Are marketers missing customer signals on social?

In our data-driven world, marketers need to think more about the nature of social conversations and not just look at raw social data. You would probably agree: It’s a lot harder to get value from social insights if you don’t have a clear sense of the conversations your customers are having with each other, as well as with you and other brands on social.

We live in a time where people are generating and accessing an extraordinary amount of data, both real-time and historical. What makes Twitter’s social data so unique is that it reflects the public conversations happening in real-time. And what makes Twitter audiences so unique is that they’re made up of influencers who drive public conversation. They are receptive, relevant and looking for new experiences with a discovery mindset—not just a lean-back-and-entertain-me mindset. That’s why Twitter is investing in new ways of understanding behind conversations and delivering meaningful data about the hundreds of millions of Tweets shared on Twitter every day.

When you think about the size and breadth of the conversation on Twitter, it’s essentially the world’s largest focus group-- of present and historical data. Research shows 79% of Twitter users follow brands and 53% recommend products and services to friends and family. Listening to what consumers are saying can surface unique opportunities that extend beyond marketing, into customer service, sales and even product innovation. And for a brand, this allows them to provide a better customer experience, avert issues that could have a negative impact, and get valuable insights to help deliver products and services that better meet consumer needs.

Diana Helander, head of marketing for the Twitter Developer Platform, chatted with Marketing Disrupted podcast hosts Brent Chaters and Amber Mac about the importance of social listening, and the role of Twitter Data in helping marketers solve problems. 

“It’s important for brands to start listening,” Helander says in the Marketing Disrupted podcast episode Brands On-Line: Marketing, Tech and Social Media. “Brands can help identify something newsworthy, or if needed, remediate an issue. But that’s just a first step. Following on from that is active engagement with those audiences, whether it’s for brand voice, marketing campaigns or customer service—engaging in that conversation and doing so in an authentic way.”

By listening first, brands can then analyze conversations and social mentions. This can provide a better understanding of what consumers are talking about, doing or buying, which is where solutions like trend analysis come into play.

In the podcast, Helander shares some case-study examples of how Twitter Official Partners have used social listening to drive big results and how they’ve used social insights to find fun ways to engage their audiences. For example, she discusses how Sprinklr, a Twitter Official Partner, helped Chick-fil-A use artificial intelligence to spot signs of food-borne illness from social media posts with 78% accuracy, and how social listening helped NASA spot a gap in its content strategy and successfully engage new audiences.

Check out Diana Helander’s full interview about Twitter Data’s role in marketing on the Marketing Disrupted podcast, episode 3: "Brands On-Line: Marketing, Tech and Social Media.” Helander’s portion starts at the 29:09 mark, just after McDonald's Canada VP and CTO Lara Skripitsky.