Social listening has fast become indispensable for brands aiming to deeply engage today‘s digital-first customers. This strategic process involves monitoring social media and other online sources to identify relevant conversations then analyzing that data for actionable consumer and competitive insights.
Forrester predicts businesses will invest over $1.5 billion in social listening platforms by 2023, marking it as an emerging marketing capability promising immense value.
This comprehensive guide will get you up to speed on everything you need to know regarding social listening – from what it entails and key benefits to best practices, vendor solutions, and critical success factors for executing an impactful strategy. Let‘s dive in to unlocking the voice of the customer at scale.
The Core Social Listening Process
Effective social listening rests on a few key capabilities working in tandem:
1. Monitoring Relevant Online Conversations
Whether reacting to crises or uncovering opportunities, brands must know where to listen first. This requires identifying the 2-3 social media platforms where your audience already gathers organically in communities.
Start by examining your owned channels‘ demographics and engagement levels using built-in analytics. From there, explore adjacent sites like industry forums or review platforms frequented by your customers.
Monitoring tools aid pulling data from these sources using Boolean search queries and keywords related to:
- Your brand, products and competitors
- Industry trends, events and influencers
- Demographic terms and purchase considerations
- Campaign names and branded hashtags
This establishes an always-on listening stream detecting online conversations in real-time.
2. Analyzing Unstructured Data
Monitoring collects masses of unstructured text, images and video requiring analysis to extractconsumer insights.
Sentiment analysis tools automatically detect the prevailing emotional tones across content – positive, negative or neutral. Brands gain perspective on how audiences really feel about products, features and messaging.
AI further helps classify content by keywords, authors, languages and source platforms. This illuminates who is saying what and where.
But automated technology alone lacks the nuance humans provide. Brands should combine machine prowess and emotional intelligence to correctly decipher meanings within customer conversations.
3. Taking Strategic Business Action
The end goal is conjuring tangible actions from social data to create better consumer experiences.
Maybe volume spikes about shipping delays indicate an operations bottleneck to address. Or customers tweeting at competitors signals desire for rival features to integrate.
Product teams might leverage conversations around broken flows to prioritize software patches. Marketing could pivot campaign visuals based on negative aesthetic feedback.
No matter the use case, social listening informs strategic decisions with public consumer truth – directly from the source.
Why Listening to Customers is Now Non-Negotiable
Here are four key reasons social listening can no longer be considered optional:
1. Magnitude of Social Conversations
Over 4.65 billion people now actively use social media worldwide. They‘re not just posting cute pet pics and breakfast photos either.
Consumers turn to their timelines and networks to express unfiltered opinions on brands, products, and recent purchases. This presents an unprecedented opportunity for brands to tap into organic focus groups larger than the population of Europe.
And volume is rising every minute. Just on Facebook, users share over 100,000 comments every 60 seconds.
That‘s too much valuable consumer data for brands to ignore.
2. Consumer Opinions Influence Decisions
A Gartner survey reveals over 70% of buying decisions are now shaped by social media. Consumer reviews, influencer recommendations and word-of-mouth sway product selection and brand perception.
People trust strangers online over corporate messaging. They crave authentic peer insights to feel confident choosing between competitors.
Savvy brands meet this demand for social proof by listening then integrating user perspectives across touchpoints. This establishes resonance and community building greater preference.
3. Predict Public Stance on Issues
Every brand seeks to anticipate potential reputation blows before destructive waves crash. Monitoring societal issues and consumer sentiment arms brands with foresight to adapt appropriately.
Fashion retailer Everlane listened as growing criticisms percolated around inequality and lack of leadership diversity. So the brand proactively launched new corporate values anchored by radical transparency and an inclusive internship program for Black college students.
What swells in murmurs online informs where progressive or defensive brand positioning must take shape early.
4. Fuel Viral Word-of-Mouth
The holy grail for marketers today is catalyzing viral attention as brands like Wendy‘s have with humorous Tweets. Social listening helps catch lightning in a bottle.
Brands can use spikes in audience interest on niche topics as clues to shape engaging content with viral potential. Listening tools even predict which pieces of existing content have indicators for taking off based on target psychographics.
Capitalizing on hot trends and moments primed for word-of-mouth gives content and campaigns the stickiness to scale reach exponentially.
5 Best Practices for Social Listening
Now that the immense potential of social listening is clear, here are key strategies for executing effectively:
1. Develop Boolean Search Strings
Relying solely on brand name keywords returns limited data. Broaden queries through Boolean search strings using modifiers like:
- AND to combine multiple keywords
- OR to cover keyword variations
- NOT to filter irrelevant content
Grouping keywords this way expands listening coverage for richer insights. For example, monitoring "ghost kitchen" AND ("online ordering" OR "delivery") surfaces more innovation opportunities.
2. Analyze Sentiment and Engagement
Volume metrics provide a pulse but lack context. Brands need to complement quantity with quality indicators.
Sentiment ratios reveal positive, critical and neutral perceptions tied to products or initiatives mentioned online. High negative ratios demand attention.
Like and share activity help quantify influence and interest levels per post. This spots brand advocates to potentially collaborate with.
Adding sentiment and engagement provides a sharper perspective when diagnosing conversations.
3. Monitor Your Executive Team
It‘s not enough to listen externally. Brands must also tune in internally to learn faster.
Track executives and thought leaders sharing industry perspectives on social channels and in trade outlets. This surfaces blindspots between their beliefs and current customer reality.
Siloed workgroups also benefit from consuming feeds of cross-department insights highlighted daily. Knowledge flows freely rather than getting trapped.
Ultimately brands must listen to their own thought ecosystem first to enable leaders converting external listening into growth.
4. Identify Psychographic Groups
Mass consumer categorizations like millennials or suburban moms only go so far. Tune into psychographics for actionable segmentation.
Analyze groups who share attitudes, values and interests rather than simply demographics. Perhaps VR early adopters dismiss a new campaign while working parents applaud your sustainability initiatives.
These psychographics steer future innovation and creative decisions to better resonate with target audience mindsets vs. wasting efforts trying to attract universal appeal.
5. Close the Loop with Customers
The job doesn’t end once insights get uncovered. Brands must complete the cycle by relaying internal actions back to customers.
Communicate how you’re turning listening data into better products and experiences. Show don’t tell through launching requested features, evolving messaging based on feedback or directly resolving complaints.
When people clearly see brands responding to their voices, it builds community while incentivizing further authentic conversations. Transparency through listening fosters greater customer trust and satisfaction.
Real-World Social Listening Use Cases
Here are three listening scenarios revealing tangible business impact:
Customer Complaint Mitigation
No brand aims for complaints. But the right listening plan turns negatives into positives.
Analyzing causes behind spikes in grievances provides the chance to rectify systemic failures. Dissatisfied customers also identify exactly how brands fall short for others to likely leave.
Addressing the root of issues raised then communicating solutions rebuilds loyalty and prevent detractors. Listening ultimately transforms complaints into a customer-sourced roadmap for keeping users delighted.
Influencer & Ambassador Identification
Nothing drives credibility like third-party endorsements. Seeking such partnerships begins with listening.
Monitor which bloggers, podcasters and TikTok stars organically mention your company or content. These influencers enthusiastically promoting your brand makes collaboration a no-brainer.
Power users raving about your product experience also provide a goldmine of prequalified brand advocates. Listening spotlights ideal partners to fuel amplifying word-of-mouth.
Product Development Decisions
Opinions sharply vary on which features are must-haves or useless. Don’t waste resources guessing – listen instead.
Analyze customer commentary around competitor product functionality gaps and pain points. This reveals precisely which capabilities users value most.
Brands can even post prototype concepts online to evaluate initial reactions at scale before heavy lifting occurs. People feel heard seeing requests materialize into new solutions.
Top Social Listening Platforms
Now that best practices are clear, specialized technology transforms listening efficiency. Here are five highly-rated social listening tools to consider:
Sprout Social
Sprout Social is the Cadillac listening solution for large enterprises but also meets SMB needs. Tailored listening feeds are powered by broad social data access and smart automation.
Users can analyze audience psychographics, monitor historical conversations, compile competitive research and more. Robust collaboration tools also help centralize findings across an organization for amplifying impact.
Buzzsumo
Buzzsumo specializes in content listening to fuel ideation and benchmark performance. Just enter any topic and view the most shared online articles across social media and websites.
This illuminates key publishers and influencers driving audience interests. Competitor content analysis is also possible to reverse engineer high traction creative styles and messaging that resonates.
Awario
Awario offers unlimited searches across 1 billion indexed resources including social content, news sites, blogs and forums. Users gain historical data dating back over 10 years for insightful trend analysis.
The tool excels quick crisis monitoring with automatic alerts keeping teams abreast of emerging brand threats. Awario also provides intuitive reporting and competitive benchmarking.
Keyhole
Hashtag, handle and keyword tracking sits at the core of Keyhole’s offering. The tool effortlessly aggregates results across every social channel to showcase total reach and engagement. Users also gauge performance of posts, tweets and videos tied to tracked terms.
What sets Keyhole apart is expansive competitive benchmarking. Brands gain an aerial category view of performance based on historical and real-time metrics.
Socialert
For startups with limited budgets, Socialert provides robust but affordable listening functionality. Users can track unlimited keyword searches across social platforms to analyze performance and sentiment.
The tool displays easy-to-digest data visualizations highlighting trends and top engaging content. Bulk CSV/PDF reporting equips brands with presentation-ready listening analytics to fuel data-driven decisions.
Developing A Scaled Listening Practice
Getting executive buy-in, addressing common bottlenecks and enrolling key partners accelerates listening impact across organizations.
Here’s how to scale success:
Secure Leadership Investment
New listening initiatives require upfront resource investment to design frameworks and contract vendor tools. Educate leaders on hard ROI measurable through higher customer lifetime value and retention driven by listening programs.
Support claims with market precedents and benchmarks for attainable results. With C-suite vision fueling launch roadmaps, programs sustain beyond pilot purgatory.
Centralize Findings Across Silos
The marketing team uncovering a game-changing insight matters little if knowledge stays trapped in their silo. Brands must facilitate seamless listening data accessibility company-wide.
Ongoing working sessions that distill and synthesize key discoveries for universal circulation prevents duplicate efforts and wasted time. This also nurtures more holistic strategies factoring in multi-departmental perspectives.
Activate Channel and Agency Partners
Third-party retailers, technology vendors and agency relationships serve as external listening posts. Since partners interface directly with customers daily, their ears better detectrising issues and shifting preferences.
Formalize feedback loops where partners rapidly communicate intelligence back to brands via shared CRM portals or central Slack channels. Bringing more listening sources into the fold widens the net for catching hidden consumer insights.
The Future of Social Listening
While already invaluable today, listening scope and impact continues evolving at pace with tech disruption across AI, AR and more.
As digital oversight bodies emerge, ethics will grow as a concern with using personal data. Expect vendors like Sprout Social to integrate privacy controls allowing users to opt out of tracking. Data anonymization will also become best practice.
The analyst firm Gartner also predicts rise of “distributed listening” networks. Partnerships between brands will mutualize larger data pools to run richer cross-vertical analysis uncovering strategic opportunities. Competitors may even exchange insights to better serve shared customers.
And listening won’t just tap into social conversations and structured web data. The next wave of platforms will also incorporate vocal tonality analysis and facial emotion readers from video content. This fuels enhanced empathy and reading between the digital lines.
The bottom line is that brands not actively listening to their customers today face imminent threat. Choose to embrace online listening now and enable data-backed decisions that create measurable competitive separation. suburb moms only go so far. Tune into psychographics for actionable segmentation.
Analyze groups who share attitudes, values and interests rather than simply demographics. Perhaps VR early adopters dismiss a new campaign while working parents applaud your sustainability initiatives.
These psychographics steer future innovation and creative decisions to better resonate with target audience mindsets vs. wasting efforts trying to attract universal appeal.
5. Close the Loop with Customers
The job doesn’t end once insights get uncovered. Brands must complete the cycle by relaying internal actions back to customers.
Communicate how you’re turning listening data into better products and experiences. Show don’t tell through launching requested features, evolving messaging based on feedback or directly resolving complaints.
When people clearly see brands responding to their voices, it builds community while incentivizing further authentic conversations. Transparency through listening fosters greater customer trust and satisfaction.
