We have all heard the expression, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade,”
Let’s say I’ve met a lot of lemons in my consumer marketing journey. Everyone has taught me a lesson.
The lemons have taught me how to look at them from a different perspective…
Let’s invite the lemons to the party. The digital age and the growth of social media have welcomed a new type of data that is perhaps even more important to building and scaling a brand than the numbers…words. Yes, words matter because words have meaning.
The “word data” can come in the form of a Facebook post, a hashtag, a DM from a customer, a Yelp review, or a tweet. Regardless of how it gets into the universe, the reality is that this is free immediate market research.
And remember, from our prior post about Communities, when you communicate with one, you communicate with many since birds of a feather flock together.
Reaching out to your audience and striking up in-person or social media conversations helps you understand their thoughts, preferences, and experiences with products and services. You will hear their opinions (there might be some lemons) and suggestions on improving your content. Even if the feedback and insights taste sour like lemons, handled carefully and thoughtfully, you might end up with premium lemonade!
A recent article in Forbes points to seven tactics companies can use to create real actionable insights from real-time social data:
- Monitor your brand and your industry (google alerts are simple and crucial)
- Build a demographic picture of your social audience and engagers (are they whom you thought?)
- Serve your customers better by understanding what they “like” as you build content
- Measure the social engagement of your content (not the vanity metrics)
- Use public sentiment to create predictive models
- Identify prospective customers with “needs” and “intents” (outbound social)
Are you ready to make some lemonade?
Social Data for Brand Growth FAQs
How can negative feedback be beneficial in social media?
The negative feedback provides opportunities for improvement and innovation in marketing strategies.
Why is engaging with audiences important?
Engaging helps understand the needs and preferences of the customers. It gives insights that help craft strategies for targeted and effective marketing.
What methods can gather actionable insights from social data?
To gather actionable insights from social data, we can consider the following –
- Social Listening: Monitoring brand mentions and conversations across platforms.
- Sentiment Analysis: Evaluating the tone and emotions in social media posts to understand consumer attitudes.
- Trend Analysis: Identifying patterns or trends in social media activity to strategize the marketing strategies.
- Competitor Analysis: Keeping an eye on competitors’ social media to benchmark and identify opportunities.
- Engagement Analysis: Measuring the interaction with the content to refine strategies.
- Demographic Analysis: Characteristics of audience to create better and actionable content.
