La República, one of the most important economic and financial newspapers in Colombia, published the latest article by the president of ATREVIA, Núria Vilanova, titled “Social Listening, a Profitable Investment”. Social listening is vital for the communication world, as it helps us better understand our stakeholders and develop sound ideas to strengthen our positioning. Today, we have access to a global space where more than 4.2 billion users converse 24 hours a day: social networks. Multidirectional and dynamic conversations evolve and provide feedback in real-time.
This is the context in which brands operate today and the ten reasons why it is more important than ever for brands to engage in social listening.
- Listen before developing a communication plan. Its success will depend on our ability to know what our audiences are interested in and what they would like to learn about us; to identify what qualities and defects they associate with our products.
- Listen and tell your story. Your story will be told whether or not you tell it. In the context of the Ukrainian war, we have observed much confusion between companies that have decided to close their businesses in Russia or those that have agreed to maintain their activity so as not to harm the population. Both decisions are valid, but they must be communicated and explained firsthand.
- Listen to determine whether your message was compelling. What may be apparent to us may not be clear to our audiences. If the subject matter is very sensitive, this mismatch between reality and information can compromise our reputation.
- Listen to limit the effects of potential attacks among our audiences and develop new strategies for future communications tactics. For example, an energy company came under attack from activists and decided to communicate all its sustainability activities, something it had never done before. It did not convince the activists, but they knew they had improved their image with customers who were unaware of their commitment by listening. To remain silent would have been far worse.
- Listening is part of social intelligence, a trend increasingly followed by companies such as Mondelez, McDonald’s, and Coca-Cola. Listening is used to measure and understand and know the feelings and expectations of stakeholders. As opposed to focus groups, social networks allow users to share experiences without feeling restricted, thus allowing us to build a genuine and reliable profile of our target groups and learn how they act in their natural state.
- Listen for commercial intelligence purposes. This is a step further than social intelligence, which takes advantage of social networks’ immediacy to define the product, detect unmet needs, and improve customer satisfaction.
- Listen because current times provide us with the message. Prior to any communication effort, it is crucial to understand our audiences’ state of mind. It happened during the confinement and now with the war. The same message at different times has different effects. What is favorable today may be negative tomorrow.
- Listen to avoid collateral damage; to know where and when to be or not to be. There have always been advertising and media outlet boycotts. In the past, they had less scope. Now, users coordinate, discuss, and make decisions through social networks.
- Listen because the whole market is a conversation itself. If you miss that conversation, you miss the market in which you operate. This is an age-old definition, but it is more relevant than ever. Today that conversation is becoming more prominent, global, and plural.
- Listening is the most profitable investment: it allows us to improve relations with stakeholders, add value to our offer, reduce dissatisfaction and avoid mistakes. All of this benefits our reputation and profits.
Click here to read the full article originally published in La República.