Rebel Thinking

From Qualified Social Listening to Digital Brand Strategy in 5 steps

GoodRebels

3 February 2015

“Te lo mereces y lo sabes”
(Transl. – “You deserve it and you know it”)

Raise your hand if you’re that Facebook, Twitter or Instagram user who hasn’t smiled at a Mr. Bean, Julio Iglesias or a Little Nicholas meme, containing that very phrase (“Te lo mereces…”), in the last couple of months.

El Corte Inglés, taking advantage of a great creative opportunity, has incorporated this phrase into its recent sales campaign – this year, we’ll have to go without an image of today’s most relevant celebrity, but in return, we have been given this well-built campaign, based on tailored social insights.

To have reached this message is an indicator that the creatives and managers responsible for bringing about this campaign understand, listen, and strategically apply the information obtained on social media, as they have managed to incorporate “social language” into their commercial marketing strategy.

At Territorio creativo, where we are focused on fields that include marketing, branding and communication strategy, we believe that social listening and monitoring are extremely essential tools for understanding the state of the brand. They are also essential for designing new marketing actions for products, and furthermore, for defining the strategic lines of communication. Social data can have numerous beneficial applications, including promoting positive transformation within the company and generating authentic business intelligence.

The periodic results obtained from well-structured, comprehensive and continuous monitoring over time are gray matter. They provide valuable information for key areas of a business – not just marketing and communications, but also for areas such as trading, operations, human resources and innovation. The conclusions drawn could provide such important ‘brand insights’ that it is necessary for all managers to be well-informed on the results acquired from social interactions – which now represent a modern version of ‘permanent focus groups.’

At Territorio creativo, we recently carried out one of the most interesting and comprehensive listening and monitoring projects for one of the largest retailers in the world; it was an ambitious project in terms of the number of mentions that had to be analyzed, the objectives we set, and the relevance of the quality of the results obtained.

So, summarily, the steps we took for a systematic approach, which helped us to obtain our predicted results, are as follows:

  • Choice of correct monitoring technology that will provide a powerful tracking engine that globally groups all of the brand mentions in a given period, which in this case is 3 months, and will cover all existing digital platforms, forums, blogs, social networks, news sites, among others.
  • Definition of strategic objectives for monitoring: will allow you to meet perceptions of the brand; to explore mentions surrounding the customer experience; to analyze its digital presence on various social platforms; to explore pre-existing real communities and target new ones; and assess the virality of campaigns.
  • Categorization of mentions based on objectives and identified themes, customer experience, participation of the points of sale, communication, services, marketing, the role of people in the organization, the values ​​associated with the brand, and the quality and depth of social customer service. This initial categorization will detect transversal categories that impact the set of categories and will in turn expand or diminish the conclusions obtained.
  • Analysis and volume of mentions by category, number of mentions, positive, negative or neutral and the digital environment where these volumes are concentrated; the detection of the types and level of influence of the authors, brand ambassadors, and workers that generate spontaneous conversations and interactions. This analysis shows quickly and easily where the brand is present or where the conversation is insufficient or nonexistent. The results from this analysis defines the brand’s social network presence, its social relevance on each platform, and how to enhance creativity and connection with desired communities, both pre-existing and those within the target audience.
  • Definition of strategic lines of performance: The results acquired from the aforementioned points make it possible to define the human dimension of the brand, as well as the content to improve, the current level of knowledge of users who interact with the brand, and the tools necessary for enhancement. We also detect where and how to improve the customer experience, new platforms for interaction and ultimately, we define how to improve the operational dimension of performance with the customer; how to adapt the organization of the company to achieve this; and how to measure the results and effectiveness of the business.

Regarding this particular brand, Brandwatch (the tool used by Territorio creativo) recently published the results – complementary to our study – of an international experiment dubbed the “Ikea Listening Hub,” whose objective was based on conducting global social monitoring to obtain ‘global brand insights’ and taking the first steps to becoming a socially smart business. The details of this study and the main findings are summarized in this Ikea Case Study.

Let's talk