Why Social Listening Is Important For Brands

Millions of pieces of content are released daily on the internet. How do some cut through the crowd and rise to the top and others get lost in the shuffle? What does your audience want to hear and see from your brand? What kind of content should a brand post? What are your competitors posting and is it working?

These types of conversations happen every day. While the answer may seem daunting and unknown, there is a very simple way to figure out what your audience is talking about – social listening.

Social listening is the process of seeing what your audience is talking about. One way to do this is through social media platforms, where you can use search functionality within the platforms to find real time conversations about your brand. However, this process is painstakingly manual and the amount of information sourced isn’t consistent and can’t show a clear picture of what pieces of content are working and not working with your brand.

A tool is the best way to track the sentiment around your brand and the types of content you release. Through meta-data, a listening tool is able to extract emotion and track sentiment on a post. Captiv8’s platform uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning algorithms when analyzing meta-data to ensure sentiment is tracked properly. The information sourced through our platform can prove crucial to your brand and dictate the types of creative or the copy utilized as a brand. Based on this, you can build out a content calendar and create the best ways to engage an audience based on set goals. Moreover, you can track how well they are meeting the needs of their audience and easily adjust based on new needs or issues. Here are a few more tips to consider when using social listening:

• Typically, brands only look to track positive sentiment however it is also smart to take a look at the negative sentiment. Negative sentiment can source small problems and allow a brand to contact the user so problems don’t escalate within the community. Social listening and sentiment tracking can also be utilized to act as an easy focus group, testing out a piece of creative or a new product or design without the price point of a dedicated team.
• When working with influencer marketing, social listening is key to figuring out how your brand is resonating with the audience of the influencer. Work with a partner, like Captiv8, to track overall campaign metrics such as sentiment, total reach, engagements and the engagement rate. You can also dial in post by post, and track sentiment, engagements, engagement rate, as well as many other metrics to give your brand an accurate idea of how certain content is performing.
• Use social listening to find out how your brand is doing in comparison to your competitors. Through analyzing your competitors content, you can capitalize on the missteps of your competitors to service the needs of your audience.
• Make sure that the policies and beliefs of your brand are aligned with your audience. Many brands have been listening to the social and political beliefs of their audience and taking proactive steps to support or pull support from key businesses.

To move forward successfully as a brand, utilize social listening to track engagement, monitor competitors and find the real time needs and beliefs of your audience. Reach out today to see how Captiv8 can help your brand with social listening!