Brand listening is a key part of the most in-depth market research and you should definitely not do without it… If you care about your company’s reputation!
We imagine that you really care about your brand name and want to make and keep it as positive as possible.
But what is your company’s real reputation today?
Listening to the network is absolutely necessary precisely to understand what your company’s reputation is, avoid crisis and image damage, and constantly improve your customers’ opinion constantly.
In short, create all the basic prerequisites so that you can grow more and more in your target market and outperform your competitors.
But what specifically is brand listening and why should no company ever give it up?
Definition and meaning of brand listening
Brand listening, more commonly known as social listening, is the interception and monitoring of online feedback and mentions directed at a company’s brand. In this case, of your company.
Listening to the network is a key part of market analysis, as it allows you to monitor your reputation, deepen consumers’ opinion of your brand, and make the right business decisions at the right time.
Does it seem little?
The point is that you should not give up on intercepting messages that relate directly to your company and your products or services. Those that “speak” directly about you. In a world where a viral “epidemic” can break out in a matter of hours, you need to be aware of exactly what is being said about you.
And by “you” I mean your brand, your products, your employees, and everything about you.
No excuses. If a consumer suddenly speaks poorly of one of your products because he or she has had a problem, has had a bad experience, or simply has their boxes turned, you need to know right away so that you can react before a bad opinion turns into a fire that is impossible to tame.
But it doesn’t end there! Collecting these conversations allows you to do much more.
Read also: Social listening: what it is and why you can’t do without it today
First, brand listening allows you to assess what is known in the jargon as “reputation.” Simply put, it lets you know whether people are speaking well or badly about you.
Second, it allows you to get inside your customers’ heads, finding out exactly what they think: what image they have of your products, what they associate you with, what drives their purchasing choices. Isn’t that the dream of any entrepreneur?
Third, it helps you quantify your “online visibility,” that is, how much your brand is being talked about online and how many people you are reachingoutside of your marketing investments.
This visibility is called “earned”(earned media in English), because it is the end result of everything you are doing.
This means that the better your marketing, the more people, blogs and newspapers will be brought in to spontaneously talk about you (hopefully always in positive terms!).
Let us better clarify the concept of “earned media,” because it is most important for understanding the principle behind network listening.
Media earned by your brand? What does it mean?
You’ve probably already seen the diagram below on a company’s online presence, which is a bit dated but still more than valid.
As you see there are three different types of media:
- “proprietary media,” which is all the content you publish yourself and can directly control: your blog, your social profiles, your campaigns. They make up the hard core of the media talking about you, but their magnitude is not that significant.
- Then there is “paid media,” that is, your sponsored campaigns on social networks, Google, online newspapers, etc. that are visible in spikes, at the time you actually pay for them to be visible. If you don’t pay, they disappear.
- Then there is finally “earned media,” which is all the content about you that has been spontaneously posted by someone else. It’s all the visibility you get as a result of your activities in proprietary and paid media: people talking about you, reviews, articles mentioning you, influential people using your products, satisfied customers posting photos with your products, and so on, all of which help you amplify your online presence even more.
As you can see in the chart, earned media is the most relevant percentage and the one that can grow the most over time if you manage it right. They are also free because you don’t have to directly spend to increase them!
But you need to make sure you can measure, monitor and manage them, noticing if they become negative in any way and interacting to nurture your audience’s interest.
Otherwise, in addition to taking great risks, you will miss the opportunity to understand what is in people’s heads when they talk about you.
In conclusion
Brand listening, or rather social listening, is essential for all companies: from the smallest that have yet to make their way online, to the medium-sized ones that face increasingly fierce competition, to the larger ones that are on everyone’s lips every day.
Personally, I advise you not to waste any more time and start a network listening project right away.
Don’t know how to do it?
No problem: contact us now to tell us about your business and your needs!
There are many opportunities to grow; don’t miss them.
