How To Use Social Listening Insights

Social listening platforms, such as Infegy Starscape, provide a wide range of data that can lead to valuable insights into consumer behavior, preferences, and challenges. However, it’s not enough to simply collect data. The real power of social listening comes from putting these insights to work for your brand. This blog will focus on not just how you can find social listening insights but how you can apply them to capture market share or respond to your customers’ complaints.

We’ve written extensively about how social listening data can be used to inform competitive intelligence, industry intelligence, market research, brand management, and marketing campaign planning. These are all vital components of a successful brand strategy, but social listening’s value extends even beyond these tasks.

The applications of social listening are vast, including the ability to interpret and apply social listening insights to drive sales, capture market share from competitors, respond to consumer feedback, and, ultimately, elevate a brand’s status.

Let’s consider two important ways social listening insights can help your brand.

1. Capture additional market share

2. Understand and act upon consumer feedback

Competitive Analysis – The Key To Capturing Market Share

A key function of a successful brand manager is to capture market share from competitors. But, what’s the most effective way to accomplish this? Putting together an in-depth competitive analysis allows you to better understand what competing brands are doing and how your target market responds to your competitors’ efforts. This allows you to make improvements to take market share away from those competitors.

A great place to start is by using high-level insights to identify potential market gaps. Market gap identification refers to the process of finding unmet or underserved needs within a target market. This typically involves analyzing existing products, consumer preferences, and market trends in order to take advantage of opportunities where current offerings don’t fully satisfy consumers’ demands.

Market Gap Opportunities

Let’s say you’re a brand manager for Impossible Foods, a plant-based meat company. You’re looking for insights to help you capture market share from your biggest competitor, Beyond Meat.

Your first step is to gain a general understanding of consumer interest in your product category.

^{Figure 1: Post volume related to substitute meat (November 2014 through November 2024), Infegy Social Dataset.}

A post volume analysis can help you gauge interest in your product category. Figure 1 shows a steady stream of social media conversations surrounding substitute meat. These conversations began picking up in late 2017 and have continued through November 2024. This indicates prolonged consumer interest in the product category.

Next, you can leverage the power of social listening to identify existing market gaps. You may be particularly interested in gaining market share through product partnerships and would like to know what opportunities exist outside of Beyond Meat’s current partnerships.

^{Figure 2: Top entities associated with Beyond Meat (November 2021 through November 2024), Infegy Social Dataset.}

As you can see in Figure 2, Beyond Meat has focused on partnerships with fast-food chains, such as Carl’s Jr., Burger King, and Starbucks. It has also targeted expansion at retail locations, such as Costco.

Based on this information, there are opportunities for Impossible Foods to gain market share by targeting areas where plant-based options are still limited, such as fine-dining establishments, gourmet food producers, airlines, institutional catering, and meal kits.

Using Social Listening Insights To Guide Actions

Using social listening insights, you recognize a growing interest among consumers to have plant-based meat offerings in fine-dining restaurants (as opposed to fast-food or fast-casual restaurants).

^{Figure 3: Growth associated with “restaurant” and “plant-based meat;” (November 2021 through November 2024), Infegy Social Dataset.}

In Figure 3, notice the sharp spike in posts related to “restaurant” and “plant-based meat.” This spike may prompt you to dig deeper into the cause of increased consumer interest and the driving forces behind it. There are several ways you can use social listening to gain a deeper understanding.

· Keyword analysis – In Infegy Starscape, use search terms such as “Impossible Foods,” “plant-based gourmet,” and “fine-dining” to identify conversation clusters and mentions by chefs or food influencers.

· Post volume and sentiment analysis – Post volume and sentiment analysis – Use Infegy Starscape to track growth in plant-based fine dining discussions and analyze sentiment to gauge interest and acceptance.

· Audience interests – Use the interest-based query to uncover lifestyle overlaps, such as “gourmet cooking” or “culinary arts,” among people discussing Impossible Foods.

· Demographics and geography – Identify key demographics (e.g., chefs, high-income consumers) and geographic clusters (such as urban fine-dining hubs) using demographic widgets.

Establishing A Geographic Brand Presence

Geographic brand presence is essential, as it enables a company to tap into diverse markets, adapt to regional consumer preferences, and capitalize on growth opportunities in emerging areas where demand might be increasing.

Social listening data can give you an understanding of what Beyond Meat is doing and help you identify potential geographic opportunities.

^{Figure 4: Top countries associated with Beyond Meat (November 2021 through November 2024), Infegy Social Dataset.}

^{Figure 5: Top countries associated with general plant-based meat conversation (November 2021 through November 2024); Infegy Social Dataset.}

Figures 4 and 5 show that Beyond Meat has a strong presence in North America and parts of Europe, but it has limited reach in certain emerging markets where plant-based diets are growing in popularity, such as the United Kingdom, India, Canada, and Australia.

This insight can be used to guide specific actions. For example, Impossible Foods may decide to:

· Create localized flavors – Create localized flavors – Offer products with regionally inspired spices and flavors to appeal to local tastes.

· Partner with local retailers – Collaborate with major grocery chains, restaurant groups, and e-commerce sites for greater durability and visibility.

· Emphasize sustainability and health benefits – Highlight the environmental and health benefits of plant-based meat to resonate with eco- and health-conscious consumers in those areas.

Product Feedback And Development

Now that we’ve looked at how social listening insights can be used to capture market share from competitors, let's consider how these insights can help improve your business and make your customers happy.

This time, let’s say you’re a brand analyst at Disney. You’re seeing a lot of social chatter surrounding a viral video in which a fan reacts to the closing of the Galactic Starcruiser, an immersive hotel experience at Walt Disney World. The hotel received negative reviews for being too expensive, not immersive enough, and for providing an inflexible guest experience.

Your goal is to gain a better understanding of the negative customer experience to recommend specific changes to future Disney immersive hotel options. Basically, you are charged with ensuring Disney doesn’t repeat the same mistakes.

^{Figure 6: Word cloud analysis showing general topics around the cost of the Galactic Starcruiser hotel (May 18, 2024 through November 1, 2024); Infegy custom dataset.}

In Figure 6, negative emotions are indicated in orange. Notice the negative sentiment related to topics such as “money,” “price,” “failed,” “expensive,” and “cost.” This likely reflects dissatisfaction with the amount of money guests paid relative to their experience at the hotel.

As a brand manager, this data provides a great starting point to help you develop recommendations for leadership. While more research is likely needed, these insights can help you develop suggested pricing improvements, such as the following:

· Offer tiered pricing packages. You may suggest that Disney offers multiple pricing tiers with varying levels of immersion. For example, a basic package could include a one-night stay and limited access to immersive activities, while a premium package may offer a two-night experience with exclusive elements. This approach can make the experience more accessible for a wider range of guests while offering premium options.

· Create flexible, a la carte experiences. It may make sense to allow guests to book shorter, customized experiences or select specific activities of interest, rather than committing to the full package. This may include day passes for immersive elements or dining, making the experience accessible to guests who want to experience the hotel without the full financial commitment of staying there.

· Implement seasonal and off-peak discounts. Offering discounts during off-peak seasons can make the experience more affordable at certain times. You may also suggest offering occasional promotions or loyalty discounts to Disney Vacation Club members, annual pass holders, or Disney+ subscribers. This approach can help incentivize repeat visitors and enhance customer loyalty.

^{Figure 7: Word cloud analysis showing topics associated with the engineering quality of the Galactic Starcruiser hotel; (May 18, 2024 through November 1, 2024); Infegy custom dataset.}

The negative sentiment surrounding the Galactic Starcruiser carries through to the hotel’s engineering quality (aka, special effects). In Figure 7, notice the overwhelming negativity of posts about the hotel’s special effects, particularly “sounds”, as indicated in red and orange. Specifically, we see words such as “nightmare,” “bad,” and “run.”

Based on this information, you may recommend the following.

· Invest in upgrades to core technical elements. Enhancing the technology behind the resort’s special effects may lead to big improvements in guest satisfaction based on this social listening feedback.

· Enable real-time guest control. If you know that guests are interested in a more interactive experience, consider allowing them more opportunities to influence story elements. For example, you may decide to offer apps or wristbands that allow guests to take control of their own stories to make the experience more dynamic and engaging.

Putting the power of Infegy’s social listening insights to work for you

These are just a few examples of how social listening insights can make profound impacts on your brand and strategy. Infegy’s social listening platform offers the potential for unmatched insights into both competitors and consumers. When put into action, these insights offer a powerful opportunity to drive success for your brand, capture additional market share, and deliver for your target consumers.

To learn more about how to put Infegy’s social listening insights to work for your brand, request a custom demo.

Key Takeaways:

• Social listening transforms raw data into actionable business strategies for capturing market share and understanding consumer needs.
  
• By analyzing competitor partnerships, geographic presence, and consumer conversations, brands can identify market gaps and growth opportunities.
• Advanced techniques like sentiment analysis, keyword tracking, and demographic insights enable precise product development and marketing strategies.
• The ultimate goal is to use social listening to drive sales, improve customer satisfaction, and elevate brand positioning in competitive markets.