Social listening, a 5-step guide
How to effectively capture, analyze and understand this invaluable data
Tune into what people say about your brand
Social listening enables an organization to actively follow and leverage conversations taking place across the major social networks that relate to its brand, those of its competitors plus the wider industry or business sector in which it operates.
As well as insights regarding brand perception, customer satisfaction, and positive and negative sentiment towards customer experience, data captured from social listening can also feed into future product or services roadmaps.
The information that consumers provide across social networks is public and unsolicited. This makes it even more valuable for any consumer-facing organization. This data can be used to complement solicited feedback such as VOC programs or surveys, focus groups and customer need analyses to provide a more robust understanding of consumer trends and behaviors.
5 steps to social listening succes
1. Define clear parameters
The potential volumes of data that can be harvested through social listening could overwhelm an organization’s systems. Therefore, select the right social listening tools and begin with a pilot project with a narrow scope. However, this does not mean limiting the number of key search terms or data points to track. Consider terms and keywords that relate directly and indirectly to a product or service and the wider industry so that results can be viewed in a broader context.
2. Capture the data and classify
Once data has been captured, lean on AI to classify within a series of categories that will serve as initial metrics. This initial sorting and structuring will provide insights regarding customer sentiment, such as whether the majority of posts are positive or negative or which types of posts and comments are the most popular, most liked or most shared.
3. Identify brand influencers
As raw data is processed, it will become easy to identify brand influencers — social media users with a larger share of voice and whose opinions carry the most weight. User-generated content is an extremely potent and authentic form of marketing and promotion. Therefore, identifying and engaging with influencers is good for business.
4. Combine all data and analyze with AI
All data harvested from social listening should be compared and combined with any relevant data within the organization in order to see the big picture. Again, AI will be your friend here.
5. Act on the findings
Having the data is one thing, but acting on it is another. Insights need to be operationalized and shared across the organization. Taking steps to move closer to the customer is a process that requires everyone in an organization to engage based on the findings of any form of detailed, robust customer feedback.