Social Listening is a form of market research based on social media discussions, helping to analyze brand health, campaigns, special events, and more...
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Occasion-based marketing is a strategy to help brands connect customers to special occasions or product selection contexts.
Occasion-based marketing is a strategy to help brands connect customers on special occasions. By showing up at the right time, touching the specific needs of the customer at the time, the level of engagement and purchasing intention will increase. Occasion-based marketing helps customers answer when they should buy products of a brand, giving customers reasons and occasions to remember the brand.
Just by correctly identifying the concerns during a special occasion, the brand will able to reach customers. This is something not easy to identify on “normal occasions”
Event-Based Marketing is a solution that helps marketers target a group of concerns that have a strong impact on a large number of customers but only appear in a short period of time
There are many shopping decisions that are made at special occasions. If the brand is able to connect with customers on these occasions, the chances of being remembered and chosen by customers will be higher. Occasion-based marketing also helps increase consumption by encouraging users to use the product at more times.
It is advised to consider the case of 7Up Revive Isotonic Drinking Water. Since 2014, 7Up Revive is the brand of energy-intensive sports activities. Since 2016, 7Up Revive has been associated with everyday activities such as walking, playing or working in sunny weather. Thus, Revive has expanded the theme of products from “exercise/sports” to “dehydrated activities” to increase product consumption.
In a more strategic perspective, occasion-based marketing is used to emphasize the differences between brands.,especially in the catering industry (F&B) - where dining activities are heavily dominated by the times.
Kitkat is one of the best examples of using occasion-based marketing to strengthen brand positioning.
In Vietnam, occasion-based marketing is most popular on major holidays such as: New Year, Summer holidays. However, there are still many other special occasions and moments that the brand can take advantage of to attract more customers.
For the convenience of determining the tactics of choosing a special occasion, Buzzmetrics divides all types of special occasions into 4 categories based on differences in characteristics, frequency of occurrence, and time of occurrence:
Especially suitable for brands that want to take over the platform by creating a big bang throughout the year, to help customers remember them every day.
Usually suitable for brands that want to appears frequently, every day, tightly tied to the life of the consumer.
There are so many moments in life when a consumer becomes especially “sensitive”, letting unexpected concerns and needs appear. With the advent of social networks, consumers tend to share more oftenabout each moment in their lives in search of empathy. Especially at sensitive times, consumers are more motivated to share these things on social media as well as seek out people with similar situation, to talk about common concerns. This makes it possible for the social network to record such special emotional moments of a consumer. There are more and more “Special Moments” that social media marketers can exploit to help brands find new opportunities. For example:
These “Special Moments” are predicted to be the future of Occasion based marketing because of the high frequency of repetition (usually daily/weekly/monthly). The brand only needs to capture a “Special Moment” to become a part of a customer's daily life.
Special seasons are similar to special days. They are for brands that want to put resources into a specific period of a year, using different tactics to convey brand message. Special seasons last longer than special days, which is suitable for brands telling a longer story. They are recommended for brands that want to change a longtime habit or behaviour of consumers, which is not easy to adjust in a short time (1 day/1 week).
Hot events are often predictable and therefore difficult to plan in advance. However, a hot event really needs to be taken advantage of when the target customer is the most affected in that event. This is a golden opportunity for the brand to get closer to its target consumer, sharing the same atmosphere and concerns.
Hot events are a must since a brand can gain high attention in a short period of time. However, if the brand image is in contrast or irrelevant to the theme of the hot event, trying to make use of that event will bring no benefit. In fact, brands can experience negative feedback when they try to become “an attention freak” in the eyes of consumers. More dangerously, brand image and personality will likely suffer greatly, and leave a bad impression on consumers.
- Relevance: There are many special moments but depending on each brand, only some moments are worth using.
- “Deep” or “wide”: If your brand is overly focused on a special moment, you can miss other moments. You can try to "conquer" one special moment, but please be aware of the others.
- Understand the target customer: Look closely at every moment in the life of your target customer. There are very ordinary moments In everyday life that can provide opportunities for brands to engage with customers.
- Target customers are always changing: Always listening to consumers to discover a new special moment and connect with consumers through that moment.
The Syndicated Report Hub online reporting library aggregates research proactively conducted by Buzzmetrics based on observations of common market needs. These studies do not serve a specific customer but will provide a panoramic view of users and the goods industry on the social network.
