Social listening has been gaining ground as an essential tool for online marketing. This trend is clearly visible in the fact that an increasing number of companies are tuning in to listen to online chatter every day. And this is for a reason. Active social listening has motivated businesses to perform better. Companies have started to use social media listening centers to monitor and analyze social data. This is how they monitor online reputation and derive actionable insights.
What is a Social Media Listening Center?
You must have heard of brand offices having sleek glass rooms with monitors displaying graphs and charts all over. Every other brand like Dell, Cisco, Tampa Bay, Gatorade seem to have these. These spaces are for the social media team. They monitor their brand’s performance online as the elite system pulls in data. The social media listening center helps an organization monitor real-time tweets, reviews, heat maps and shifts in sentiment. Every department works in tandem with the information which goes out of this room. Hence, it is ideal to concentrate all social listening activities to a dedicated area. This helps ramps up your crisis management strategy and allows you to react well in time.
Why is a Social Media Listening Center a Necessity Now?
The effectiveness of having a centrally communicative system providing actionable information is self-explanatory. However, setting up such a system would require resources. But here’s a business case to justify such an investment:
- Everyone has access to data. When you have a centralized system for social listening and data analysis you can team up with other departments and change the way your company shares information.
- When you have a dedicated team, you are listening to the chatter and deriving insights round the clock. Your decisions are no more based on guesswork but are backed by the insights that you got from your target audience.
- Using a social listening tool makes data more accessible. You can grant access to easily comprehensible tips to all your employees. Data is presented in well-thought-out visualizations which are easier to understand.
- When you are monitoring data round the clock, there are very low chances of being hit by an overnight crisis. Your social media team would be able to jump into action at the first sign of a negative mention.
- Apart from these additional advantages, you get all the other benefits of using a social listening tool. This includes ease of doing market research, content marketing, influencer marketing et cetera.
- A social listening command center goes a long way to help both your customers as well as your employees. As a result, you can build your business better. By listening to your customers, you get to know about their needs and expectations. When you deliver, you win their support. For an employee trying to figure out ways to improve business for the brand, these insights or pointers are of great help.
In Conclusion
Top brands and startups have all started diving deeper into social conversations. For some, it is to measure mentions, while others may use it to generate leads or manage crises. Whatever be the case, social listening has been on the rise and a social listening command center helps to make the process more streamlined.