Social listening is a tool that helps companies monitor public opinion. Monitoring public opinion is an essential part of PR and marketing teams’ efforts, to manage and prevent brand reputation crisis. In the age of social media, online comments can make or break a company’s reputation. Investing in social media monitoring and analysis is quickly becoming an important component of any PR strategy. Media monitoring analysis is an ever-evolving field, and in this article, we will focus on its key tools and trends for 2022.
Tracking social KPIs
All businesses want to know whether their social media strategy is effective. In order to identify the outcome of a campaign, we need to use measurable metrics that can show us a company’s presence on social platforms quantitatively. Social KPIs is an indicator of social media performance. Social KPIs include metrics for reach (such as Follower count, Impressions, Post reach, Share of Voice) and metrics for engagement (such as Clicks, Likes, Shares, Comments, Mentions, and Profiles visits).
Social media KPIs show how a social media strategy connects with the target audience and yields results.
Campaign reporting/success measurement
Measuring marketing campaign success is essential for every business. Success measurement allows marketers and business owners to see what works and does not work. It helps you measure performance, track where your sales come from, and determine any areas for improvement. Success measurement can be challenging, given the expanding number of marketing channels and data privacy concerns.
Reporting success measurement is all about collecting and presenting the information to your clients in an easy-to-digest way.
Crisis Management Reports
Crisis Management Reports are crucial in determining any emerging issues that may negatively affect an organization’s reputation or profitability. Crisis Management reports should be delivered as quickly as possible (preferably 24hrs) so PR teams can address any potential problems that may occur. Crisis Management reports are used by PR teams or crisis management teams to avoid or minimize any possible damage.
Receiving crisis management reports is critical because it allows an organization to make quick and data-driven decisions. Informed decisions are the best and most optimal way to minimize threats and respond appropriately to emerging issues during a crisis.
Influencers and stakeholders’ identification
Identifying key influencers and stakeholders is essential for an effective communications strategy. They are the voices that can influence opinions about your organization. Many companies implement influencers in their marketing strategies to ensure they are putting the right message to the right audience. Influencers and stakeholders can be traditional figures such as journalists, politicians, or industry experts.
But they can also be social media influencers, bloggers, or even concerned citizens. That is why accurately identifying influencers is a key component of your PR and marketing strategies.
Conversation Analysis
Conversation analysis is about online conversations – such as social media threads, comments, blogs, review websites, customer support emails, and call center transcripts. With conversation analysis, companies can get insights from consumers and use them for business strategies. They are helpful when it comes to finding negative comments and addressing an issue before it turns into a big problem for the organization.
Conversation analysis goes one step further – by determining the reason behind negative customer feedback and preventing future bad reviews. Conversation analysis will help you to:
- Identify spikes in conversations about your brand
- Understand customer experience on your website
- Understand online language and improving communication
Reputation analysis
Reputation is important for every company and organization. As they say, reputation can make or break a company. That being the case, monitoring reputation is one of the first steps in recognizing how to manage and maintain a positive reputation. Reputation monitoring is all about finding information that might impact your brand. With brand reputation analysis you can monitor every mention of your brand and act accordingly.
Many brands pay close attention to what their customers comment on social media about their products and services. Listening to what customers have to say about your brand is helpful when developing new products or marketing strategies. Furthermore, brand reputation analysis can help you avoid any scandals before they become big.
Risk assessment analysis
There can be hidden risks for organizations on multiple fronts such as liability, investments, or cybersecurity. For this reason, determining the risks is a crucial step in managing and minimizing potential damages. Risk assessment analysis is the first step in the risk management process. PR teams or risk management teams can rely on a proper risk assessment analysis to prioritize threads and resolve them as quickly as possible. Also, risk and compliance requirements include risk assessment analysis.
Audience profiling, segmentation, and journey mapping
Getting to know your audience is key to increasing sales and revenue. Knowing the habits and behaviors of your audience will allow you to create personalized campaigns and bring better results. Audience profiling is getting customer data and separating them by similar behavior. The dividing of the audience around similar behavior will improve personalization and optimize sales.
Audience segmentation is the process of dividing customers into demographics. The demographics can include age, income, gender, occupation, ethnicity, and many others. Segmenting the audience will allow for personalized campaigns that appeal to the demographic.
Journey mapping is the process of illustrating customer needs and their journey with your organization visually. With journey mapping, you can understand each step of the customer experience with your company and how they interact with it.
Share of voice analysis
Share of Voice is a way to measure how popular your brand is online. Share of voice is usually measured as a percentage of the total mentions of the brand online. Then it is compared to the number of competitors mentions online. It is an effective way to know how famous a brand, a product, or a service is. Share of Voice allows you to gain deeper consumer insights and understand how your brand performs in contrast to your direct competitors.
It can also give you insights into your marketing efforts and how successful they are. Share of Voice can be analyzed in many different categories. Many brands monitor their SOV in various markets, for example, to determine any geographic differences. SOV can be monitored through consumer demographics too.
Sentiment analysis
Sentiment analysis is a way to find how people feel about a brand, a service, or a product. Sentiment analysis usually combines natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning to determine whether a test is negative, neutral, or positive. Sentiment analysis is a great way to understand the customer experience, and monitor reputation. Sentiment analysis can improve customer service by monitoring any negative comments and taking appropriate action. Furthermore, it can be useful when developing products or implementing new marketing strategies.
Target Audience Analysis
Audience analysis is the process of research and understanding your audience. It can be separated into various categories such as demographics, language, age, interests, or any other metric. Brands often use audience analysis to identify buyer personas and develop marketing strategies. Understanding your audience will allow you to communicate better with them. Properly separating your audience will save you time, money, and resources when advertising a specific product or a service.
With audience analysis, you can find whether your target audience prefers any social media platform over another. Or, what type of content are they sharing online, what factors they consider when choosing a product, and last but not the least customer values. All of that information will help marketing and advertising campaigns.
Conclusion
Managing reputation, coming up with new ideas for products or marketing campaigns, is not an easy task. All of that can start with the help of media monitoring services aimed for your specific business needs. Following what your customers say online, for example, can serve as a great inspiration for future projects and product development.
Monitoring your customer’s opinions online, on the other hand, can help and boost your marketing efforts, as well as help you prevent any reputational crises before they turn big. Social media listening can be a powerful tool for any business and organization who wants to keep their customers satisfied and happy.
Undoubtedly, your business will benefit from social media listening tools in many ways. You can improve and perfect your customer service, find any weak spots in your communication strategies, improve your marketing campaigns, have a specific target audience, identify influencers, and manage your reputation. All of that will help you get an edge on your competition, make data-based business decisions, and organize your business efforts better.
