Perception is everything. How people feel about your brand can impact online engagement, sales and even media coverage.
Need someone to spill the tea on your brand? Want to get all the hot goss?
How are you supposed to get into the mind of your target audience to learn what they think of you? You don’t need a psychic; you need social listening! Social listening will help you shape your marketing message with key insights, improving performance and driving strong brand reputation management.
Keep reading to learn how social listening and the subsequent data gathered can inform messaging to boost engagement and the relevance of your business.
What is social listening?
Social listening is simply tapping into the online conversations happening about your brand and industry. Social listening will help your company gather customer feedback and sentiment from social media trends that interest your customers, blogs, forums, reviews and more. Social listening data can then be used to shape marketing messages and guide the company to a deeper connection with the target audience.
You may have also heard the term social monitoring. What’s that and how is it different from social listening? With social monitoring, your brand is simply seeking out individual mentions. It could be the brand name, a specific campaign or individual product provided by your brand. With social monitoring, you will respond to individual messages. This often takes place on review platforms such as Yelp, or on social media.
Social listening takes in the bigger picture. Your brand, your industry, your product and overarching product categories, as well as various target audiences within those areas. Through social listening, your business will be able to glean insights and develop data-driven strategies.
There is a growing importance for the development of data-driven messaging for brands looking to resonate with audiences, and social listening is a good tactic to get you there. According to ZoomInfo and reported by LeadingResponse, 78% of organizations reported data-driven marketing increased both lead conversion and customer acquisition.
Why social listening matters for messaging
So, how does social listening facilitate those vital data-driven messages? Great question! Here are a few of the key insights that social listening can provide:
- Real-time access to what audiences care about
- Understanding customer pain points, desires and trends
- Identifying brand advocates and detractors
- The ability to shape timely and relevant brand messages
- The capability to align messages with audience sentiment and expectations
- Foresight into a PR crisis before it blows up
These are all important data sets and can have a significant impact on what type of marketing messages are shared with the target audience.
Types of data you can collect through social listening
But how do you get those insights for marketing message creation? What types of data can be collected through social listening? Another great question! Here are some of the types of data that your brand will be able to utilize:
- Brand mentions and reputation signals
- Competitor analysis and benchmarking
- Industry trends and emerging conversations
- Customer sentiment (positive/negative/neutral feedback)
- Influencer and thought leader insights
You’ll be able to see who’s talking about your brand, what your competitors are up to, industry trends, how your customers feel about your brand and your competitors, and what influencers are saying about your brand and industry.
Social listening data can provide proactive insights for brand reputation management and marketing message development. You’ll also be able to see where online these conversations are taking place, which will help you determine if you’re on the right platforms or need to make a media buy update.
How to turn social listening data into messaging insights
Okay, but now how do you turn that data into messaging insights? Here’s some things to consider when trying to turn all that juicy goss (data) into messaging:
- Analyze common themes and repeated customer questions or complaints, then answer them
- Spot gaps in competitor messaging you can capitalize on
- Identify language and tone that resonates with your audience (informal vs. professional, serious vs. humorous) and use it
- Take what your audience is sharing is important to them and weave it into your message
- Seek out niche or adjacent markets that could use your product
- Meet them on the channels where they already are, instead of trying to get them on a channel you have determined is where you should be
Use these insights to refine PR messaging, marketing campaigns and content strategies.
Tools and platforms for effective social listening
Need to find a tool that’s just right for you? Check out some of these options:
Brandwatch
Sprout Social
Hootsuite Insights
Mentionlytics
BuzzSumo
Meltwater (more PR-focused)
How social listening supports PR crisis management
You think it can never happen, but it can. You need to be prepared. During a crisis, social listening can help your PR team spot potential crises early and shape proactive messaging, adjust messaging during a campaign based on live audience feedback and enhance customer support and community engagement to put your best foot forward in a tough situation.
Common mistakes to avoid with social listening
Social listening is an incredibly valuable strategy. Be sure to avoid common missteps including relying only on vanity metrics (likes, shares) without deeper analysis, ignoring negative feedback instead of addressing it and failing to act on the insights gathered. What’s the point of putting the effort into gathering social listening data if you put your head in the sand? Use everything to benefit your brand, even if it’s a hard pill to swallow.
You’re listening
Now that you’ve got the dish on social listening, are you ready to serve up some insights of your own? Integrating social listening into your PR strategy is smart, especially since it can give you the fuel you need to create data-driven messaging. If you’ve never done social listening before, that’s okay. You can start small and scale your efforts as you find value and the right tools.
Need help making sense of social listening data? Contact Beyond Fifteen to build a messaging strategy that connects.
