In today’s digital age your customers are having hundreds of conversations online each day. In fact, it is estimated that every day 500 million tweets are sent and 4 petabytes of data are created on Facebook. With this much chatter, it isn’t enough to simply produce your own brand content online. A successful business stays one step ahead by listening to what customers are saying and anticipates the effect of these conversations.
What is Listening?
As the name suggests, social media listening is about taking a step back and listening to your customers’ online discussions. Netbase makes the distinction between listening and monitoring by emphasizing the preventative role that listening can play for your business. While monitoring will pick up on specific mentions of your business, social media listening takes a broader picture of what the market is saying. Listening captures conversations, not just about your specific brand, but about competitors and trends within the market.
Learning from Listening
Social media listening will provide you with a wealth of information, but how do you turn that information into actionable items to advance your brand and image? Some examples of how this can be done include:
Your customer preferences – By listening to what your customers are saying on social media, you will gain insight on how and where they use your products. This information can inform your future advertising.
Information on competitors – Your organization can use listening to pinpoint what customers are saying about your competitors. If their customers are unhappy, this provides a unique opportunity for your brand to step in and win the customer base.
Trends in the market – Consumer conversations will show trends as they are forming. Use listening to gain information on keywords within your market niche to pinpoint what customers are looking for in future development. This allows your business to stay ahead of the curve.
Software Solutions
Analyzing this data can be difficult, so many companies are turning to social media analytic software for answers. NetBase, a leader in social media listening, uses patented next generation Artificial Intelligence (https://www.netbase.com/applications/nb-social-media-analytics/) to analyze the online conversations that are happening around your brand. They capture what they refer to as sentiment, which looks at the intent and tone of the social media content you are analyzing.
NetBase software combs 300M + sources of social media and analyzes and provides real time access to the data that is being gathered. They also provide image analytics which are able to scan for the appearance of your logo in images across the web. The software is then able to summarize the impact these images and conversations may have on your business, helping you to avoid issues before they happen.
Implementing listening
In order to effectively manage your business’ brand and navigate the plethora of online opinions, it is essential to listen to what is happening on social media. Using a software such as NetBase will allow your business to develop more effective marketing campaigns, anticipate consumer needs, identify potential risks, and respond to customer concerns. The landscape of communication is constantly changing. Don’t let your business fall behind. Instead, listen and learn as you build strategies for the future.
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