As you’ve likely observed, social listening is a growing trend. And, it’s
here to stay. Why? Because we’re capable of learning more than ever by tracking
consumers’ behavior online. By listening to the online
universe, brands can obtain insights from consumer conversations and collect
data on themes, trends and behaviors to accomplish a number of objectives.
“Social
listening” is the practice of tracking for online mentions of your brand and topics
important to your brand (via campaign hashtags or industry keywords, for
example), and then analyzing those comments and conversations for insights to identify
opportunities to act.
To help with
this process, there are a number of social listening tools that have been
introduced to the market. The biggest advantage of using these tools is their
ability to capture posts and comments that mention a brand without directly tagging
it. According to Brandwatch, 96% of conversations about brands happen outside
official brand channels and without tagging the brand in question. Without
tagging, these kinds of mentions will not be identified by standard monitoring
tools.
Here are
a few other key reasons you should consider employing social listening tools:
Brand
Sentiment
Social
listening tools collate online chatter and provide an analysis – sometimes
called opinion mining – by digging into word choice and context, primarily
through algorithms or filters. Most tools group the search results into
positive, negative or neutral categories, and many will go further by providing
audience segmentation.
As you
monitor online conversations over time, such as investigating spikes in
positive or negative sentiment, you will gain insights into how your messaging
can influence the way followers feel about and interact with the brand or
product.
Let’s
say, for example, that you track overall positive social sentiment about the
technical specifications of a new product, but users often share negative
comments in feeds about the look of the product. This insight can be shared
with R&D to help revamp the design. Social listening can even help you
understand how moves you’re making offline are resonating in the social media sphere.
For instance, consumers may respond on Twitter to a TV ad (especially during
big events like the Super Bowl or Oscars), or post on Facebook about customer
service received at a brick-and-mortar location.
Competitor
Analysis
Beyond consumers, you can also learn what your competitors are
up to in real-time. Creating alerts to monitor competitors allows you to
measure sentiment for them the same way you would measure for your own brand(s).
You can, for example, keep an eye out for positive mentions to find inspiration
and negative mentions to generate sales leads.
This is an area where different social listening tools can
really stand out depending on what your goals are. Are you focused on
particular platforms? Are you more concerned with social share of voice or who
has better SEO? Is your priority product development? Do you want to track
advertising campaigns?
With most tools, you can analyze competitors’ profiles
on social platforms via metrics such as engagement, growth of fans,
interactions, popular hashtags and more. Downloadable, and sometimes
customizable, reports provide detailed charts and graphs to compare performance.
From an SEO standpoint, there are even tools that allow you to determine
competitors’ website referral traffic, backlinks and targeted keywords.
User-generated
Content
Leveraging user-generated content (UGC) is an affordable and effective
approach that could mean less money spent on stock photos or asset creation,
and more budget for PR and marketing tactics. One key benefit of social
listening tools is that they make it easier to find customer photos, videos
and testimonials.
Several
tools allow you to easily invite your customers to share their experiences with
your products and brands, display that UGC on your website and social channels,
and even track performance metrics across all channels. If you are seeking
assets for use beyond the web in perpetuity, some tools will auto-generate
direct messages to request usage rights and notify you when the content creator
confirms.
Even more,
some social listening tools have advanced image recognition technology,
offering the ability to identify brand logos or other visual cues. Up to 80% of
images don’t mention the brand in captions or other text, so these AI
capabilities provide a great way to capture posted photos you may have
otherwise missed. Keep in mind that your product must have a strong visual
component, such as a brand logo that is front and center, like on a Starbucks
cup. While these features come with a bigger price tag, it can be worth the
investment if amassing quality visuals is important for your brand initiatives.
Influencer
Engagement
Social listening tools can help identify the users with clout
and audience followings in a given topic area and provide engagement features to
help turn them into brand ambassadors.
But note, social listening tools are best for finding nano- and micro-influencers.
If you are looking for professional social media personalities with a niche
focus, there are alternative tools that focus specifically on influencer
vetting and management. When it comes to social media listening, you are
looking for brand mentions (tagged or untagged), and it’s rare to find professional
influencers mentioning a brand without a sponsorship.
What you will find via social listening tools are organic brand advocates – i.e. people who already love your brand and are saying great
things about you on social media. Basically, social listening tools allow you
to accelerate native searches. By setting up filters in advance, hashtag search
results are better organized and scalable to allow you to spend more time on
influencer engagement instead of searching.
These four
benefits only scratch the surface on the many advantages that social listening
tools can bring to a PR or marketing campaign. The best tool for your brand
ultimately depends on your goals. Once you define your key objectives, you can determine
the best tool for the job.