All brands say that customers are the most important. And they all claim they listen to their customers. But, with AI social listening tools, they can tap into millions of conversations every day beyond their core brand channels.
With the newest advancements in the AI industry, businesses can now transform unstructured data into actionable, relevant insights that drive business growth and evolve customer experiences. And according to Gartner, 77% of board members view AI as one of the biggest game-changers for CX.
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Furthermore, many people claim that AI social listening can increase your team’s productivity, but is there any evidence to support this? According to Rachelle Bedell, Communications and Engagement Manager for the City of Gilroy, CA, there is.
“Not only does it make us more efficient, it makes us go further,” says Bedell. “It’s like the invention of the graphing calculator for math. We no longer have to sit around and add numbers with paper and a pencil. Instead, we can take what it provides and do so much more.”
But what does “more” look like exactly? This blog explores five practical ways AI social listening can help your team save time.
What even is AI social listening?
AI social listening is the process of analyzing online conversations using artificial intelligence (AI) technology. Specifically, AI technologies and algorithms are used to analyze and interpret the large volumes of data generated from social media channels, blogs, forums, and other relevant online sources. It allows businesses to gain valuable insights by monitoring and understanding customer sentiment, preferences, and trends.
One of the biggest challenges in manual social listening is dealing with unstructured data. AI technologies, such as natural language processing (NLP), can analyze and make sense of this unstructured data.
The impact of AI social listening on business insights
AI-powered social listening plays a crucial role in business growth in these areas:
Brand monitoring
AI social listening saves a bunch of time in scouring the internet. It basically gives you instant results from millions of online conversations in any language or location. It provides the most complete set of brand insights. This is useful because it gives you all your brand mentions in one feed and makes it easier to measure and protect your public reputation.
Sometimes people tag your social profiles in their comments, but sometimes they don’t. And this is what social listening tools can catch.
Here is an example of a Tweet (now X’s) that might go unnoticed because the brand Zara was not tagged.
However, with AI social listening tools, all of these are collected in a single dashboard. The collected mentions then look like this, inside Determ’s tool.
Determ also provides various metrics for single mentions, such as the sentiment, reach, interactions and influencer score.
“If you want to improve your brand visibility, know where you or your client’s brand is mentioned – Determ is the way to go. We increased brand awareness by directly action on our mention results, we connected with our clients and received a full brand picture thanks to Determ.” Kristina Mudri, Customer Relations Group Lead at Barrage
Data analysis and reporting
You may have access to your own social media data. And you have the data from your Google Analytics. But this is rarely the most beneficial thing when proving PR results. Especially to the C-suite when you’re asked to present the results of your work.
Chances are they’re not only asking for your “here’s what I’ve done in the past month” list. They’re also looking for the “here’s what I’ve achieved in terms of results” report or just overall to understand how your efforts made an impact on the audience.
What AI social listening does is it collects, filters, and analyzes data in real-time. This means you can present most of your efforts in a single dashboard. How many people created posts anywhere online mentioning, let’s say, your campaign hashtag or how the talks around your company have grown since you launched a new product?
And for departments like PR, this is the only way to show your results.
Here’s how a good report made for the C-suite might look.
“My favorite thing is at the end of the year when I summarize what Marketing & PR department has done in the past year. The number of mentions in the millions that I could not prove otherwise. And when I compete it to the competition, no one can tell me we didn’t do a good job.” Tatjana Paunoski, Head of PR & Marketing at Bingo
Competitor Analysis
AI-powered social listening offers significant benefits for competitor analysis by allowing businesses to understand and compare their market position comprehensively. Through advanced algorithms, businesses can measure their brand visibility using metrics like Share of Voice, enabling them to assess how often their brand is being mentioned in comparison to their competitors.
This data-driven approach goes beyond mere quantitative metrics, allowing companies to delve into qualitative insights as well.
Additionally, AI social listening helps decipher public opinion, revealing whether sentiments lean towards the business itself or its competitors. This nuanced understanding empowers companies to refine their strategies, capitalize on strengths, address weaknesses, and ultimately gain a competitive edge in the market.
Consumer Insights and Customer Service Enhancement
AI social listening provides remarkable benefits for customer insights and customer service enhancement. As social media and technology level the field for brands of all sizes, customer experience (CX) emerges as the pivotal differentiator, and businesses are turning to innovative solutions like artificial intelligence to enhance it.
Beyond streamlining operations, AI tools offer nuanced insights that revolutionize customer journeys, making them more engaging and supportive. These tools enable the development of compelling CX strategies that cater to customers’ needs, deliver personalized offerings, and foster meaningful relationships.
By leveraging AI-driven customer experience, companies can harness technologies like natural language processing (NLP) and sentiment analysis to decipher customer sentiments and behaviors.
This empowers businesses to optimize interactions, respond proactively to customer concerns, and make informed decisions that elevate overall satisfaction. In a world where AI applications such as behavioral segmentation, predictive analytics, and sentiment analysis redefine customer understanding and engagement, AI social listening emerges as a catalyst for building a more human-centric, impactful customer experience.
Crisis management
During times of crisis or unfavorable publicity, AI social listening offers real-time monitoring and notifications. By detecting potential problems in their early stages, marketing teams can swiftly respond, take necessary measures, and minimize any harm to their reputation.
Let’s look at a chart showing mentions over time for Lizzo. On the 1st of August, ‘23, three of Lizzo’s former dancers filed a lawsuit against Lizzo and her dance director, claiming that they were sexually harassed and they worked in a hostile environment.
The chart effectively highlights the significant impact the event had on the audience. For Lizzo’s PR team, the ongoing monitoring of mentions holds significant importance as it allows them to gauge the duration of Lizzo’s presence in public discussions and assess the extent of potential damage to her reputation.
Additionally, within just the first day of the dancers sharing their story, there was a clear indication of the impending surge in attention. This can be attributed to the fact that on the initial day of their disclosure, the mention benchmark doubled.
Usually, Lizzo garnered around 2-3 thousand daily conversations. However, this narrative swiftly prompted an immediate increase to five thousand mentions on the first day and a subsequent jump to twenty thousand the following day.
Now, let’s take a look at the sentiment chart.
There is indeed a notable increase in negative mentions, as anticipated. Nevertheless, upon examining the sentiment chart, it becomes evident that some of the comments exhibited a positive tone. Furthermore, as the story gradually subsided, the discrepancy in ratios between positive and negative sentiments became less pronounced.
Without the invaluable insights provided by AI social listening, comprehending the magnitude of conversation generated by this story would pose a significant challenge for Lizzo’s team.
What are the key components of AI social listening?
If you’re new to AI Social Listening, it’s crucial to familiarize yourself with the essential components that make it work effectively:
Data Collection
AI social listening tools employ diverse methods to gather data from social media platforms, online forums, blogs, and news websites. This dataset encompasses mentions, comments, reviews, hashtags, and other pertinent user-generated content.
Natural Language Processing (NLP)
NLP is a foundational aspect of AI social listening. It facilitates the analysis of textual data by comprehending language patterns, sentiment, and context. NLP algorithms are pivotal in identifying keywords, and sentiments, and extracting valuable insights from unstructured data sources.
Sentiment Analysis
Sentiment analysis, powered by AI, assesses the sentiment expressed in user-generated content across social media. This analysis categorizes posts and comments as positive, negative, or neutral, offering marketing teams a clear understanding of customer perceptions towards their brand, products, or campaigns.
Data Visualization and Reporting
AI social listening platforms frequently provide tools for data visualization, presenting insights in visually engaging and easily digestible formats. Interactive dashboards and reports empower marketing teams to identify trends, patterns, and actionable insights swiftly.
Grasping the concept of AI social listening, recognizing its advantages over conventional methods, and understanding these essential components lays a solid foundation for marketing teams to integrate this technology into their strategies effectively.
With the capacity to efficiently and accurately process vast amounts of data, AI social listening equips marketers to make informed decisions based on data, gain invaluable customer insights, and maintain a competitive edge in the dynamic digital landscape.
Use Determ to harness the full potential of AI social listening and monitor various social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, and LinkedIn.
To sum up
In conclusion, the power of AI social listening is undeniable. As brands strive to connect with their customers and adapt to the ever-evolving digital landscape, these advanced tools offer an unparalleled opportunity to tap into the pulse of conversations and sentiments that shape their reputation, strategy, and success.
From unstructured data to actionable insights, from crisis management to customer engagement, AI social listening transcends traditional methods, allowing businesses to make informed decisions, enhance customer experiences, and stay ahead in today’s competitive market. As AI continues to shape the future of business, embracing the potential of AI social listening is not just an advantage, but a necessity for those seeking to thrive in the dynamic world of modern marketing.
