Social listening – the key to amazing customer experiences

Ever wondered how some brands manage to capture and retain audience attention week on week? They’re probably using social media listening.

There are billions of conversations on social media platforms (more than 1 billion Facebook stories are published per day).The rise in the popularity of BeReal has made many companies realize that people are getting sick of the superficial nature of social media. Companies are now rolling up their sleeves to ensure that they post content that people want to see. But how do companies know what their customers want to see? 

Social media listening takes social media analysis a step further. It refers to the process of identifying and assessing what your audience is talking about on different social media channels, with the goal of acting on that information. The process only gets a little bit more complex than monitoring owned channels, because the public won’t always tag or mention any brand in their post. 

Social listening softwares help us pull mentions based upon keywords and phrases that could be relevant to a brand. 

How does social media listening work?  

It is simple, we create a list of relevant keywords. We translate those keywords to all relevant languages based upon the company’s presence. We feed all those keywords into a social listening software and viola! The big data gets collated and fed back to us. 

Simple enough? Well, the work lies in making sense of the data. That’s when our social media listening gurus gets to work, turning the mentions inside out, and finding patterns. 

But how do our clients use that data? Here’s how. 

• Building relationships with customers and turning likes into love 

One category of social listening data is what we like to call, “the good, the bad and the ugly” How many positive, neutral and negative mentions are there? Positive mentions advise brands on what they should keep doing, neutral mentions feed into knowledge about elements that customers are noticing, while the negative mentions tell brands what to avoid. 72% of consumers typically share a good customer experience with at least six other people. However, bad customer experiences can spread like a wildfire.  

• Feeding product development  

At the height of the pandemic, we saw close to 2 billion social media posts about it in some countries. While the public was doom-scrolling, innovators were busy listening and innovating. Masks, home testing kits, data apps, hand washing stations and every possible solution to beat the pandemic! Many of those innovations were genius and timely, SATO for example, made the list of Time Magazine’s 100 Best Innovations of 2020.  

• Staying ahead in the industry 

Let’s be honest… assessing what competitors are up to can be difficult. When social listening is done in an overall industry, companies are able to identify clusters of conversation, leading us to campaignable moments and activations. Using social listening, our clients are able to look out for themes and turn them into activations. The fast movers then become trend setters; but many of them were simply responding to what the public had been struggling with. One of our favorites is this KLM campaign about lost and found items. 

• Filling in missing gaps

Imagine what happens when your car runs out of petrol in the middle of nowhere? You call for a rescue and then you sit back and wait. You probably tweet about being stuck and frustrated, and then a brand sees your tweet and brings you petro. You tweet about the rescue and the tweet goes viral. Check out this amazing Avis moment. Who do you rent a car from next time you need one? According to a customer experience study conducted in the US, 42% of consumers would be willing to pay more if they have a wonderful experience with the brand. 

Now these are just a few examples of how your company can make use of social media data. While you’re busy thinking up ways to make your customer experience amazing, our team will be busy digging up suitable opportunities for you. 

To learn more on how you can elevate your brand through social listening, reach out to us on info@sparkpublicity.com