Before the digital era, social listening meant physically meeting your customers and listening to what they had to say. Then it took the form of feedback forms. But today, more than 4.5 billion use the internet, with 3.8 billion of them on social media. Today knowing what your customers say about you on social media has become important as ever. Accordingly, social listening has once again evolved.
The topic was explored further in a recent webinar themed, “Using Social Listening to Gain Competitive Insights.” It was organized by Digital X, a Sri Lankan marketing agency specializing in data engineering and programmatic advertising. Sharing insightful case studies, the webinar highlighted the importance of utilizing social listening in the modern world.
But what does this social listening mean in this digital era?
According to Vishal Agarwal, Cofounder and CEO of LocoBuzz, “The most important thing to understand is that many people will turn to social media to write about their negative experiences over their positive ones, which can be amplified by their social following. This can be quite damaging for a business if not managed properly.” He shared these sentiments during the webinar organized by the Digital X team on the subject.
As Vishal puts it, another important factor in managing a brand’s reputation on social media is to address these issues promptly. This is because the social media landscape changes constantly. It only takes a few hours, even minutes for a negative Facebook post or a Tweet to go viral. Consequently, monitoring all social media channels, even if the brand does not have a prominent social presence on some channels is a must to maintain a positive image.
Invariably, brands have turned towards social listening out of necessity. Locobuzz is one such tool, which helps brands manage their online reputation across different social media platforms. It also offers real-time monitoring, which allows brands to understand the general sentiment towards them at all times.
During the webinar, Vishal also shared that Locobuzz can be integrated with other third-party apps such as ERP systems, various automation tools and bots. For instance, Locobuzz can be integrated with the core email marketing platform of a company. This allows specific emails to be sent to subscribers who’ve shown a positive or negative sentiment towards a product.
Such integrations and interactions can enrich the user experience, as well as help retain customers. By integrating with bots such as Facebook and Viber bots, brands can easily scale their marketing communications. It only takes a few clicks without any major investment. All this while still retaining brand reputation on social platforms. Another added advantage of a social listening tool such as Locobuzz is that it will help brands gauge competitor activities. They can understand the general sentiment towards the competitive brands and understand any emerging trends in their respective industry.
Social listening in Sri Lanka
The team at Digital X was able to deploy the social listening platform Locobuzz for several Sri Lankan brands as well. These brands operate in the retail, banking industry as well as the government sector who were fronting the fight to curb the COVID-19 pandemic in Sri Lanka.
Particularly during the lockdown period one of the most important things were delivery services. Retailers did not have any insight into how well their operation was fulfilling their consumer needs. However, retailers using Locobuzz were able to understand the progress of their door-to-door delivery service on a real-time basis. This helped them to refine their operations and serve their customers better. Another example is how real-time data and insights helped the government agency combat the coronavirus through understanding the digital sentiment.
All in all, managing the online reputation on all digital platforms is vital for a brand to create a positive outlook towards its consumers. A tool such as Locobuzz will definitely help any brand that is concerned about general sentiment.
If you like to know more about how Locobuzz can help your business, the team at Digital X would be happy to assist you and even trial run social listening for a few weeks. So you can understand how it can impact your own businesses. You can reach out to kithmini@adstudio.cloud to get your trial activated. If you get a chance to try, let us know your feedback on the comments below.