The Power of Social Listening — And The Brands That Do It Best
Do you ever see an ad, commercial, or social post and think, “How did they read my mind?”
While reading people’s minds is a questionable superpower, it’s likely that the brand that produced that content engages in social listening — the practice of monitoring online channels to understand what people are saying about your brand. Through social listening, brands gain a holistic snapshot of how consumers perceive their brands.
But social listening is not just social monitoring. There’s a key difference between the two — social listening goes one step further:
Social Monitoring is about collecting data on social media.
Social Listening is strategically using that data to inform your business decisions.
Listening to consumers is more important now than ever, especially amidst a crisis when the pressure to remain relevant, sensitive, and present is at an all-time high. Most importantly, brands need to make sure what they think they’re saying aligns with what a consumer actually experiences.
Consider Pepsi, who thought it was promoting unity with its Kendall Jenner-starring ad. The commercial had the complete opposite result, infuriating fans over its lack of racial sensitivity. Misalignment can allow a competitor to take the lead, or worse, impose irreparable damage to your brand.
With modern-day technology and tools, it’s all too easy to post something online with little oversight. When a marketing campaign or product fails, it’s usually as a result of not being in touch with your customers — and social listening can bridge that gap. More importantly, social listening helps with reputation management. In Pepsi’s case, its marketing failure plunged the brand to its lowest consumer perception levels in a decade.
In this article, we’re discussing the importance of social listening, best practices your brand can adopt, and leading examples from brands to offer some inspiration.
Why is social listening important?
Do people speak highly of you, or in the case of Pepsi, do they speak negatively? Social listening is a surefire way to find out.
Let’s reflect back on another marketing mishap that paved the way for social listening.
In 1985, The Coca-Cola Company took arguably the biggest risk in consumer goods history: changing the formula of what was, and is still, the most popular soda in the world. They called this updated Coca-Cola “The New Coke.”
The product launch was met with near-instantaneous backlash, with Coke fanatics campaigning countrywide for Coca-Cola to bring back the original Coke. Even today, the company acknowledges this as one “one of the most memorable marketing blunders ever.”
So what made this incident a complete failure? The lack of social listening.
This mistake paved the way for market research, which began with focus groups, interviews, and observations, and eventually lent itself to social listening.
It’s important to recognize that New Coke isn’t the only product that has failed. 30,000 new products are introduced every year, and 95% of them fail. Even CPG giant P&G routinely misses the mark with product rollouts.
With this said, there’s an inherent need to look beyond sales data, shopping behavior, and industry trends to keep your business afloat — and this is exactly how social listening can come to your rescue.
Social Listening Best Practices
In short, social listening is a process of analyzing consumer conversations and tracking mentions of your brand, competitors, or other brand-related keywords.
However, social listening is quite a complex process, and there are several other steps that can help you interpret brand sentiment across your social channels. Here are some best practices to consider:
Invest In Social Listening Tools: Social listening tools help you track behavior you may not be able to dig up easily on your own. With these tools, you can track metrics like linkless brand mentions, brand mentions without your “@” handle, trending topics in your niche, influencers in your niche, and mentions of your competitors.
Pay Attention To Consumer Sentiment: CPG consumers are always changing — whether it's their likes, dislikes, interests, or buying behaviors. Consumers want their best selves portrayed in the brands and products they choose, and social sentiment can clue you into audience perceptions before a product launches or campaign goes live.
Be Responsive: Whether it's responding to a happy customer or addressing a complaint from a frustrated one, responding quickly to your followers on social media is key to success.
Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is: In other words, invest in content creation that aligns with your mission, values, and social responsibility. In fact, 64% of consumers will choose, switch, avoid, or boycott a brand based on where it stands on the political or social issues they care about. The belief-driven mindset has fully gone mainstream.
The More You Give, The More You Get In Return: Many people will talk about your brand or products on social media, but only if you give them something to talk about. Whether that’s a tear-jerking video, a clever meme, or an inspirational quote, producing consistent, quality content in line with your brand identity is the best way to stay on the forefront of your consumers’ minds.
Uncover Opportunities: It’s important to know why loyal consumers are buying from you, but it’s equally as important to understand why some people aren’t. Comments from followers can even serve as lightbulb moments to spark an idea of how to reach an untapped market.
Capitalize On Customer Interactions: Customer mentions and conversations serve as invaluable social proof for B2C brands. A comment from a customer or interaction between yourself and a customer can signal to others how committed your brand is to customer service.
Analyzing data gathered from social listening
So you’ve monitored your social channels for mentions and brand sentiment, but where exactly do you go from there?
It can be difficult to know where to start, especially if you’ve dug up a lot of data.
Here are a few common trends to look out for you in your data that might offer some insights:
Sudden Peaks and Troughs In Mention Volume
Seasonal Trends
Changes In Sentiment
Overarching Themes In Emotions
It’s also helpful to take note of what keywords and language your audience is using in brand-related conversations. You may notice they phrase concepts in a certain way or use common secondary keywords that you might want to implement in your marketing strategy.
Social Listening in Action
Here’s how some of the world’s leading brands have harnessed the power of social listening to strengthen their marketing efforts:
The CPG brand has become so popular, the name “Kleenex” has become a real word.
One of the key drivers of Kleenex’s success is its high activity on social media — their responsiveness in particular. Consumers can expect a response from Kleenex on social media in 2.5 hours on average — quicker than the CPG industry average and the average of all other industries.
The company, most well-known for its facial tissue, has used social listening to increase brand sentiment. Perhaps the most unique initiative is its “Feel Good” campaign, in which Kleenex scoured Facebook for statuses from users indicating different degrees of sickness. Upon identifying these status updates, Kleenex leveraged the users’ online connections to obtain their addresses and send them specially prepared Kleenex Kits.
50 lucky people received kits, and every single one of them posted about this special surprise.
The result? Kleenex garnered over 650,000 impressions and 1,800 interactions between the brand and social media users.
Since the brand’s inception, Fitbit has been committed to incorporating customer feedback into the products and services it develops.
If you’ve ever worn a Fitbit, you’re probably familiar with the “Reminders to Move” feature — a buzzing reminder that encourages the user to take some steps. Believe it or not, this was something consumers had actively been discussing in Fitbit’s community forums before the alert was even developed. Community members self-titled this feature, “Idle Alert,” which is exactly what inspired Fitbit’s “Reminders to Move” development.
This case speaks to the power of community platforms as a place consumers can share their expertise and opinions about certain topics. In fact, Fitbit’s customer-centric community platform has over 940,000 members and almost 3 million posts. The brand highly prioritizes customer care, using social listening to resolve customer issues and provide customers with a little bit more delight from the brand.
Sometimes, social conversations can spark brilliant ideas for your next campaign.
Hallmark’s Mother’s Day ad spot this year was inspired by a Facebook fan who shared her journey of parenting a child with a disability. Recognizing just how many moms were in similar situations, Hallmark created a commercial featuring a mother whose daughter has Down Syndrome
Hallmark used social listening to not only cultivate deeper connections with consumers, but also incorporate an actual consumer’s story into its brand narrative. Other brands can mimic this approach by incorporating user feedback into new products or marketing campaigns.
“We are always listening in an effort to provide products that reflect [customers’] needs and lives,” says Lindsey Roy, Hallmark’s CMO.
With cards celebrating moms of all types — from adopted moms to pet moms — Hallmark lives up to its promise to offer products that cater to its entire consumer base.
You may remember when “natural-cut fries with sea salt” made their way onto Wendy’s menu a few years ago.
What you may not know is that this action came as a result of social listening.
Through extensive consumer research, Wendy’s found what people truly valued in a french fry: one with an even golden color, a real potato taste, and one that stays hot longer. The brand also found that consumers talked about sea salt, a gourmet trendy ingredient, way more than they talked about regular salt or sodium.
Wendy’s knew it had to up their fry game — and as a result, the new fry model helped improve its sales. By engaging in social listening, Wendy’s discovered positive sentiment around a long tail keyword — sea salt — that served as a growth opportunity for the brand.
Takeaways
The most successful brands go beyond using social media just for promoting products. They use it to break down consumer habits, conversations, and sentiment into specific categories to ensure they’re targeting the right audience. By listening to social media chatter, marketers can make sense of what people are saying about their brands.