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Why Do You Need a Social Listening Platform?

Introduction

Social Media channels are no longer just avenues for people to post about their personal lives. Channels have evolved to become platforms where people consume content from brands and get inspired to make purchases. Social media has become a very cost effective solution for brands to reach the masses and build an audience.

This change in dynamic has made it very crucial for brands to understand what is being spoken about them on these channels. Not doing so may result in brands developing a bad reputation resulting in huge losses on the business front. With more than 50% of social media marketers using social listening to understand their customers better and improve customer experience, the increasing popularity of these platforms is more apparent than ever.

Apart from understanding what is being spoken about them, brands also need to understand the market to ensure that their offerings are in line with the market’s demand.

All in all social listening has two major use cases, to manage and maintain their online reputation and effectively undertake market research. While social listening may seem like a straightforward process, it involves a lot of process like the collection of conversations, analysis, and reporting. Having a platform can prove to be very beneficial when the number of conversations you as a brand receive is high. In this article, we will discuss why brands need a social listening platform.

Social listening is the process of analyzing conversations about a specific topic or brand happening on social media and web channels. Social listening enables users to track and understand what is being spoken by the masses about a specific topic on online channels.

Social listening platforms are programmes like Konnect Insights that enable users to seamless track online conversations irrespective of the online channel used. Social listening platforms irradicate the need for manual tracking of conversations making the whole social listening process more seamless and effective.

While social listening may seem like a straightforward process of collecting conversations about a certain brand or topic, over the years, the process have evolved to be much more. It has become a key component of most brands’ strategic decision-making across various verticals like customer experience management as well as product development. For D2C brands, it is a great source to gather feedback and address customer complaints, for brands developing a product to launch, social listening can be very beneficial to gauge the market, identify gaps, and align their offerings accordingly.

A Social Listening platform enables brands to go above and beyond in their social listening efforts. It enables them to seamlessly track conversations across multiple channels like social media and the web all within one platform. Without a robust social listening platform, brands would be left navigating uncharted territory and miss out on invaluable insights regarding the market.

All in all a social listening platform like Konnect Insights is required to ensure that teams are able to track conversations effectively, analyze them, and derive meaningful data for market research or customer experience management, whatever the end goal may be.

Adopting a social listening platform for a brand’s needs can enable them to uncover some key insights for their brands, let’s look at a few benefits of adopting a social listening platform.

Data-driven Decision Making

Social listening platforms can enable brands to uncover insights to make better and more data-driven decisions. Social listening platforms like Konnect Insights can enable brands to analyze their sentiment and feedback allowing them to uncover what truly resonates with their audience. Such data can enable them to understand what works and what doesn’t and adjust their offering accordingly. Data-driven decision-making can improve the brands’ overall performance, efficiency, and thereby profitability.

Real-time Monitoring

One of the most crucial reasons for using a social listening platform like Konnect Insights is the access to real time data. Manually tracking and collecting conversations relevant to a brand can never be done on real time basis. Social listening platforms with their access to real-time data can enable brands to be up-to-date with the latest conversations. The CXM industry is highly dynamic making it very important for brands to address queries as soon as possible, not doing so could result in huge problems for the brands and also give rise to major crises.

Competitive Advantage

Who doesn’t want to be a step ahead of their competition? Social Listening platforms enable you to put your brand side by side with all your competitors and uncover some valuable insights into how you fare against your competitors. It can uncover your shortcomings enabling you to improve on those aspects. Employing competitor analysis effectively can ensure that you are ahead of your competitors and stand out in the market

So far we have covered the benefits that users realize when they employ a robust platform for their social listening needs. Now, let’s look at what are the shortcomings of not doing so. Here we will highlight key aspects that get missed when users try to undertake social listening in a manual manner.

Lack of Insight into Consumer Sentiment

How much ever we try, manual conversation tracking can never be as seamless as a social listening platform. Without the right conversations being tracked at the right time, a lot of insights especially the ones pertaining to consumer sentiment slip through the cracks and are missed.

Missed Opportunities for Addressing Concerns

Following on the trend of missed conversations, without a social listening platform, brands may miss out on opportunities to address customer concerns that are posted on the web by the customers. This has a dual effect, the customer who first posted negatively definitely will have a very low level of customer satisfaction, seeing their experience, the prospects viewing this conversation will also perceive negatively about the brand.
How to Use Social Listening to Join Conversations on Social Media

Inability to Gauge Brand Perception

Following on the previous point, the brand’s inability to effectively track what the market and prospects are talking about will result in a huge gap in understanding of brand perception for the brand. This situation is not very healthy as it can lead to serious losses down the line.

In today’s competitive business landscape, customer feedback is the backbone of good products and services. With the right feedback, brands can transcend in the quality of their offerings and also ensure the over satisfaction of customers. Social media and web conversations have become one of the leading sources of customer feedback in the current age. Without the right framework to track these conversations, brands miss out on a goldmine of feedback.

Failure to Anticipate Trends and Shifts

We know today’s markets are dynamic. Only those who are able to ride and anticipate the latest trend waves are able to survive in the market. Effective Social listening enables brands to be in tune with what exactly is being said and accurately gauge current and upcoming trends. Without a robust framework, a brand would be shooting in the dark and eventually be consumed with failure as their offerings wouldn’t be in line with the market requirements.

Limited Crisis Preparedness

Some brands like the ones in the fintech industry deal with a lot of sensitive things like peoples life savings. When such customers are unsatisfied, the repercussions can even lead to legal matters. This makes it even more important for brands to resolve such matters before they are escalated out of proportions and turn into a major crises for the brand. Without social listening, they wouldn’t be able to track such conversations eventually leading to the worst.

Disconnected Engagement, Impersonalized Interactions

The best product doesn’t guarantee success, today’s consumers want to connect with the brand and make brand identity and engagement more important than ever. Social listening helps brands understand their audience better and tailor content in accordance with their likings. Without proper social listening, brands wouldn’t be able to understand their audience leading to a very impersonalized approach to their engagement strategy.

Diminished Brand Loyalty

Following on the previous points the lack of a brand’s understanding about their consumers and audience will result in a gap between them and the audience. Without tailored offerings a communications, the brand won’t resonate with the customer base resulting in a lack of faith in the brand and overall grievance. This will lead to highly diminished levels of brand loyalty.

Now that we have understood why it is important for you as a brand to have a robust social listening process backed with a robust social listening platform like Konnect Insights. Let’s look at what you need to do exactly to implement a platform.

Define Objectives: Mark what it is that you wish to achieve with the social listening process, be it market research, customer experience management, enhancing brand perception, or keeping a lookout for what your competitors are up to. Defining clear objectives will enable you to effectively manage the implementation process

Choose the Right Platform: Just like any process you do, choosing the right tool can be all the difference. Choosing a platform for your social listening and CXM needs like Konnect Insights can make all the difference. The platform has a comprehensive suite of tools to ensure you dont miss any conversations and are able to ace your social listening game. From real-time monitoring to highly accurate sentiment analysis, Konnect Insights enables you to unify all conversations under one platform. To help you evaluate your options read – Choosing the Best Social Listening Tool: Key Features and Considerations
Integrate with Existing Systems: Customers may choose to contact you through any channel of their choice such as call, email, or even chats. Ensure that you are able to integrate these requirements into your social listening framework to not let any conversation get missed
Train Your Team: Konnect Insights Academy: Ts very clear that social listening, CXM and market research arent as straightforward as they seem. Professionals undertaking these processes need to be trained effectively to ensure that they are able to work at the best of their capabilities. Trends keep shifting and individuals need to be at the forefront of the latest trends in the social listening world. But how is this possible? Konnect Insights Academy (KIA) is a free certification program by the Konnect Insights team curated in partnership with CX and social listening experts to bring to you the latest information and skills to be the best at social listening and CXM. Register for FREE

Conclusion

Social Listening is a crucial process there is no denying that. It can prove to be beneficial for brands of all shapes and sizes. Having a platform to assist you in this endeavor can make all the difference to make your social listening process fruitful. Book a demo with our experts to help you choose the best platform for all your CX and Social Listening needs

Home / Blogs

Why Do You Need a Social Listening Platform?

Introduction

What is Social Listening, and What are Social Listening Platforms?

Evolution and Adoption of Social Listening Across Industries