From there, you can develop feedback implementation processes and improve relationship management.
Do it right, and you’re on track to become a customer-centric, advocate-worthy business.
#1 Easy Social Listening
Brand mentions, trending topics, and sentiment at your fingertips. Enhance your social strategy with the insights that matter.
Measuring the reach and sentiment of brand mentions
If your brand sentiment takes a nosedive (or the polar opposite), your social team will be the first to know.
Social media listening tools like Hootsuite Listening use enhanced sentiment analysis to tell you how consumers really feel and how many feel that way.
The correct tool will not just warn you, but make sure you have real-time insights to get to the root of the issue, fast.
Good news: Your existing and future customer advocates are waiting to be found, listened to, and engaged via Hootsuite.
Even better news: Every Hootsuite plan includes everything you need to get started.
Use Listening Basics to discover trending hashtags, brands and events anywhere in the world, or dive deeper for personalized insights on your brand.
You can track what people are saying about you, your top competitors, your products — up to two keywords tracking anything at all over the last seven days.
Plus, you can use Quick Search to analyze things like:
- Key metrics. Are more people talking about you this week? What’s the vibe of their posts? Hootsuite Listening doesn’t just track what people are saying — it uses enhanced sentiment analysis to tell you how they really feel.
- Top themes. How are people talking about you? What are the most popular positive and negative posts about? Which other conversations are you showing up in?
- Results. Ready to get into specifics? The results tab will show you a selection of popular posts related to your search terms — you can filter by sentiment, channel, and more.
Video more your thing? Watch Hootsuite’s social media expert Trish Riswick explain how to get started with Hootsuite Listening, below:
And if you want to take social listening to the next level, our upgraded listening can show you sentiment over time, top influencers in your space, audience demographics, and much more. Interested in a free demo? Book one now.
Need to see the concept in action? Here are six brands using social media listening to increase customer advocacy.
1. Marlow
Monitoring conversations about your brand and industry online is a powerful marketing tool.
Take menstrual brand Marlow for example, who sprung into action amidst internet-wide tampon concerns.
The opportunity was two-fold: Confirm their customers don’t have to worry about their products and spotlight positive brand reviews for the ultimate stamp of approval.
The takeaway? A brand that addresses their customers’ concerns head-on is a magnet for loyal supporters.
2. Grubhub
In the case of customer experience, Grubhub doesn’t mess around.
Because when food delivery became an essential lifeline during the global pandemic, concerns like driver safety, disinfection protocols, and cost were all the talk of the (virtual) town.
The company’s plan of action? Use social listening to understand how they can best keep their community safe, fed, and happy.
To put hungry quarantiners at ease, and position themselves as the food delivery service among competitors, Grubhub implemented programs to help customers save money and order food safely.
And as the year came to a close, Grubhub proved the value of social listening on the other end of the scale.
In other words: They embraced their “Belly Dance” TV ad’s transformation into a viral meme.
The team first created memes inspired by the post that garnered a record-breaking 651K engagements for the Grubhub X account. Then, they launched the #DeliverTheRemix contest, asking followers to help choose the next song in the “Belly Dance” spot.
That, friends, is how you turn a negative community sentiment into a brand-amplifying outcome.
3. Haus Labs
Here’s the thing about beauty brands on the ‘gram. Between heavy filters and professional shoots, it’s hard to know which products are the real deal.
That’s why Haus Labs’ feed is one to watch.
The Lady Gaga brand breaks up their grid with UGC that organically boasts their makeup. Case in point: Golloria’s candid review of the Color Fuse Glassy Blush Balm.
A thumbs up from a macro influencer? With the potential to develop an authentic, lasting partnership? Take notes, people!
Pro tip: Collect and share UGC across your social channels with Hootsuite. Get started.
4. HelloFresh
HelloFresh is proof that when it comes to brand advocacy, social listening is the missing ingredient.
Before, the team spent long hours manually monitoring and analyzing data, and missing important mentions where the brand was not directly tagged.
As the company grew, the meal kit provider invested in social listening to monitor the reputation of their brand, analyze customer feedback, and measure the performance of its marketing initiatives.
Source: Talkwalker by Hootsuite
The result? Over 400% more monthly HelloFresh mentions identified — and the social team never missing a beat, question, or complaint.
5. Spotify
You know you take social listening seriously when you have an entire X account and website dedicated to it. Hi, Spotify!
While this type of social listening allows users to come directly to them, The Spotify Cares account also monitors tagged and untagged mentions.
That way, they never miss an opportunity to offer support.
6. Cargolux
When Cargolux Airlines International decided to use social listening to measure their latest splash — moving two beluga whales from China to Iceland alongside Sea Life
Trust (yup, you read that right) — they discovered they could:
- Increase brand mentions by 20% across the world
- Shape their social messaging based on feedback to maximize engagement
- Increase mentions in a target market, UK, by 42%
How did they do it? When the campaign became a top story, Cargolux and partners kept their finger on the pulse to keep the social media conversation going and capitalize on the event.
TL;DR: To become a brand that your customers want to shout about, you have to show that you understand them inside-out. Only then can you meet their needs, develop a strong consumer-brand relationship, and become their preferred brand.
Luckily, you’re equipped with the building blocks to tackle social listening and your growing pool of customer advocates.
Your final task?
Discover valuable insights you can’t find anywhere else with Hootsuite Listening. Get started managing all your social profiles in one place with a free 30-day trial.
Do it better with Hootsuite, the all-in-one social media tool. Stay on top of things, grow, and beat the competition.
