In today’s era of social media, consumer dialogues are more open than ever. This internet characteristic unlocks countless possibilities for businesses to better understand their audience. Exploring conversations about your brand and industry on different platforms can give you insight into the target market’s preferences, needs, likes, and dislikes.
Social listening is one of the many marketing tools companies can use to gather data about their target customers. It is particularly advantageous for small businesses that do not have enough resources to conduct in-depth market research. With it, brands can discover the general social media sentiment and leverage trends to improve their strategies.
Understanding Social Listening
Social listening involves monitoring conversations and mentions of a particular brand, product, service, or industry across social media platforms. This includes keeping an eye on review sites, forums, blogs, and other online channels.
The goal of social listening is to understand how people perceive and interact with a brand or topic and to use that information to make informed business decisions and improve marketing strategies.
By tracking and analyzing social media conversations and online reviews, businesses can:
- identify trends
- learn public sentiment
- measure the impact of their marketing efforts
- identify customer pain points
- respond to customer complaints or inquiries
- uncover new product or service opportunities
Social Monitoring Vs. Social Listening
Social listening and social monitoring are two related concepts in social media management, but they are not the same.
- Social monitoring involves tracking social media channels for specific keywords, brand mentions, or customer inquiries and responding to them in a timely manner. It is typically focused on identifying and addressing customer service issues, monitoring brand reputation, and keeping track of competitor activities.
- Social listening, on the other hand, involves monitoring social media channels to gain insights into customer behavior, preferences, and opinions. Social listening involves analyzing conversations for patterns, trends, and themes that can be used to inform marketing strategies, product development, and other business decisions. Social listening focuses more on understanding the broader social media landscape and identifying opportunities for engagement and growth.
Social monitoring explains what people are saying online, while social listening reveals the motivations behind what people say. Listening focuses on long-term strategic choices, whereas monitoring is tactical.
This image is taken from Drive Research.
How to Apply Social Listening
Social listening typically involves the following several activities:
- Identifying relevant social media channels: Identify the social media channels where your target audience is most active and where conversations related to your brand or industry are happening. This may include platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Reddit, and more.
- Defining keywords and topics to monitor: Businesses need to identify the specific keywords, topics, and hashtags relevant to their brand, products, or services and use social listening tools to monitor those keywords and topics across online channels.
- Tracking mentions and conversations: Social listening tools track and analyze mentions of a brand, product, or topic across social media platforms, review sites, blogs, forums, and other online channels. This helps businesses understand how people perceive their brand and products. It will also help identify trends and patterns in online conversations.
- Analyzing sentiment: Analyze the data collected from social listening tools to understand customer sentiment, identify trends, and track the impact of your marketing efforts. Look for patterns and themes in the data, and use that information to inform your business decisions.
- Responding to customer feedback: Respond to customer comments and complaints, engage with your audience, and use the insights gained from social listening to improve your communication and marketing strategies.
- Identifying opportunities: Social listening tools can help businesses to identify new product or service opportunities, as well as new trends and emerging topics in their industry.
There are many social listening tools available that can help you monitor online conversations and analyze data. Some popular tools include Hootsuite, Brandwatch, Mention, Sprout Social, and BuzzSumo. Choose a tool that works with your budget and aligns with your goals.
You may also outsource social media to partner with experienced professionals and generate better campaign results.
Brands Doing Social Listening
- Tylenol
Tylenol is a pain reliever manufacturer. In order to understand the trends and causes of the illnesses that Tylenol can treat, the company conducted social listening.
With this social tool, their marketing team learned that people doing activities of prolonged concentration, like crocheting and knitting, complain of migraines. In conversations, knitters expressed their frustrations, saying their hobby causes eye fatigue and headaches.
This information supported Tylenol’s expansion and development of a new marketing plan. The company adjusted its SEO and marketing strategy to reach out to the knitting community and gain access to a new customer base.
- Samsung
Samsung wanted to understand consumer trends before and during the release of its latest products. So the organization used social listening techniques to keep an eye on these international launches in real time. From it, they discovered the effectiveness of their product launches and what consumers thought of the products released at each event.
Samsung compared these findings to earlier product launches and made adjustments to planning the next product launch events. By monitoring online conversations and important trends, they also learned crucial information to enhance customer service and find areas where their business may grow.
- BMW
BMW discovered from their social listening efforts that the recently introduced laser-guided headlights sparked a lot of conversation. On the other hand, data from prior years showed that the earlier models of LED-powered headlights weren’t as warmly accepted. As a result, they decided to stop making those car models.
BMW would have missed the opportunity of knowing that their customers preferred the latest laser headlights if they hadn’t used an effective social listening approach.
Conclusion
Customer centricity is very crucial in today’s business landscape because it enables brands to forge stronger bonds with their clientele. Tools like social listening and support from a social media marketing company Philippines can help organizations move in a customer-centric direction by gathering information about their customers.
Brands can use the generated information from social listening for content creation, business growth, research and development, customer service, and real-time marketing campaigns. As the business concentrates on enhancing customer pleasure, it also aids in reducing operational costs and increasing sales and income.
Get the support you need for your social media campaigns by working with marketing professionals. Get in touch with Digital Marketing Philippines (DMP) today to learn how our experts can help you achieve better online visibility.
References:
https://www.driveresearch.com/market-research-company-blog/social-listening-market-research/
https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/definition/social-media-listening
https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/blog/what-are-the-top-digital-marketing-trends-for-2023
Jomer B. Gregorio is a well-rounded expert when it comes digital marketing. Jomer is also known as a semantic SEO evangelist and practitioner. Check out our Digital Marketing Services today and let us help you in achieving positive and profitable results for your business.