What is Social Listening and How Does It Play a Role in Social Media Marketing?

Along with the development of social networks, Social Listening is also growing in application capabilities. If in the past, Social Listening was only about collecting social media data, today data collection is only a part of Social Listening. Measuring buzz volume or sentiment is no longer the only function of Social Listening. In the context of this article, let's look at old questions through a new lens: What is social listening and what role does it play in social media marketing?

1. What is Social Listening?

Social Listening is a form of market research that analyzes online user discussions across social media platforms. It involves the collection and analysis of conversations from various online platforms, including social media, forums, blogs, news sites, and review websites. Unlike traditional research methods, Social Listening works primarily with unstructured data, offering businesses real-time feedback from diverse users across different online platforms.

Typically, a Social Listening process follows these steps:

- Step 1: Build an analysis plan

Researchers begin by defining the context and research objectives, then set the key questions to be addressed.

- Step 2: Data collection

Using Social Listening tools, researchers gather data based on keywords from all social platforms, ensuring an accurate and comprehensive understanding of trends and industry data.

- Step 3: Data filtering and analysis

After collecting data, researchers filter out irrelevant or misleading information to ensure accuracy. Data is processed through AI systems and human verification to find potential insights.

- Step 4: Data visualization and reporting

Finally, the results are compiled into a complete report with visualized data for easier understanding and decision-making.

2. How Do Social Listening Tools Collect Data?

Social Listening data sources are not limited to major social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or Threads. They also cover any medium that allows multi-way interaction, including forums, e-newspapers (comment sections), blogs, and e-commerce review sections.

(A) API Data Collection

This method connects Social Listening tools to the APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) of social networks to retrieve posts containing specific keywords.

- Advantages: Allows access to all data from the network, including personal pages.

- Disadvantages: API reliability may fluctuate, leading to incomplete or inconsistent data over time.

(B) Site Data Collection

This method involves accessing listed sites to collect data without disrupting the websites, either by manual or automatic data gathering processes.

- Advantages: Ensures 100% of data on the site is collected.

- Disadvantages: Certain issues, like site changes or blocking, may cause temporary data shortages.

3. Key Metrics in Social Listening

When conducting research via Social Listening, marketers should focus on key metrics to gain a comprehensive view of the research landscape and measure the effectiveness of their Social Media Marketing strategies:

- Buzz Volume: The number of discussions (posts, comments, or shares) about a specific topic.

- Share of Voice (SOV): Compares the discussion volume of a brand against competitors.

- Audience Scale: The number of individuals participating in discussions about a topic.

- Sentiment Score: Indicates users' emotions toward a topic, calculated by comparing positive and negative discussions.

4. The Role of Social Listening in Social Media Marketing

Initially, Social Listening was seen by many marketers as a purely measurement tool, providing basic metrics about campaigns or brands in comparison with competitors (such as discussion volume, participant count, sentiment scores, etc.). However, over time, social media has expanded significantly in scale. Users have become more familiar with Digital Transformation, sharing more than ever, and social media trends are emerging increasingly. As a result, the scope of social media data has broadened, offering a wealth of potential information to support Social Media Marketing strategies. Consequently, Social Listening has also evolved to gather data across various platforms and meet diverse research needs from marketers.

For each research focus, marketers can apply Social Listening to a range of different areas. Typically, marketers can use Social Listening for three main research directions: (1) Insight Understanding, (2) Campaign Tracking, (3) Crisis Management.

4.1 Insight Understanding

This research can provide a comprehensive overview of a specific industry, including e-commerce performance, brand image identification, and opportunities for differentiation. It also outlines the target audience's profile, capturing public attitudes and usage toward products/brands/industries.

a. Industry Competitive Landscape:

For instance, the chart below shows the most-discussed functional food brands over a certain period. From this, brands can identify their competitors, understand their position in the competitive landscape, and aim for top-of-mind awareness among consumers. Moreover, by quoting user discussions, researchers can pinpoint issues regarding public perception of both the brand and its competitors. This allows the brand to compare, recognize problems, and take corrective action if needed.

→ Read more: Exploring Insights in the Functional Food Industry: Challenges and Opportunities in the Digital Era

b. Brand Image and Differentiation:

An example of Buzzmetrics research on leading diaper brands paints a detailed picture of brand differentiation. Compared to other brands, Molfix’s product performs exceptionally well in absorbency. However, aspects like softness and thinness received negative feedback. Molfix’s branding team can also monitor current customer perceptions of competitors and identify areas for improvement.

c. Usage and Attitude Research (UnA):

UnA research focuses on consumer discussions and plays a key role in unveiling the consumer landscape of an industry. It addresses key questions like:

- Users' interest levels in the product/brand on social media

- Awareness, usage, and consumer behavior displayed on social platforms

- Motivations and barriers to product/brand consumption

- General satisfaction/dissatisfaction with current products/services

- Users’ needs, unmet demands, or general expectations

d. Target Audience Segmentation:

In some cases, brands aim to understand consumers not just from a product buyer perspective but from a broader context that includes their lifestyle and habits. Social Listening can support brands in achieving this.

For instance, analyzing the most-discussed topics within Gen Alpha revealed that "love" was the top theme, surpassing even "education" and "games." This insight shows that to engage Gen Alpha, brands should consider using "love" as a central theme to attract attention and foster interaction.

→ Read more: Gen Alpha: What Sets the Next Generation of Consumers Apart?

Notably, social media is segmented by interests. Therefore, identifying user groups and their main concerns is crucial in segmenting the social media audience. Pinpointing key interests and insights will help brands align their marketing tactics with user interests. As a result, branded content and messaging are more likely to appear in users' feeds, capturing attention, generating engagement, fostering recall and affinity, or even leading to user-generated content (UGC) related to the brand.

4.2. Campaign Strategy and Monitoring

Social Listening supports marketers in planning, creating content, and adjusting strategies in real time throughout all phases of a campaign. It helps track brand sentiment and ensures campaigns align with audience expectations.

4.3. Crisis Management

Today, even a small complaint on Facebook can cause significant damage to a brand. As consumers become increasingly familiar with social media, the likelihood of crises occurring rises. Our Social Listening data shows that while the number of crises has decreased as brands take a more proactive role in crisis management, the average scale of a crisis has grown significantly.

Crises may seem to occur randomly and can impact any brand for seemingly arbitrary reasons. This makes social media crises difficult to track and challenging for brands to respond to. However, through Social Listening, not only can crises be monitored, but their patterns can also be identified, allowing brands to develop strategic response plans.

By analyzing user discussions on social media and providing actionable insights to brands, Social Listening plays a critical role in shaping communication strategies. The most common applications of Social Listening include gathering insights, tracking campaign performance, and managing crises.

To learn more about metrics, marketers can refer to here