Think of how powerful a brand would be if it knew what consumers were talking about and looking for on the internet.

Social listening metrics make this possible. One of the hottest and fastest-growing trends in social media marketing, social listening metrics help brands analyze digital conversations, be they about a specific topic, their brand, or even their competitors. The data harnessed from social listening can help our brand increase conversions, improve customer satisfaction, improve product design, and even increase lead generation.

Imagine eavesdropping on consumers—but harmlessly and positively. In fact, according to over two-thirds of marketers, social listening has helped increase brand value exponentially in the past year itself.

Social listening is a great way to gather intel and research from the market; it helps us determine consumer needs and pain points and understand their reasons for approaching competitors. Brands can use this intelligence to make informed business decisions, marketing strategies, product strategies, etc., all contributing towards a positive impact on the overall business goals and reputation.

Understanding social metrics

A buzzing phrase, “social listening,” is the art of monitoring and analyzing social media channels and search engines to understand where our brand has been mentioned, what the competitor mentions are compared to our brand on these channels, and what related keywords consumers are using to reach our brand and its offerings.

Through social listening, we can:

• Track mentions: Brands have access to real-time mentions through social listening. We can type in keywords or hashtags on social media channels or search engines to gather valuable information on what customers are saying about our products and services, including their likes and dislike about our brand.
• Track trending content: Social listening allows us to understand trending information and topics related to our business.
• Track competitors: Through social listening, our brand can easily understand what competitors are doing, analyze the trends they are picking up on, the keywords they use to approach their target audience, etc.

Technically put, social listening metrics are systems or standards of measurement wherein metrics denote values that measure campaign performance. Without metrics, marketers wouldn’t know (tangibly) if their campaigns were successful. In short, metrics are the currency by which we measure our marketing success.

Our brand can get ahead of the game with a good social listening strategy. Here’s how.

• Understanding our audience: Through social listening, we can understand consumer needs and wants and the steps we need to take to fulfill them.
  Example: Spotify is well-known for listening to its customers, and it constantly uses Twitter feedback to improve its product and redress customer grievances. This has helped Spotify retain customers, build trust and loyalty, and create a world-class customer service approach that other brands look up to.
• Improve the product: Social listening helps us uncover valuable business insights into how well our product works for customers.
  Example: McDonald’s deploys social listening metrics to understand how it can bring new flavors into the market and which flavors would work in which geographical locations.

Cashing in on social listening metrics can prove to be very beneficial for our business, but like every other marketing strategy, social listening also makes use of specific metrics to uncover market potential. At Konnect Insights, we objectively use social listening metrics to help brands discover market opportunities.

8 Important Social Listening Metrics To Measure A Marketing Campaign

1. Mentions

Brand mentions are extremely popular on social media. Wherever we may look, we will find consumers tagging brands to either get the brand’s attention or bring the brand to the public’s attention. For example, a tweet that reads, “Dear @nestle, your milkmaid made my Thanksgiving cooking easier!” Understanding why our brand has been tagged can be extremely useful in improving business and product intelligence; brands can also use mentions as testimonials or create a social media campaign with them.

We can measure mentions in the following ways –

• The number of mentions: The number of mentions our brand has on social media is directly proportionate to the awareness it has generated among our audience. The more we are mentioned, the more likely our brand will trend on social media.
• The reach of mentions: Brand mentions are only helpful if they reach a wide audience. Brands use creative ways to improve their outreach – through memes, testimonials, or giveaways. This improves not only the total number of mentions but also the reach. It’s also important for brands to have influencers mentioning them on social media to ensure a larger reach to a wider audience.
• Share of voice on social media: Share of voice is an important social listening metric that helps us understand our brand’s marketing position viz-a-viz competitors. It helps us set benchmarks and goals so that we can use the insights to improve audience awareness.
• Share of positive mentions – net promoter score: A net promoter score, or an NPS, is a benchmarking tool that helps us measure metrics like customer loyalty, customer satisfaction, and customers’ eagerness for our brand. It helps to derive insights into how well our brand is received in the market and whether our consumers would recommend our products to others.

With Konnect Insights, brands can improve their digital presence by gaining insight into their digital health. We help brands improve their online reputation and cash in on their core strengths.

2. Engagement

When we talk about conversions, we often refer to engagement. Engagement metrics include social sharing, following, comments, likes, and even direct messaging. While the motivation behind these actions may differ, the outcome is the same: customer or prospect engagement.

Interacting with customers helps build loyalty and trust; it tells the customer that the brand is interested in listening to them and their queries and is working towards resolving them. Trust and loyalty are the two aspects of improving conversions; therefore, engagement equals conversions.

For example, Konnect Insights worked with an e-commerce brand to improve its level of customer and market interactions.

Also Read: 5 Types of Social Listening and How Konnect Insights Can Help Create Them

3. Brand awareness

What is brand awareness? Is it just about how many people know about our brands? Brand awareness isn’t just measured in terms of the number of customers a brand has but also the outreach it has, even to people who don’t use its products.

For example, let us consider the brand awareness that most luxury brands have generated. Not everyone can afford an Audi or a Bvlgari, but almost everyone knows about them.

Brand awareness is built in several ways, from social media campaigns to a brand’s identity and story; it is about creating awareness so that a wider audience knows about the brand, even if they don’t use it.

Social listening is a great tool to help build brand awareness. Through social listening, we can generate insights about how many people know about our brand, among which demographics or geographic locations it is most popular, and in which areas we need to strengthen or build brand awareness.

Konnect Insights uses scaled big-data technologies. We are so thorough that we help our brands listen in on every online conversation, so they can leverage them to suit their requirements.

Also Read: How Can Social Listening Improve Marketing Strategies

4. Demographic data

Brands use social listening tools to analyze data based on demographic information and behavioral insights. Demographic data includes data gathered based on user profiles. These include language spoken, age, gender, occupation, place of residence, interests, preferences, social media channels used, etc.

By using social listening tools via this metric, our brand can easily analyze specific conversations based on demographic data. For example, we can understand the problems a millennial crowd has with our product or the pain points of a high-income audience in the 50s.

Through demographic data, brands can also create customer segments or profiles, which help in catering to specific audiences and widening the reach to that target group.

With Konnect Insights, brands have the opportunity to segregate their users based on demographic details and use this data to improve brand health.

5. Influencer analysis

Influencers play a huge role in determining a brand’s audience. Influencers have a huge reach on social media and can easily identify and analyze their audience.

For example, a fitness influencer has created a niche audience interested in fitness and wellness regimes. Therefore, a brand specializing in this space would do well to have fitness influencers endorse their products.

This method helps brands filter their audience. Influencers know what the audience likes, what content they are likely to consume, and when they will consume it.

Brands can do a lot by leveraging this information to their advantage. By conducting an influencer analysis, we can understand which influencers have the maximum reach and potential, what connections they have with other brands, and how well they can supplement our marketing strategy.

We at Konnect Insights believe in helping brands undertake influencer analysis; through this, brands can identify executives, thought leaders, bloggers, etc., who are leading in their space and can consider partnering and collaborating with them to improve brand awareness.

6. Conversation share

Conversation share is yet another social listening metric that measures the number of mentions a brand receives in a broad conversation. For example, Patagonia’s recent news about the founder giving back all profits to nature sparked much conversation, not just in the apparel industry but also in terms of climate change.

Why is conversation sharing important? When our audience searches for something online, they input keywords into a search engine or social media platforms. They are casting a net into the sea, hoping to catch something valuable.

Will our brand be the fish that catches their bait? Conversation sharing helps our brand dominate the search engine, so we need to use social listening tools to understand what the trending conversations are so that we can be a part of them. One way to be part of conversations is to spark them, but if we can’t spark a conversation, we can at least keep them going. For example, many brands use trending reels and trending songs to “get in on the conversation”.

Brands need to be part of meaningful and impactful conversations. At Konnect Insights, we help brands monitor specific conversations they can then be part of and help them generate valuable insights, reach a larger audience, and engage with prospects and consumers better.

7. Sentiment score – Customer satisfaction feedback

Analyzing customer sentiments is another essential aspect of social listening. As a tool, this uses natural language processing to analyze whether a social post has a positive effect, a negative effect, or a neutral effect.

This analysis helps understand customer satisfaction. Many brands monitor customers’ sentiments towards their products to understand their pain points and positive feedback.

Even positive feedback is helpful for the brand to understand the various offerings and benefits its product line could have, in addition to the ones it already knows about. If the sentiment score is low, the brand can use the insights to improve its product offerings.

With Konnect Insights, brands can respond to consumers in an impactful way that increases brand loyalty and engagement.

You May Also Like: How Can Social Listening Improve the Customer Experience

8. Number of leads

Leads are directly proportionate to business sales. Leads are typically prospects or potential buyers and include

• New followers,
• Website or social media page visitors, or
• People signing up for a newsletter or freebie.

However, even the digital world can be chaotic, and not every lead turns into a qualified lead. Nevertheless, through social listening, brands can look for specific leads that have the potential to convert into customers.

This typically involves using marketing strategies where predictive language is leveraged to define products in such a way that they come up as search results for specific people who intend to purchase them. Through social listening, brands can also jump in on conversations about their products, which can help them turn every onlooker into a lead.

For example, many brands use platforms like Twitter and Quora to describe their products’ benefits or the convenience they can bring to a consumer’s life.

Conclusion

Social listening metrics are the marketing strategies that help our business improve sales, increase engagement, and enhance customer satisfaction. Social media is a goldmine for marketers, but while the possibilities of increasing outreach are abundant, it becomes imperative to use tools to a brand’s advantage to make the most of the outreach and get the best return on marketing investments.

At Konnect Insights, we help brands make sense of all the data, insights, and information they gather from the internet. With our social listening tools, brands avoid getting overwhelmed with information and instead use it objectively to make necessary changes to their marketing campaigns and improve product design.

In a nutshell, social listening can be immensely helpful for brands looking to scale their business and increase awareness—by simply using data. If your business is excited to make a lasting impact, contact us at Konnect Insights.