Despite what you might think, there were other things going on in the world recently besides the resignation of Anthony Scaramucci as White House communications chief (see page 8). An example of this was a deal last week in the social listening space. Social listening vendor Synthesio acquired social data firm Social Karma. Synthesio’s plan is to continue making acquisitions—Karma is the brand’s second in 2017—as it builds up its social listening capabilities, TechCrunch reports.
This prompted us to discuss social listening best practices with communicators who have experience using social media to listen to conversations for crisis communications, product development, lead generation and customer service.
For Daniella Peting, social media manager, N. America and global co-lead, Social Media Center for Excellence, at Motorola Solutions, the first step for brands is to set up a search agent with a tool (or tools) to track mentions of your brand. Motorola uses two, HootSuite Insights and Social Report. “We prefer to track every mention of our brand, so we [have Social Report] search everywhere online,” she says, although brands can opt to be more selective and search only particular areas. Social Report allows users to search by keywords, so you’d enter your brand name as well as various spellings of your brand name and keywords people use to go to your web site, she says. Brands can also choose to search by geographic locations.
Listen for Irregularities
When Peting monitors conversation volume surrounding Motorola, she pays particular attention to irregularities, such as spikes. “As you monitor, you begin to see a regular pattern.”
When there’s a spike she moves to HootSuite Insights to look more closely. She often will use the tool’s word cloud to see what words are being used and at what frequency.
Then she’ll return to Social Report to identify influencers in the conversation, investigating their reach, or share of voice. Based on all that information, the brand will determine what the next steps to take are, if any. Next steps could include starting procedures for crisis management, for example.
Typically Peting spends one hour each morning checking for irregularities. She notes that tools can be set up to monitor for bursts in activity surrounding key words and to notify the user when bursts occur. In addition “all day long” she keeps social networks open so she can track messages.
Spinning PR Gold by Listening
Angela Wells, senior director, Oracle Social Cloud, repeats the adage about listening that points out people have two ears, but just one mouth. “Brands that see social only as a bullhorn for their messaging without listening are missing the point,” Wells says.
She sees three ways social listening can help brands: “by turning product ideas heard on social into PR gold; by connecting with influencers; and letting service be your star.”
For example, LeapFrog heard conversations on social about adults wishing that a former product, FridgePhonics, were still around. The brand listened and decided to bring back FridgePhonics.
Another similar example she cites is the snowmobile and ATV maker Polaris, which monitored social and heard the word “pink” in conversations about its snowmobiles. Although skeptical, Polaris created a limited number of pink wraps that could be affixed to its snowmobiles. They sold out.
From there Polaris partnered with a group called Pink Ribbon Riders, which is composed of breast cancer survivors who are avid snowmobilers, to raise money for breast cancer research. Polaris gave the group, via social media, a chance to design a pink wrap. People were able to vote for their favorites on Polaris’ Facebook page and a portion of the sales of the pink wraps went to breast cancer research.
Another example comes from the Mack truck brand, where a trucker mentioned on Twitter, a popular channel for truckers, that he’d found a way to maximize his Mack truck to get better mileage. Mack was monitoring the trucker’s conversation and created a marketing campaign around him. To get access to more information about this case, truckers provided their info to Mack on a landing page. This resulted in sales leads totaling some $4 million gross, Wells says.
A key point regarding listening and customer service, Wells says, is the mistake brands make often, figuring using social will substantially reduce the amount needed to be spent on traditional customer care. Not true. “Customers who want to call for service or to complain will continue to call,” she says. Still, she points to the utility CenterPoint Energy, which listened to its customers during Hurricane Ike and got ahead of the story, posting important information on social in response to events.
CONTACT: [email protected] @AngWWells