by Social Media Listening allows marketers to hear directly from customers and the public as to what they think and say about their brand(s) and/or industry through their social media conversations. As a result, marketers cannot make decisions based on trends, hunches, or conjecture, when developing their marketing strategies using the data obtained from Social Media Listening.
Improving Campaign Planning with Audience Insights
Some advantages of utilizing social listening tools for campaign planning are as follows:
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Identifying trending topics sooner than competitors.
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Adapting messaging to keep pace with changing sentiments.
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Making content more relevant to target audiences.
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Competitor intelligence and market positioning.
Competitor Intelligence and Market Positioning
Social listening tools also provide brands with a unique perspective on their competitive landscape relative to other brands within their industry. Brands can utilize social listening tools (e.g., Hootsuite and Sprout Social) to monitor their share of voice relative to the competition’s share of voice and the level of engagement they are receiving.
The data gleaned from these sources allows for a more informed positioning of the brand and provides marketers with a stronger base upon which to develop a more extensive social listening analysis of their audience.
Utilizing Behavior-Based Audience Segmentation for Marketing Purposes
The benefits of using practical segmentation include:
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Targeting audience content based on their interests and sentiment.
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Creating personalized campaigns at scale.
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The relevancy of engagement can be improved upon by targeting based on the relevance of their interests and sentiment.
By understanding audience behavior, brands can improve the customer journey across channels and use insights garnered from the use of Meltwater to help anticipate customer needs and provide proactive responses to those needs, therefore facilitating the establishment of stronger brand strategies going forward.
A better brand strategy can be established with listening data than through internal assumptions about how customers discuss and view brands, products and experiences; social listening provides insight into how customers perceive brands and what they expect and consequently marketers can align the way they position those brands according to how the public is actually describing the brands.
Protecting Brand Reputation Through Real-Time Listening
By using social listening tools to monitor the conversations surrounding their brands, organizations can receive alerts when negative sentiment is beginning to trend, thereby giving them the opportunity to address those issues immediately and effectively mitigate potential harm to the organization’s reputation and maintain trust with consumers.
When agencies use on-going insights generated from the use of social listening tools, it is much easier to ensure that their messaging remains consistent amongst all platforms.
Assessing Features and Capabilities of Social Listening Tools
Essential Features to Seek
Robust social listening apps must provide capabilities for both daily monitoring as well as strategic planning. The combination of these two features should allow teams to obtain the greatest amount of value from their effort with minimal complication.
There are several essential features to consider when assessing social listening apps:
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Historical Data Access: Ability to conduct analysis over an extended time frame.
Team Fit, Budget, and Scale Considerations
When evaluating social listening apps, it is also critical that the app aligns with the size, budget, and workflow of your organization. Many times, social listening apps like Sprinklr have already developed a platform to accommodate an enterprise team that is dealing with high volumes of data.
Therefore, selecting the right platform for your organization will make it much easier for your organization to adopt and use this type of technology and prepare your team for the use of more advanced listening technologies in the near future.
Integrating Listening Technologies into Daily Marketing Workflows
Maximizing Value from Listening Technologies
Listening technologies provide value only when they get to the correct people in a timely manner.
Improving Communication Across Different Departments
The use of listening technologies will enhance not only the marketing department, but will also be valuable for product, support, and sales departments. The benefits of increased communication across departments include:
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Faster response times to customer concerns.
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Increased product enhancement feedback loops.
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More consistent messaging throughout all departments.
Utilizing Automation and Reporting
The greatest value from listening technologies comes from the ease of managing and monitoring large amounts of data without being overburdened by the sheer volume of information. An example of this type of technology is Zoho Social, which automates the generation of reports and alerts so that teams can concentrate on what is important at any given moment.
This type of automation will also facilitate more detailed performance evaluation detailed later in this article.
Utilizing Listening Technologies to Measure Marketing Performance
Stepping Away from Traditional Metrics
The process of adding context when measuring sentiment, volume of conversation, and relevance of a topic to your audience. Social listening helps marketers evaluate the quality of their performance, not only the quantity of the performance.
Linking Insights to Business Outcomes
When utilizing social listening data, marketers connect their marketing efforts to the actual outcome that can be measured around brand and customer satisfaction. Below are typical Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that are monitored while utilizing social listening data:
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Marketer Perception Improvement After Campaigns
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Growth in Marketer Share of Voice within Industry After Campaigns
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Decrease in Negative Mentions During The Launch of Products
Continuous optimization of the marketing and social media strategies of companies is possible because social listening is a part of a continuous measurement process. There are many social listening platforms available to support a more comprehensive analysis of the entire campaign.
This insight into the data will become the basis for the next social listening trends.
Emerging Trends Shaping the Future of Social Listening
Artificial Intelligence – Powered Listening Functionality
The increase of artificial intelligence (AI) to help process the large volume of conversations that occur on social networks is shifting the way marketing is done.
Below are the predicted key advantages of Social Listening due to the introduction of Predictive Analytics:
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The early detection of trends based on machine learning
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Improved Crisis Avoidance through Predictive Alerts
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Better Campaign Planning Based on Expected Demand
The Continued Evolution of Social Listening Growth into Voice and Visual Listening
Social listening has evolved beyond only listening to text-based conversations to now including the reviewing of images and videos. Various social listening platforms, including Talkwalker, are now able to analyze logos, pictures, and spoken words. The innovations support the development of deeper, platform-specific strategies for brands.
Customizing Your Content
The first step is to develop platform-specific social listening strategies by understanding the differences in platform channels. Every social channel has unique audience behaviours and content the way consumers interact with, content shared on Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and X, are different.
Customizing the Strategy Based on Insights Gained by Listening Tools
Insights gained through listening provide value by giving marketers an opportunity to know which formats or tones resonate most favourably with their target audiences, with the appropriate visuals and captions accordingly. Through the implementation of the suggestions provided through the listening tools and adapting your posting times by platform, brands will experience increased levels of user interaction as well as build a more genuine presence online.
The platform-specific benefits as a result of customizing content include:
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More Effective Interactions Through Tailored Content
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Less Chance of Audience Fatigue Due to Repetitive Messaging
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Increased Relevance to Different Audiences
Consolidated Monitoring of Multi-Platform Data
By centralising all social listening data across multiple platforms, the overall data will provide an opportunity to create uniformity across all channels, however, will create a means by which brands can continue to adjust throughout the different platforms based on the nature of the different types of channels their data is being pulled from.
Influencer Identification and Performance Measurement
Listening Tools are also used to assist brands in partner identification and ongoing management of partnerships based upon influencer within the brands market. A brand can use social listening tools to identify influencers that are currently talking about the brand’s products or services in an authentic way.
The Evaluation and Potential Performance of Influencers Can Be Measured
Listening tools can track the number of times an influencer mentions a brand and the resulting change in sentiment and volume of conversations. By measuring the results, it provides brand marketers a better understanding of the true impact of partnership between brands and influencers, beyond simply likes and views.
Some key areas of valuable insight include:
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How a specific influencer affected the trust and sentiment of an audience surrounding a brand.
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The amount of growth in volume of conversations surrounding a brand after engaging in partnerships with other influencers.
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The quality and context of the mention of a brand by an influencer.
Using Social Media Listening for Crisis Management
Identifying Potential Problems Early
The opportunity for a brand to have its reputation damaged by social media marketing is ever-present, as negative comments spread very quickly across the internet.
Quick & Transparent Response
Benefits of Social Media Listening in Crisis Management Include:
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Faster identification of potential issues.
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Clear insight into audience concerns.
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Limiting the impact of negative viral conversation.
Learning from Previous Crisis Events
This historical data helps brands refine existing crisis management response plans and prepare for future challenges. The ability to learn from each crisis promotes a stronger bond between the brand and customer, which will be addressed in the next portion of this article.
Assisting Customer Support Teams
Improving Support by Providing Insights
Listening tools can allow customer support teams to identify recurring problems that customer support has not appropriately addressed through ticketing alone. Through the use of platforms, such as Zendesk, that integrate feedback into the service process, brands have been able to utilise data around their customers to improve their product/service offerings.
The data collected from listening corresponds with the marketing strategies/decisions made based on ROI expectations.
Calculating the ROI of Social Media Listening Investments
Measurement of the Success of Listening
Many social media marketers are looking for ways to understand how their listening is driving revenue/growth for their business.
The way social listening connects conversations and takes action on those conversations is through the measurement of the result of those conversations.
This includes both the measurement of sentiment (positive and negative) towards the brand.
It also includes the quality of engagement that has taken place on the social media platform.
These two metrics help justify the investment made into listening.
Connection of Insights to the Business Goals
Arming marketers with tools, such as social media analytics, allows them to track lead generation, retention and reputation over time.
Thereby showing how they have moved towards those objectives.
Examples of Common Indicators of ROI
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Decreased negative sentiment from time of intervention.
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Increased market share of voice from the targeted geographic area.
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Greater degree of engagement on the part of user and fan as a result of campaigns driven by insight.
Evidence of Long-Term Impact
Tools, such as Sprout Social, that are used for social media listening provide reports.
To show how the information gathered can be turned into sales and/or referrals.
Thereby providing brands with the assurance that they can continue the listening.
Escalating Social Media Marketing with Advanced Listening Strategies
Campaigns can be adapted to keep pace with changes in the market.
This also provides opportunities for the campaign to reach out to new customers.
It also helps brands keep in contact with their existing customers.
The Transition from Tactical Insight (Short Term) to Strategic Planning for Long-Term Growth
Scalable social listening tools provide marketers with several advantages, including:
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Consistent Brand Messaging across Regions
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Advance Identification of Global Trends
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Greater Alignment between Marketing and Business Strategy
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Support for Enterprise-wide Decisions
Platforms such as Sprinklr provide organizations with the ability to analyse large amounts of data in multiple departments.
This data supports the development of an organisation’s brand strategy.
It also identifies the best practices that will ultimately prepare the organisation to implement its brand strategy.
Avoiding the Common Mistakes Associated with Social Listening
Many brands are unsuccessful in their social listening efforts due to a lack of focus.
Brands often track too many keywords.
This creates noise rather than providing Insight into what customers want.
Key Areas of Focus to Avoid These Mistakes
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Focusing on the Goal Before Selecting Metrics
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Reviewing Insight on a Regular Basis, Not Just Occasionally
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Sharing Insights Across the Organisation Continuously
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Emphasis on Providing Value to Users
Emphasis on Providing Value to Users
The best way to ensure voice-search success and sustainable implementation of voice-search optimizations is to create content that provides value to users.
The goal of all marketing is to provide an answer to a user’s question.
Therefore, creating content for voice searches creates value by providing clarity, accuracy and helpfulness.
This creates a feeling of confidence about where to go for everything from product reviews to shopping advice.
Automation vs Human Insight Balance
While the available tools can identify opportunities for brands, the actual judgement still comes from humans.
Knowing how your audience behaves allows you to keep content sounding natural.
The right balance will help develop a scalable approach to the future of content strategy.
Best Practices for Voice Search Growth (Longitudinal)
For brands looking to achieve long-term growth with voice search, it is vital to implement strong best practices.
Voice Technology Advancements and Multimodal Search Experience
With the increased use of screen devices, most people utilize a combination of voice and interactive results to receive answers to their queries.
With the advent of this combination of spoken and displayed responses, content marketing should be organized to provide the user with the entire experience that involves interactive experiences.
By optimizing for both composed and displayed results, you can increase the scope of your audience.
This also helps maintain visibility on emerging platforms.
Voice Search Is Changing
A continual awareness will help brands to remain discoverable in the future Search Environment.
Final Note
With the rise of voice search, the ability for brands to connect their audiences to their products via voice search will be substantial.
As a result, the need for clarity and conversational style content will strongly create connections between brands and audiences across all platforms for many years to come.
Optimizing for voice search requires not only technical optimizations such as keyword optimization.
It also requires an understanding of user intent and how the content provides immediately usable information to the user.
Utilizing in-smart SEO techniques, content marketers may be able to expand their audiences.
This also increases the potential for long-term business growth.
As voice technology continues to advance, so will the number of ways voice will affect how data continues to be utilized.
As voice usage becomes more varied, it presents an unprecedented competitive advantage.
To keep ahead of their competitors, companies must continue to deliver quality, consistency, and optimal user experiences.
As the increasing trend of using voice search continues, it is because of the increased use of content marketing that voice search has gained a significant amount of popularity in the increasing role of content marketing.
