Social Listening: Strategies to Prevent Brand Reputation Crises

In digital marketing, a single negative comment from a user can snowball into hundreds within hours. That is one of the consequences of a brand failing to recognize signs of user dissatisfaction quickly. As a result, a reputation crisis is inevitable.

However, this can actually be anticipated with a method called social listening. This method serves as an “early warning system” for brands, offering extensive benefits if implemented optimally. Want to understand social listening thoroughly? Check out the full explanation below!

What Is Social Listening?

Social listening is the process of tracking, analyzing, and understanding conversations on online media about a specific topic or brand. In addition to tracking brand mentions, this process is also conducted to understand the sentiment and deeper context surrounding the brand in question.

Generally, social listening is conducted on social media, discussion forums, blogs, and news portals. The key tools for implementing it are algorithms and Natural Language Processing (NLP), which can filter large amounts of data and provide actionable insights that businesses can act upon immediately.

The Purpose of Social Listening

After understanding the definition of social listening, now understand the purpose of this process, which includes:

1. Building Communication with Customers

It is undeniable that many customers actively express their opinions about a brand online. By conducting social listening, your brand can hear customer opinions and respond to them accordingly.

In fact, many customers appreciate it when brands respond to their questions or join discussions on social media. By consistently building active communication, your brand can strengthen long-term relationships with customers.

Read also: How to Develop Conversational Commerce Platforms for Business

2. Assisting Strategic Decision Making

As mentioned earlier, social listening aims to capture the sentiments that arise naturally in online media. With a social listening strategy, you can obtain real-time data and then make informed decisions without relying on predictions.

Public conversations are often also an early indicator of changes in customer preferences. By conducting social listening, you can capture these changes and take the right steps, such as developing new features or doing remarketing.

3. Analyzing Competitors

Competitor analysis generally involves measuring share of voice and brand health metrics. Share of voice is a comparison of a brand’s exposure with competitors, while brand health metrics measure how positively the public perceives a brand.

Well, both are closely related to social listening, as this process provides real-time data that forms the basis for measurement.

Not only that, but with social listening, you can also analyze what customers like and dislike about your competitors. You can certainly use this to your advantage to outperform your competitors.

Benefits of Social Listening for Business

If your business actively engages in social listening, here are some of the benefits you can gain:

1. Creating a Positive Brand Image

By responding promptly to all social media conversations, you are building a responsive and trustworthy brand image. This automatically prevents reputation crises and builds long-term audience trust.

2. Increased Resource Effectiveness

Data from social listening can serve as a reference to determine audience response to ongoing digital campaigns. From there, you can find out whether the allocation of resources for the campaign has been effective. 

If it has not been effective, you can adjust your marketing strategy, for example, by reallocating your budget to channels that have more impact or adjusting your communication approach to be more targeted.

3. Potential for Increased ROI

Ultimately, proper and accurate social listening will lead to an increase in ROI (Return on Investment).

With positive communication and consumer trust, brand responsiveness to market dynamics, and increased resource effectiveness, the opportunity for increased ROI will be even greater.

Read also: The Role of Brand Advocacy Marketing & Tips to Build It

Examples of Social Listening Applications

Social listening can be applied in various aspects of business, including the following:

1. Content Strategy

One example of a social listening application in content strategy is creating content with topics that are currently being discussed by the audience.

For example, in the sports industry, there is considerable discussion about the achievements of Indonesian athletes in international badminton competitions. Therefore, sports equipment brands can create content about recommended badminton equipment or basic badminton techniques.

2. New Product Launch

For example, a skincare brand releases a new facial scrub product. After the release, the brand conducts social listening and finds many comments from users that the scrub is too harsh.

As a form of concern, the brand immediately responded to user complaints and improved production in the next batch, ensuring the scrub would be smoother and users would be more satisfied.

3. Customer Service

An example of the application of social listening in customer service can be related to influencer marketing. For example, an influencer who collaborates with a brand has just uploaded a promotional video for the latest pajama products, and then a potential customer asks about the availability of sizes.

With a social listening strategy, the brand can capture that question and provide an answer, thereby increasing the potential for a purchase.

4. Monitoring Program

For example, a brand in the education technology sector creates a competition program for students. To conduct social listening, you should monitor real-time comments to identify which participants are being discussed the most.

Next, the brand can feature these participants in various Instagram content to increase audience engagement.

Social Listening Activities Made Easier with cmlabs

In fact, several challenges that brands commonly face in social listening. These challenges can include the large volume of conversations, the need for in-depth analysis, or confusion about choosing the right tools.

However, there is no need to worry because social listening can be easier if you use a tool named the Orion by cmlabs. This tool can help you monitor media and brand mentions. As a result, you can find out what phenomena are happening in your business field.

In addition to assisting with social listening, cmlabs is also ready to help optimize your business performance across the entire realm of digital marketing. Do you need to increase your brand's visibility on search engines and optimize all social media platforms? No worries, cmlabs is ready to assist you every step of the way.

You can take advantage of the All-in-One Digital Marketing service by cmlabs, which covers the following important aspects:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Helping with technical website audits, website projection development, and increasing its authority on search engines.
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM): Helping increase brand visibility on search engines using paid advertising strategies.
• Creative Services: Providing creative assets to support a variety of visual advertising and social media needs for brands.
• Website Development & Management: Developing websites so that brands appear professional in the digital realm.
• Media Placement: Helping businesses gain broader and more positive exposure through presence in renowned media outlets.

 

Ready to take your business to significant growth in the digital realm? Contact the cmlabs team now to get complete information about the best services tailored to your business needs and secure the best offers!

Read also: How to Calculate ROAS and Tips to Get Maximum Profit