1. Get a Great Social Media Listening and Analytics Tool
There's really no shortcut to achieving this: if companies and brands want enough quantity and quality of social media data to do consumer insights, they need a good tool. They can't monitor social media themselves because the volume of information and data is simply enormous. A good social media listening tool will handle this for companies and brands so that they can focus on consumer insights. A great social media listening tool needs to equip:
1) Strong Listening Capabilities.It needs to capture data from all major social media platforms and deliver it in real-time at one place. Companies and brands have four key questions to ask when choosing a good social media listening tool: 1. Does It Cover All the Social Platforms I Care About? 2. Is Its Data Delivered in Real-Time or Do I Have to Wait to Get Results? 3. Can It Provide Filters to Narrow the Search, or Do I Only Get a Jumble of Information? 4. Can the Team Be Supported by Training and Implement Quickly?
2) Excellent Analytical CapabilitiesWe're not all data scientists. But that doesn't mean companies and brands can't make more informed business decisions based on social media statistics and conversations. Look for a tool that can handle both massive amounts of data and information, a tool that can even use machine learning to continuously learn to optimize and improve the final results presented based on every aspect of what the company and brand need to know. Great brands are adept at using social media insights to shape their products and business strategies. What they do is integrate powerful, easy-to-use software with some execution with excellence. 2. Do Some Target Audience Analysis Obviously, the first step to gaining consumer insights is to find out more about the consumers who are related to the brand. Even if companies and brands think they know everything about the consumers who buy their products and services, social media will give them a larger sample to confirm their thinking, and they may be surprised. Start by listening to brand names and collecting enough amount of data, preferably thousands. Good social media analytics tools not only provide the age, gender, location, and language of these social media users, but they also provide sentiment or mood analysis. Companies and brands can look for unexpected information and use this to guide the way they communicate with their customers. 3. Discover Brand-Related Topics It's not enough to know whether the consumer feedback is positive or negative or to read some of their reviews every day. Don't you want to know about the scenarios where they mention your brand name when consumers are talking about your brand, or what else are they talking about? For example, Nike wouldn't be surprised to learn that people mention their brand name when talking about fashion or basketball. But it may be surprising to learn that a large group of consumers mentions Nike when discussing Asia-Pacific politics. And most of these users are between the ages of 18-24 who live in the U.S. and mostly talk about the brand on Instagram. This insight drives future marketing campaigns that allow companies and brands to reach consumers in new and interesting ways. 4. Identify The Platforms Where Consumers Are Talking About The Brand Social media listening will guide companies and brands on where conversations about your brand are happening. For example, it may not be surprising to know that Instagram is the very social platform where consumers talk often about major cosmetic brands. But it may be shocking to know that Facebook is far behind. If a cosmetics brand doesn't tap into Instagram marketing in 2019, it is highly likely that it lost a lot. Do the same research for your own brand and industry, and you'll quickly learn if your current social strategy makes sense or if you need to consider other places to communicate with your customers. 5. Find Consumer Insights From Competitors Companies and brands can perform all of these analyses on other major players in their industry. Start your analysis with information that mentions your brand and your key competitors: which brands are mentioned the most, who has the most engagement, and who has the best consumer feedback? If one brand is doing well, then your next task is to try to figure out what they're doing right and how they're doing the same thing. You can also carve out a more accurate portrait of the typical consumer by looking at the entire industry as a whole.
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