In the United States, 85% of consumers use social media and of this group, 58% follow brands on social media (LaMontagne, 2015). Brands are more active on social media now than ever as they should be. With all of activity through social channels, brands must have a social listening strategy in place. Social listening allows the brand to see what is being said about them, their competitors, their industry, and trends. Social listening provides real time updates, an easy way to track mentions across multiple platforms, metrics (so you can spot trends), and reports for your clients or C-suite level management. With social listening you can receive all messages, mentions, tags in one central place – making it easier to see everything that is being said about your brand online.
Social listening can benefit your brand in a variety of ways – it provides a strong base for your brand when considering updates and development of future strategy. It helps analyze your audience and their likes/dislikes and what they care about like sustainability, price, range of product offerings. Below are just a few added benefits of social listening:
Reputation Management – By reviewing comments, positive and (hopefully not) negative, you can monitor the health and sentiment of your brand. With a social listening tool all the comments are gathered and stored in one place for easy analysis all quick reactive steps to correct any possible issues with brand perception.
Competitor Analysis – Social listening allows you to keep an eye on your competitors. You care able to see their campaigns, what they’re doing across platforms, and most importantly – what is being said about both brands across platforms. By watching your competitors (the bad guys) posts you can strategize for improvements to your brand helping you set a better price, earlier release dates, and overall more attractive products than what the bad guys have to offer.
Feedback – If your team is stumped on your brand’s next big release, you can review feedback from your audience on previous offerings and develop something that will blow them away. Listening to your audience will help your brand understand their needs and what they want to see from you. You will be able to better tailor your content, language, and messaging to make your target audience happy.
Customer Service – As discussed with social listening you can see what is being said online about your brand. Less than 30% of mentions include the brand’s handle which means without social listening you are missing many things said about your brand. By responding to customers, you can improve your brand value and relationships with your customers to increase loyalty.
Influencer Marketing – Whether customers realize it or not, they are subconsciously swayed one way or another by the profiles of their favorite celebrities and lifestyle bloggers. Social listening can help your brand learn who your advocates are and what their online community is like. This tool can help you decide who to partner with on future products/releases/events.
Social listening is beneficial to your brand and can save time of your dedicated employees and lost dollars of lost leads. Hootsuite is a popular social listening tool as well as Awario, Tweetdeck, and Mention. When choosing which tool to use consider which channels your brand has the strongest presence so you can effectively listen to your audience and what they are saying about your brand.
References
LaMontagne, L. (2015). MarketingSherpa Consumer Purchase Preference Survey: Demographics of customer reasons to follow brands’ social accounts. Retrieved from https://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/chart/demographics-why-customer-follow-brands-social-media
Walgrove, A. (2018). 5 Stats That Prove Social is the New Frontier of Customer Care – Sprinklr. (2019). Retrieved from https://blog.sprinklr.com/5-stats-social-media-customer-care/
6 of the best social listening tools for 2019 – Marketing Land. (2019). Retrieved from https://marketingland.com/6-of-the-best-social-listening-tools-for-2019-249953
Social listening: what it is, why it matters, and how to do it – Marketing Land. (2019). Retrieved from https://marketingland.com/social-listening-267175
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