The importance of social listening

What is social listening?

Social listening can be a vital part of any business – it helps you keep track of what your consumers are saying and what your competitors are doing.

It is the practice of monitoring conversations and/or activities that are shared through electronic social channels. These channels can be social networks, discussion networks, professional networks, review networks, gaming networks, sharing economy networks, book marking networks, blogging and/or publishing networks.

Social listening is an ideal way of getting real-time market research data about your brand and services.

First, you need to decide what platforms you wish to focus on and what period would be appropriate. An example of one of our previous studies was the examination of the perceptions of smart meters in the UK. We did this by reviewing the conversations on Mumsnet (the UK’s biggest network for parents, with around 10 million unique visitors per month clocking up around 100 million page views).

It looked at threads (conversations made through the forum) over a 12-week period, which yielded 727 posts from 670 different participants. We were then able to develop the posts into themes that could be used to shape product upgrades and future marketing communication messages.

You can also use it to review big data; another example of our research was the capturing of over 70,000 tweets associated with “not drinking and driving” over New Year’s Eve. This data exercise was completed in a 24-hour window.

The findings demonstrated how poor our public bodies were at engaging with society on such an important topic. It also identified potential influencers that could be used to enhance the process.

Social listening can also be used for intelligence gathering - for example monitoring of the online conversations relating to your competitors.

Social listening can also be used for intelligence gathering. In this instance, you should be monitoring all the conversations relating to your competitors. There is an ongoing debate about the ethical implications for this practice: as long as the data presented is in the public domain then there should be no issue. As with your own brands/services you will be able to gauge the public’s attitude to these competitors, which should help in the development of future strategic plans. The market intelligence review can also be used to identify “fake news”, copyright and intellectual property infringements. 

It’s important to monitor any social channels that you have a presence on – you wouldn’t publish a business phone number and then not have anyone to answer any calls, just as you don’t have a presence on social media sites without having someone to monitor it. Consider all links to social platforms from your website as alternatives to telephone numbers and email addresses. It is a signal to the public (and other organisations) that they can contact you through them.

You will require a process that monitors and responds to comments, questions and requests about your brand and its services. Your response should almost be immediate because that’s what the public expects. 

This process does not have to be onerous, simply having an individual on call whilst at home (or in the office during a working day) is all that is required. Depending on your global presence, the individual does not necessarily have to stay awake all night either: an analysis of the historical trends will help you decide how to structure your team. This means that there will be more than one person working on your social platforms, i.e., they will require the login details. The sharing of passwords and other login details is a serious business error, so what do you do? Third-party platforms (like Hootsuite and Buffer) can facilitate the management of your teams, individuals can be given their own login details.

How to respond

At the Retail Institute, we advise businesses not to reply to social media questions via the said channel’s response systems, you should use an alternative third-party platform. This is critical because social media conversations occur 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. So, strictly speaking, you should have a team working in shifts to deal with customer questions and concerns. 

Social listening: the active and passive approach

Social listening can be active or passive: the active process is where you would engage with others through the chosen network. The passive process is where you observe from afar, without participating in the conversation.

If you are listening to customers or topics related to your products and services, then you should be active. If you decide to observe competitor activity then you should be passive, that said if there are ways that you can support your competitor’s clients (i.e., convert them to your own) then don’t be afraid to interject with a potential solution.

Final thoughts

Our world is changing rapidly, and we can see that the use of social media through its various networks has become ubiquitous in every society. There has also been a growth in internet shopping with product discussions and reviews taking place through a variety of digital channels. Keeping a handle on the e-word of mouth conversations that are taking place should be a key priority for all businesses, it may even help identify potential influencers. Despite all this, experience has shown us at the Retail Institute that many organisations are overawed by the enormity of managing the social listening process.

We have several experienced researchers that can support and guide you through your journey into this new domain. If you would like to know more then drop us a line at retailinstitute@leedsbeckett.ac.uk or call 0113 812 5783.

You may also be interested in our Digital Marketing and Social Listening Workshop. There are two courses taking place in January and February 2022. You can find more information about thse courses here.