Think quickly and answer: how many times have you accessed Facebook to post a complaint or compliment about a product or service, and tagged the company? How many times have you posted photos on Instagram of that incredible restaurant or stories recounting the good and bad experiences of your daily life? Some? Lots of? Thousands?
Certainly, by doing this, you bet on the combination of mobility, reach and speed of immediate repercussion to promote your content, right? It’s what your current and potential customers do too. According to the report Digital 2021, almost 99% of users use their cell phones to access social networks and almost half of them, 45%, have already been there to research something they would like to purchase. The numbers are so superlative that they seem like a work of fiction. Every minute, the 4.2 billion users of social networks – or 53% of the global population – post more than 347 thousand stories on Instagram, upload 500 hours of video on YouTube or 147 thousand images on Facebook and exchange 41 million messages on Whatsapp.
The Social Listening process – or social listening, in free translation – is what helps companies filter in this intense universe of conversations what is strategic for their business.
More than just systematically monitoring what is said about the brand or product in the online environment, the idea is to use technologies such as Artificial Intelligence in favor of analytical capacity and go further, adding data analysis, called Business Analytics, to discover trends and support more assertive actions, interactions and communication strategies.
By capturing essential insights into this digital word-of-mouth about companies, sectors, markets and consumer behaviors, Social Listening helps answer the questions that are worth millions of dollars for any entrepreneur: what, how and where customers are talking about your brand, what they are really looking for and what is the best way to approach and content, across all social media contact channels.
It also reveals who the virtual influencers are who already identify with your brand and can expand its visibility exponentially. Not surprisingly, only the so-called influencer marketing on social networks alone should move around 13.8 billion dollars across the world in 2021.
This active and continuous social listening also makes it possible to quickly perceive changes in the scenario and adopt preventive actions to avoid or minimize reputational and, consequently, financial damage. Research shows that fake news spreads six times faster on Twitter than real news. Unfounded rumors about a brand or company start with one click and can quickly reach all social channels.
Social Listening can detect these rumors early on, as well as potential emerging crises and problems involving the sector or industry that could end up affecting all competitors.
Having access to information in real time, understanding its context and acting quickly provides enormous opportunities and minimizes risks. Your customers are talking. Are you listening yet?
