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Listen to Social Media Conversations - Gain Insight Into Your Brand Image

Listening is important in business. In order to know what people say about your brand, you need to listen to your customers, as well as the people in your target market. Traditionally, you can get the response and opinions of people through surveys. But while effective, surveys have two limitations: they cost money and they cannot give you the response you would need all the time. Hence, many brands now use Social Media to listen to their market, their intended audience. This way, you can know exactly what your customers are thinking about.

Social Media such as social networking websites reveal what most brand or business owners want to know: how people respond to their brand, what people are talking about regarding their brand, and ultimately what they are thinking – because their thoughts are published through the use of blogs, discussion forums, and other similar tools and functions. Now, this isn’t to say that listening to Social Media users can ultimately replace syndicated research done by reputable and esteemed companies. After all, these companies can effectively map out trends in the market (or the “buzz,” in more common terms). Buzz, as shown in many studies, is known as one of best indicator of sales. Research can help you learn more about the trends in your market, but they are not effective when you want to know what exactly your audience is thinking about your brand or about your service. Basically, it is not effective if you want to know their exact thoughts on practically anything related to your business.

Consider this: you can get surveys for 10,000 dollars, while 100,000 dollars can get you surveys with expert analysis. This analysis specializes in mapping out trends—the interest of the market, their age, their demographics, among others. The surveys cost more if the required respondents of the survey are special or hard to find (for example, people in a specific location, people with specific ailments or conditions, among others).These surveys are carefully mapped out to detect any change in trend, but  surveys very rarely answer what you or the researchers do not ask. In a survey, the information you get will be limited by what you ask to the respondents. This is, obviously, not necessarily a bad thing, since these are questions you want answered by the respondents. However, there will be questions that you can forget to ask or questions in areas you are simply not aware of—questions that are essential to your business and your brand.

For example, you are concerned with how your customers perceive the image of your brand or how they find your products or your service. But what if your customers are more concerned with the price of your products? This is a concrete example of one of the limitations of traditional syndicated research—on the one hand, you get what you paid for; on the other hand, you don’t get all the necessary information.

A more in-depth type of research can address this limitation—but also only to a certain extent. This is by interviewing focus groups. A focus group is composed of seven to 15 people, each one a representative of your target market. Here, you can talk to them and ask questions for a few hours. This type of research is more dynamic, since you can ask them practically anything and everything; and in return you receive spontaneous reactions and opinions. This type of response the most valuable type of response you will get in any form of research or survey. However, the concern here is the quality of the focus group. Again, you are limited not by the questions but by your respondents—you can never be too certain of the quality of the members of your focus group. You are lucky if your focus group has analytical members or those who can provide valued content and response, but this is never guaranteed.

Listening to Social Media users is one way to remedy the limitations of traditional research because you will not be limited by your research methods and your respondents. The key in getting valuable information from your audience is by getting them in their natural habitats, since the information should never be forced out. The respondents themselves should volunteer the information. The insight is valuable if the biases of surveys are removed, and the limitations of focus groups are eradicated. And this is what you get when you listen to the users of Social Media, information at its purest form—raw, pure, and honest.

Users of Social Media talk about your products and services on a daily basis. They express their opinion regarding your store, your prices, and your promotions. They compare your products with your competitors. In a nutshell, they talk about what matters to them and not what you think matters. In a way, you can know and learn about the buzz judging from the bulk of the content created by Social Media users.

Listening to Social Media users will definitely help your brand because these people share valuable insight, insight that you may never get from syndicated surveys. And when you integrate this practice of listening to Social Media users in your business practice, you can easily detect any problems, bad publicity, positive or negative buzz, important comments, and valuable suggestions. Considering the bulk of the content created, it is possible to get the most insightful comments from the most critical and intelligent customers, something a focus group can rarely accomplish.

Of course, this practice has limitations too. For one, the information garnered by listening to Social Media users will never be representative of all your consumers; after all, only those willing to talk are talking. Obviously, the people concerned here are merely those who are participants in Social Media. Specifically, you can only get the response of the creators and the critics in the Social Media demographic hierarchy, a significant sector in the Social Media population although not the biggest in number. Meanwhile, in contrast, a syndicated research makes sure the sector of your market is involved in the survey. The volume of the information can also be overwhelming, and not all of them are useful. This is why you will need technology to help segregate the chatter from the valuable insight, since not all the participants in Social Media are not representatives of your intended audience.

Nonetheless, it cannot be denied that listening to Social Media users can help your brand. It can fill the gap that traditional research cannot complete and this can also help you know the buzz or the trend online, which is becoming a very significant influence in any market today.

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