Assess Your Brand Reputation on Social Media Networks

It takes years to build a reputed brand name; however, one negative review could ruin it and leave a wreck behind. Keeping track of your brand reputation becomes vital to avoid such an unpleasant crisis.

It’s a known fact that customers who are happy may not leave feedback, but the unhappy ones today take the time out of their packed schedules to share their experiences with others. It’s only natural for a potential customer to trust the first-hand review more than any marketing material put out by the brand itself. So, how do you manage your online reputation? Is it possible to keep your customers happy, at all times?

How does managing Brand Reputation Work?

Managing online brand reputation is about tracking negative comments and reaching out to connect with such a customer to resolve their issues. You will also need to track the praise or positive feedback for your brand. Encouraging happy clients to engage more positively with the brand on social media is a really clever way to manage online brand reputation.

Carefully following your competitors can tell you about their social media reputation and the strategies they use to maintain it. Overall, brand reputation management allows you to tell your side of the story and helps people to recognize you and to connect with you. It is a very good way to influence the sentiments surrounding your brand.

Many businesses invest in social monitoring tools to keep track of the chatter. But, how do you gather insights into your brand reputation without the appropriate tools to analyze that data? Only social listening tools help you track brand mentions, analyze the key pain points, identify brand advocates and keep a check on your competitors. Social listening tools come as a complete package for your online brand reputation management.

Channels of Online Reputation Management (ORM)

A professional path to brand reputation management would require a 360-degree approach. The main channels which help manage your online presence include:

Paid Media

Featuring your brand on any digital space that has been paid for falls under this category. PPC ads with Google AdWords, paid ad campaigns on Facebook, paid business accounts on Instagram are some examples under this category. Paid media offers a quick way to gather views, spread brand awareness, gain new customers and build relationships.

Earned Media

Any talk or mention of your business/brand by third-party websites, for which you haven’t spent any money, is called earned media. When your brand is doing exceptionally well, praise in the form of earned media helps you establish a positive brand reputation among the masses. Brand mentions on other websites, positive product reviews, influencers reposting and reviewing your products are all a part of this category.

Owned Media

Every company has its own way of promoting their products digitally via website pages, blogs et cetera. All of them fall under the owned property head. The more regularly you update and maintain your owned properties, the better the awareness you build. A healthy brand reputation can be achieved using owned media diligently. Updating your blogs and optimizing your website to adapt to various device configurations are some ways you can attract an audience to visit your site and raise awareness and education about your products/services.

Social Media

Social media is by far the most popular and important form of media in today’s world. The number of social media users grows each day. Social media offers a platform for a continuous evaluation of your brand’s performance online. It also provides a channel for two-way communication with your customers, critics, and admirers. Engaging people via social media is one of the easiest ways to gain your customers’ trust. It bears repeating to say that social listening tools help you monitor the sentiments around your brand and enable you to take preventive action to avert a possible crisis.

Social Listening for Brand Reputation Management

Social listening is the key to leveraging your social branding via networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and the like. Social media listening is a smart tool if you use the features it offers to assess and improve your reputation online.

Monitor the Right Content

Before you start looking for the chatter around your brand, have clarity on what you are tracking exactly. Are you looking for the chatter around the brand name? Alternatively, do you want to know about the chatter surrounding your product or your industry? Some companies might track the news around high-profile employees working with them. You could either choose to track information related to one of these or indulge in a wholesome experience of tracking everything related to your brand.

Integrate all Your Social Media Platforms to one Tool

Tracking social media mentions isn’t an easy task so why not make it simpler? Tagging all your social media accounts to a single social listening tool lets you hear the chatter from all of them. It is also is easier to connect with and engage people across all these platforms via one dashboard.

Social Engagement – for Successful Brand Reputation Management

Social listening tools generally enable you to respond to customers and engage with them. Establishing a strong brand presence isn’t too difficult if you actively respond to your customers. A devoted brand makes its customers feel empowered and privileged. Gaining the customer’s trust is the stepping-stone to positive word-of-mouth reviews. Customer care need not be a one-way process, where you reply only when the customer asks for it. Seeking regular feedbacks via social media polls, website/live chats and surveys also goes a long way in establishing you as a responsible brand.

Managing brand reputation can be a tricky task, but it is not rocket science. With the right amount of patience, planning, and execution, your brand could become one of the most trusted brands in the industry.

Social Listening for the Pharmaceutical Industry

Global life expectancy has gone up by 9.365 years since the 1980s. Credit for this goes to better awareness among the people and the improvement in healthcare technology and the availability of new and better medicines. The pharmaceutical industry has witnessed dynamic shifts over the years, in its unfailing quest to eliminate diseases from the world, has seen it evolve and improve itself time and time again. Through the history of medicine, there have been many changes starting with microbes changing their DNA, infections developing drug resistance, changes in technology, changes in regulations from governing bodies. Pharma companies need to adopt a dynamic business model to deal with these changing needs, to stay focused on their target customer and get the attention they deserve. Social listening for the pharmaceutical industry is here to help pharma companies build a new and modern business model.

Consumers are More Knowledgeable Than Ever

There are some very obvious differences between ancient times and now. Doctors do not use leeches to cure hemorrhoids anymore. People don’t believe that epidemics and pestilence result from the wrath of God. Today’s patients are empowered with more knowledge than the passive patients of yesterday. The World Wide Web has made healthcare information more accessible and social media has provided an additional platform where patients and their families talk to each other and share information and best practices. In this environment, pharma companies need to leverage their marketing efforts with social listening.

Importance of Social Listening for the Pharmaceutical Industry

The modern man uses many more medical tools than ever. The electric thermometer and electronic sphygmomanometer (BP machine), and glucometers to check sugar levels are now being supplemented by meters to check the pulse rate, the number of steps taken in a day, the number of hours spent in REM sleep and many others. Computer-aided design is helping chemists try out new formulations which are made available to us at lower prices. Chemists are also trying to design composite pills which are tailor-made to individual customers, containing all the medicines they need to take in a day. However, it is time for pharma companies to diversify the use of technology within their business model and invest their research and development efforts. They also need to know more about customer needs as well as expectations, for which the answer lies in social listening.

Modern times, Better Services, and Higher Expectations

Food, water, shelter, and health are the most important things to a human being. Companies from these industries are improving their customer services and doing that ever so well. More and more companies prefer listening to their audience to be well aware of what requirements are to be catered to immediately. When competing against savvy brands, social listening helps you know how to modify your working model to tend to the problems at hand in the most effective and economical way.

Social Listening for the Pharmaceutical Industry – A Quick Glance

Listening to the needs of your audience
Monitoring the overall chatter and sentiments building around your brand
Competitor analysis and global opportunities
Tracking industry keywords to stay updated about the regulations and news (new formulations/patents etc.)

Listening to Customer Needs

As of now, we have no clear guidelines from regulatory authorities like the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of any obligations or enforcements laid upon pharmaceutical companies to report adverse events (AEs), which are identified through social channels. But, many manufacturing companies fear that being involved in extensive social interactions would bring up more adverse drug experience reports online and would require them to conduct a number of costly investigations into each of them. However, there’s no doubt that companies could use social listening as an effective research tool, which provides them with a lot of information, without requiring heavy financial investments.

Brand Recognition

Consumer conversations concerning you present a picture of how well your brand image is perceived, as you measure your brand’s share of voice, customer sentiment, brand switching behaviors, patient journey, patient and health care provider unmet needs and other pressing business concerns. Customer expectations shape their opinions. Managing customer segments becomes easier once you know their thoughts on how well (or inadequately) you meet their needs. Social listening for the pharmaceutical industry is absolutely essential for more than one reason. Besides monitoring brand equity, marketers use social listening to keep track of any misleading information, which is undeniably an opportunity. Managers can create campaigns and spread awareness about the actual facts and alleviate the damage caused by any false information doing the rounds.

Competitive Analysis and Global Opportunities

The pharma industry is highly competitive. Social listening for pharmaceutical industry lets you listen to the chatter around your products, campaigns and about the products and reception of other brands too. Positive or negative comments around other brands could help you strategize and improve your own performance. Identifying the gaps and moving to fill them and meet customer expectation will help you overtake your competitors, and even to outgrow their market share. Pharma companies can also listen for region-specific health problems around the Globe and learn about any gaps in service being experienced in a particular region. For instance, if you are working on a formulation which could help fight the Ebola or Nipah virus, you would want to establish your presence in a place where people need those medicines. Social media listening gives you region-wise information. Suppose you see none of the other pharma companies are serving the patients in, say Mali. It means you have identified an opportunity for global penetration, making Mali a new market for you.

Stay Updated

It is true that in some sense the world comes alive on social media. Millions of posts, impressions, engagements, comments, and interactions take place every second. Social listening aids in gathering all the relevant chatter. Listening for trends and updates from your industry will help you keep abreast of any news of a change in the regulations within your industry. In the world of web 2.0, social listening into the chatter will that you never miss any crucial piece of information.

The Ultimate Use of Social Listening for the Pharmaceutical Industry

Having laid stress on social media and the platforms providing these facilities, we would want to lay emphasis on the fact that most of the time, a patient’s digital diagnosis begins not with Facebook or Twitter. It begins with Google and the health-related chat forums available online. Interestingly, social listening does not limit itself to the chatter generated on social media. Social listening for the pharmaceutical industry should be enabled with both active and passive listening and there are tools plenty which provide such a platform.

Research and development, online reputation management, and consumer insights are all important aspects of the efforts to grow your brand further. Additionally, for the pharma industry, the risk of bad PR is high with adverse drug reaction events. Social media listening is an effective crisis management platform. Being vigilant will help you address any situations before your product and brand name get maligned beyond repair on the Internet.

The Road to Measuring Brand Awareness

In the modern world, establishing one’s digital presence is one of the most followed marketing strategies. Setting a success meter and gauging marketing ROI by trying to measure brand awareness might seem a waste of time to some. But measuring brand awareness is not about counting one’s total number of likes and shares. It’s the measure of a consumer’s ability to recall your brand and their awareness of your core products or services, which empowers your brand image.

Spreading brand awareness is key. A consumer who isn’t aware of your product will not know where to find you even when they are willing to buy a product like yours. Companies spend fortunes to push their brand into the public arena. Sponsorships, personal events, logos, and slogans are all an effort to make their brand’s image stand sharp. Companies like Coca Cola which spends over $3.3 billion globally on advertising, to Starbucks with their regular online events like “Tweet a coffee”, every company adopts a well-planned strategy to promote their brand’s name.

Brand Awareness to Business Revenue – The ROI Story

Managers often try to relate their marketing budgets to the ROI. The catch here is that there is no direct way to measure how brand awareness increases the number of sales. However, a simple common sense approach is enough to see the connection. The more people know about your brand, the more people try it out, which would translate to an increase in sales. Also, good service makes your customers trust you, increase their loyalty to your brand, and spread positive reviews leading to more sales.

Companies which invest in sponsorship do so, with the aim to make their viewers and audience aware of their product and its utility. This is very useful when these people actually decide that they need it or want it, as they will recall the brand and its product without any effort.

Ways to measure Brand Awareness

Brand Mentions

Everyone today is using social media and can be found online for the major part of a day. As an inevitable outcome of this, online reviews are more frequent. Social listening for your brand mentions is a brilliant place to start tracking your brand’s online reputation. Any chatter related to your brand gives you an insight into customer perceptions. While positive reviews build your name and reputation, the negative chatter around your brand alerts you to things that are not going well or may actually be going wrong. Social media listening offers a complete package of tools for you to measure brand awareness.

You may listen for your brand mentions or your brand phrase/slogan or even a hashtag you advertised during an event or promotion. Keyword-based listening too can give you insights into your business, your customers and their perceptions.

Brand Reach using Content

There are marketing tools which help you track how well your online content is performing. They track the URL to give you a real count of your social media reach. Metrics like shares, retweets, engagement, clicks, likes, and comments are meticulously recorded. Some social listening tools have an in-built feature to record this along with overall sentiment analysis.

Success in today’s business world is predicated on your ability to adopt technology to support your business operations and strategic plans. It’s high time you added a social listening tool to your list of must-have technologies.

Website Traffic and Direct Feedback

Knowing which sources drive in the maximum traffic to your site is yet another way to measure how well your brand is doing. Listening tools or even Google Analytics helps you see where your traffic is coming in from. Increased organic traffic or clicks from social media is a positive sign. If you are lacking in these, you can dig in and strategize to improve your social engagement.

Finally, you may also invest in social media reports to give you a better idea about your branding. Reports generally present segment wise data – the demography that most relates with your content or the geographical location responding positively to your service. First-hand reviews via social media listening is a great and inexpensive way to measure brand awareness.

Social Listening into the Cricket World Cup Buzz

The social media is abuzz with chatter about many of the recent happenings, like the anti-abortion laws, Indian elections, Brexit and so on. We at GenY Labs decided to pick up something for the sports enthusiasts. We listened to the social chatter around the keywords ‘CWC19’and ‘ICC Cricket World Cup’, and our found feed overflowing within just 10 days.

Image courtesy: Wikipedia

The ICC Cricket World Cup

In just 10 days, the event has mustered over 17874 mentions. The cricket world cup of 2019 is the twelfth edition of this international tournament. This year’s tournament started on 30th May and ends on 14th July. CWC 2019’s number of participating teams has seen a decrease from the previous world cup where 14 teams took part. The 10 teams taking part this year are New Zealand, England, India, Australia, West Indies, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, South Africa, Afghanistan.

Public Sentiments around Cricket World Cup ‘19

The public seems divided in its opinion, some positive, some negative yet a majority have tweeted with neutral sentiments.

The masses seem to be put off mainly by the unprofessional umpiring and pouring rain at match venues.

Amidst all the irritation caused by poor weather and poor umpiring standards, Indian Cricketer and the captain of the Indian Cricket team – Virat Kohli could receive heaps of appreciation for his act of true sportsmanship. Everyone was impressed at how he urged all the Indian spectators at The Oval to quit booing Australian cricketer Steve Smith and clap for him instead.

The Nitty Gritty of this year’s Cricket World Cup

Besides tracking the comments online and the attached sentiments, we also looked into the details. Geographically, London is where the event is being most discussed.

When we zoomed in, we found that these were the locations where the chatter was being generated.

Who Spoke about CWC Online?

German football player-Thomas Muller, ex Australian cricketer-Adam Gilchrist, Indian movie star-Preity Zinta and many more have tweeted with much zeal (and nostalgia too at times).

Bloggers took this opportunity to advertise the country’s food for the visitors.

The topics that are trending are shown in this word cloud:

The ICC World Cup Final

The ICC world cup final match between New Zealand and England was quite an event. The World seemed glued to the screens, betting over and praying for their preferred teams. We tried to get this blog updated from last time with the details from last night’s match.

The World’s three most discussed sports events went on alongside – ICC World Cup, Wimbledon, and F1. With over 18000 comments coming in just a couple of hours (and this was only for the keyword “ICC World Cup 2019”), the Internet broke last night. News channels and even the official pages of Wimbledon and ICC found a comic way to talk about this online.

The sentiments around the final match for the cricket world cup though were quite interesting. There was quite some support for New Zealand and many viewers felt it was not right to have the count of boundaries as the winning criterion. However, with England winning their maiden cup, the people seemed to be excited and happy about having a new champion.

One of the most influential profiles to post about the event was ESPN. Besides the regular updates, ESPN cracked some lighthearted jokes about the win too. At one point, they congratulated the Aussie coach (of England’s team) on having won the world cup because the Australian team could not make it to the finals.

To conclude, the entire period and all the 48 matches have been quite thrilling, especially for us. We had missed a lot of details while watching the action on the screen, which social media chatter kept informed us about. As informative and exciting as this event has been, we congratulate Eoin Morgan’s men for their epic win and look forward to more such events to cover.

Inspiring Examples of Social Media Listening Campaigns

The growing buzz around social media listening and monitoring would make some of you wonder if companies really implement these tools. Truth be told, in this day and age, social media has a stronghold in the lives of people. For any brand to make a mark, social media marketing becomes a must. 90% of marketers say social media is important to their business.

Social media listening can be an invaluable asset for social media marketers. In most of the previous blogs, we’ve emphasized the importance of social media listening.

If you still doubt the power of this tool, here are some examples from the corporate world. These companies tapped into social media to listen to the chatter and learn from the insights.

Social Media Listening informs Arby’s Ad Campaigns

For 50 years or more, Arby’s was known for its epic sandwiches. After engaging in a regular social listening session to learn what their customers think about the brand, Arby’s realized that their sauce is equally popular too. Almost about one-third of all the social media comments were about Arby’s sauce and how much people feared running out of it.

Arby’s decided to tap into this very sentiment and start selling their sauces by the bottle with an ad campaign designed around it. They termed this “nightmare scenario” ad campaign – “The Saucepocalypse”. And, the posters were designed drawing inspiration from the famous old apocalypse movies.

The benefits of social listening did not stop here for Arby’s. Next, in an attempt to engage with their audience, Arby’s asked their customers to share their worst sauce-less meal stories. The marketing team saw an opportunity for advertising in this. They picked these stories up and “The Saucepocalypse” posters were based on them. They posted these posters all over social media and on billboards in the towns from where the stories had come in. Soon, the ad campaign was a social media rage. Nearly 50000 bottles of sauces were sold.

Social Media Listening for Customer Insights and Engagement by Hilton

Almost every hour, there’s a tweet mentioning Hilton Hotels. For a brand of Hilton’s stature, it is to be expected that most of their client base would be tech savvy. And most of them turn to social media to list their experiences and sentiments. To maintain quality service, it is essential for the brand to listen to its customers.

On an average, Hilton hotels receive over 1.5 thousand tweets every day and needless to say, Hilton does monitor these mentions assiduously. Hilton tweets/responds to an average of 3.3 posts in an hour. There is a response team (guest service center) collaborating with the call center team. Hilton monitors all the social media handles for its brand as well as hotels. The effort is visible in the constant engagement threads over twitter and other sites.

There have been many instances of happy customers sharing a picture of their cozy room, or how Hilton hotels made their birthday special. Thanks to the use of social listening, Hilton has been doing that efficiently.

However, there are times when customers do put up negative comments too. Many Hilton hotels host important celebrity figures, negative reviews could take a toll on their firm. A constant eye on their social accounts has aided Hilton’s team to avoid major crisis moments and engage with the customers quickly to assist them.

Listening for Market Research by MoneyGram

Leading money transfer company – MoneyGram used social listening to test and deep dive into the study of their industry, product, and competitors. The analysts at MoneyGram were continually monitoring the chatter online to gather a sense of their share of voice on a daily basis. The insights helped them see any shifts in the market and then plan their future strategies accordingly.

The analysis of the existent competition and their own share of voice helped them to critically judge the success of their “Max’s World Adventure” campaign. Their playful and fun campaign targeted at children gathered quite some attention, and the company noticed a jump in their share of voice that very week. MoneyGram has been diligent with their social listening efforts post the campaign too, gathering deeper insights in real-time.

By now, you must have realized that a vigilant eye on social media really boosted the success of the above-mentioned companies. If you feel inspired, try testing the waters using the free plans many social media listening tools provide. Maybe next time, it would be your brand’s story featured here.

PR Crisis Management using Social Listening

Every brand manager’s worst nightmare would be a PR crisis and understandably so. While it might take years to earn goodwill or to build a strong brand reputation, a single negative review could literally seal your brand’s fate. PR crisis management is one of the many use cases of social listening and comes in very handy to foresee, prevent and even completely avoid such disasters.

What is a PR Crisis?

“Publicity is absolutely critical. A good PR story is infinitely more effective than a front page ad”

–Richard Branson

PR crisis moments are not rare. Big brands like KFC, Starbucks, Pepsico, and Taco Bell have all had such crisis moments. Responding well and in time becomes the actual challenge.

PR crises can be disturbing. With the global reach of social media and the Internet, it takes seconds for a story to spread like a wildfire, even if it is just a rumor. Social media can be both your enemy and your friend when it comes to PR crisis management.

Every time a product or a service fails, the brand/company faces a backlash on social media. In 2014, General Motors faced such a crisis when fatalities occurred in car crashes where a design fault in the ignition prevented the airbags from deploying. Samsung too had its share, when the battery on the Galaxy Note 7 was found to overheat and even explode. Both GM and Samsung recalled their faulty products. General Motors created a special website just to educate people about the incident. Samsung used the internet, emails and text messages to recall its products on a global scale, even though the incident was limited to less than 0.1% of the volume of the phones it sold.

Prevent a Potential PR Crisis Before it Spreads

You will not be able to avoid crisis moments at all times. However, you could stay vigilant for the crises which could happen on social media. It is really crucial for any business to be able to extinguish the fire of a social media PR crisis before it blows out of all proportion. How can you possibly do it? The answer is very simple. Pay attention to the growing chatter online and respond to sentiments around your brand on social media using the most inexpensive and easy ways of PR crisis management: through social listening.

Plan Before You Post

It is wise to brainstorm and plan your content before you post anything online. Also, be sensitive to the content you decide to post. Social media posts can go viral within seconds, so if you realize the fault in your post late, chances are that it is already doing rounds on the Internet, being shared onwards and going viral. It would matter little that you deleted your original post. If you have a problem planning for content or a topic to associate your brand with, social listening could be your hero. Listening to the comments around your brand or industry could help you understand the key interest areas of your target audience. Social listening also provides you with the opportunity to learn from any mistakes/successes of your competitors. Keep an eye on their social activities. Take note of their social media policies and how they deal with crisis situations.

Listen to Pay Heed

The most straight forward way to use social listening for PR crisis management is to listen to the chatter and analyze the sentiments of people. What do they think? Are they happy with your brand? Do you have a large following, if yes, how can you grow it further? If not, why not and what can you do to make amends and start afresh? The answers to all these questions come from social listening and are indicative of any future positive/negative reviews you might receive.

If you see negative sentiment building around your brand, the simplest solution lies in taking corrective action. Paying heed to the opinions of your customers and taking steps to resolve their problems will gain you a loyal customer-base while averting a possible PR crisis.

Is Your Brand Listening to the Millennials?

This is undoubtedly the age of technological advancement. Millennials are the first generation to have experienced technological development from the moment they are born and through their years of development. This generation is naturally tech-savvy. It is wrong to assume that millennials use social media for leisurely purposes. Many of them have actually built their careers around social media. The Gen Y is hard to please using the old traditional ways. Influencers, bloggers, vloggers – this generation is full of trends. Keeping up with them can be a challenge yet having them as your customers will help your organic marketing.

Why Should You listen to Millennials?

The answer to this is very simple. Millennials dominate the social media space. According to IBM’s executive report “To buy or not to buy?”, 69% millennials said they would post a positive comment on social media if they are happy clients. In the same survey, 93% responded saying they consult online reviews and comments before they purchase.

These numbers clearly indicate that you get the best of both worlds from these millennials. As happy millennial-customer posts positive comments for your brand and another millennial consults these comments and becomes a prospective customer for you. The cycle goes on.

There’s a caveat though! These same millennials are also active social media users who can rip you reputation to shred when they experience bad customer service. As a cohesive group, with high levels of trust among its members, you can expect one bad review to bring about a great loss of business.

What are You doing Wrong?

Millennials are the new darlings of savvy marketers. If you are trying to get their attention and have not succeeded yet, maybe your strategy is not working out. This generation is a little tough to crack, as they are into multiple things – technology, travel, food, fashion, self-care et cetera. Social listening is a great way to get a sense of their interests.

A combination of traditional and social media marketing can attract millennials to your brand. Most of the time, companies keep hunting for tips to engage these young customers. Here, we try to bring you some insights into what you might be doing wrong:

Building a Modern Perception

If you run through the social media account of any millennial, you will find dozens of trends, conversations, and pop culture jargon. This is a generation with high expectations. For someone who was born with a laptop on their lap, nothing is exciting enough if it doesn’t meet their high standards. If you stick to old concepts when trying to work with millennials, you can’t complain that they walked away.

Using social listening to track their conversations and understand their interests thus becomes crucial for businesses.

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing can get tricky with millennials. There are many influencers and micro-influencers. Choosing the right person can make a difference. From among an army of influencers, micro influencers, and bloggers, you can choose the best and the most influential ones. Someone whom a major part of Gen Y considers an idol. Social listening tools help you monitor the most influential people talking about your brand or industry. Such people can be roped in as advocates for your brand.

Segmentation

Though we are speaking about millennials exclusively, this point applies to people of all ages. No two people are equally alike. They may have similar tastes, but they are not the same. As marketers, we often tend to create groups or segments on the basis of age or gender, etc. Every millennial has a different need or a different priority. They all have clarity on they want, but that doesn’t mean they can be treated the same as their needs might differ and they may seek customizable options.

If you are ready to deliver, how would you know about their choices? What customizations do they need? Social monitoring and listening offer the answer yet again.

In conclusion, with changing times, marketing tools and techniques change too. Make sure you keep up before you become obsolete. While marketing to millennials, start preparing for generation Z as well.

The Overall Sentiment around Your Brand can Tell You a Lot

Sentiment analysis holds up a mirror which helps to reflect the sentiments evoked by your brand’s products and services. Just as a person seeks feedback from their significant others on what they need to keep or change about their personality, brands also need to be open to feedback and to initiate change, if required.

Social listening can help you collect the social sentiment around your brand, followed by the application of sentiment analysis to reveal a surprising lot on what people truly think or feel about your brand.

Sentiment Analysis and Social Media Intelligence

Typically, sentiment analysis helps you get a sense of how people feel about your brand or your product. With the advancement of technology, it’s possible to derive. In fact, Facebook recently faced quite a backlash when it was found to be using sentiment analysis to manipulate people’s emotions, by altering algorithms to track messages which inject positive or negative posts in the feed.

Social listening helps you track all the buzz around your brand as well as that of your competitors too. Sentiment analysis steps in at this point to help you to:

Identify the strong points and the weak points in your performance and your products/services as perceived by your customers, like any strong negative sentiments about your product quality or customer service standards.

Exactly identifying the problem with sentiment analysis

Negative comments report that your customer service department isn’t your strong point because every time a customer calls, they are made to repeat their issue, and even after complaining several times their issue stays unresolved. You now know what is explicitly wrong within the customer service department and can institute a process for complaint resolution.

Judge the public mood before you get into action

Sometimes a novel idea can backfire. Established businesses with loyal customers can also come up with dud campaigns which never take off. Testing the waters to know about people’s perception could help avert a disastrous venture without hampering one’s reputation.

Current Trends and Choices

The best feature of sentiment analysis is how it keeps you informed on current trends and choices, throwing light on the positive buzz around them.

Manage and track issues before they turn into disasters

Sentiment analysis works in real-time to show you the early symptoms of what might be going wrong with your business endeavors. It can help you revise your strategy before a problem magnifies and becomes uncontrollable.

Sentiment Analysis for Competitor Insights

With social listening and sentiment analysis, a marketer does not have to hunt for information about a competitor. This is the best feature of sentiment analysis. You can get an idea of how your audience perceives your brand against your competitors’.

Learning about and from your competition lets you stay ahead and adopt smarter ways. You can judge your competitors’ strategies, products and share of voice in the industry and the amount of hype surrounding them and whether it is all positive.

In case, your industry is brimming with competitors, make sure you look into the details of every one of them to fetch strategic inputs which can help you create your own robust marketing plan.

In conclusion, it must be accepted that AI needs a lot of training before it becomes 100% precise when judging sentiments from comments made by humans. The technology is ever developing and in its present state offers quite an array of benefits already. Marketers today love the fact that the software is tenacious and can filter out hundreds of opinions, which a human might not be able to process in 24 hours, within seconds. This is what makes a social listening tool an essential component of a marketer’s arsenal.