Posted by Imagine this – you put out a new billboard advertising your brand’s latest product. But most people don’t even notice it, and the ones that do just go “meh” and go on with their day.
It doesn’t feel so good when people are less than enthused about your brand and products, does it? When consumers couldn’t care less about your brand, it means you’re not making enough of an impact on them. And that also means you could easily lose them as customers since they don’t particularly feel loyal towards your brand.
The good news is brand indifference is still far better than people passionately hating your brand. You’ll be starting from a neutral position to win over the hearts of consumers and become a well-loved brand. And social media analytics can be one of the most invaluable tools to help you with that. That’s exactly what you’ll learn in this post, so let’s get started.
Why Brand Indifference Kills
Although brand indifference is far better than negative brand sentiment, it can still cost your business. From churn rates and loyalty to profits – brand indifference can have a significant impact on your performance. Let’s take a look at the top reasons why brand indifference can kill your business:
- According to a Havas study, consumers won’t care if 77% of brands disappeared. And it seems like these numbers are on the rise. Back in 2017, another Havas study had found that 74% of brands could disappear without consumers paying any attention.
- Meaningful brands tend to perform much better in many aspects. They outperform less meaningful brands by 134% in the stock market and have 24 more points in purchase intent. Plus, they also have 39 more points in advocacy, which suggests that people are more likely to recommend meaningful brands.
- When people don’t feel too strongly about your brand, it also means they’re not particularly loyal towards your business. So they could easily switch to another business due to better price points and customer service. In fact, brands are losing about $154 billion (£116 billion) each year from people switching to another brand.
Keep in mind that how people feel about your brand could be a reflection of your own attitude. If people feel that your brand is indifferent towards them, they won’t necessarily be passionate about you either. And this perceived indifference is the reason why 68% of consumers stop buying from a certain business.
Social Media Analytics as a Solution
If you’re going to combat brand indifference, the secret is in delivering memorable and outstanding brand experiences. You should be able to provide experiences that make you more meaningful in the hearts and minds of your customers.
For that, you first need to understand what’s important to your audience. What piques their interest and what moves them? What kind of values and viewpoints do they maintain? All of this will give you the tools to create content and messaging that will resonate with them.
That’s where social media analytics enters the picture. Social media analytics isn’t just for measuring your ROI. You can also use it to uncover detailed insights about your audience and their conversations.
Plus, you can also keep track of how they respond to your content. This also means you can find out just what makes them tick and then create more meaningful content for them.
Here are some ideas for how to use social media analytics to combat brand indifference:
1: Keep Track of Post Engagement to See What Works
Make the most of social media analytics tools to see how people are engaging with your posts. Also, monitor other industry brands or competitors that are gaining higher engagement from your target audience.
This can help you figure out what types of posts, topics, and content formats get the most engagement. And you should be able to get some idea of what kind of content resonates with your target audience the most.
In addition to the overall engagement rate of each post, make sure to keep track of the comments. This is crucial because having lots of comments doesn’t necessarily mean a positive reception. You could have plenty of people commenting on your posts because they’re upset about something.
The following Sherwin-Williams tweet proves just that. It received thousands of comments and only a few likes and retweets. Most of the comments are people blasting the company for firing a viral paint-mixing TikTok star.
That’s why you need to read through the comments and see what people are saying about your posts. Is there something you need to address immediately? Perhaps it’s something as fixable as making a typo. But it could also be something bigger that affects your brand reputation.
Start by keeping a close eye on your comments and the sentiment around them – which we will expand on later. You can then build a new content strategy centered on those insights. The idea is to create social media content that makes your brand more meaningful to your target audience.
2: Measure Brand Sentiment
Social media analytics can also tell you a lot about the overall sentiment surrounding your brand. How do people perceive your brand? Is the overall sentiment neutral, negative, or positive? If most of the conversations around your brand are neutral or negative, you’ll want to change them to positive.
And when you keep a close eye on brand sentiment, you can also adapt your efforts to combat brand indifference. Make the most of sentiment analysis tools to see how brand sentiment changes over time. Is your latest campaign making any difference? Are your efforts to combat brand indifference paying off?
Keep in mind that machines often struggle to detect sarcasm or to put certain words into context. In these instances, machines may not always be accurate in their reading of brand sentiment.
For instance, someone could say that your service was “just great” and go on to explain their horrible experience in detail. Or they could say that your product “is sick” but mean that it’s “really cool.”
This can present some challenges in sentiment analysis. The good news is that with the Keyhole Brand Monitoring tool, you have the option to edit those inaccuracies. You can edit the post sentiment manually in case of any inaccurate readings resulting from sarcasm or industry-specific context.
Besides this, Keyhole lets you measure changes in brand sentiment over time. It also provides you with comparative sentiment to see how you stack up against the competition.
3: Listen in on Conversations about Your Brand
Don’t just stop at measuring the sentiment around conversations about your brand. Make sure you go in-depth to see what people are really saying about your brand and its products.
What do they love or hate about your brand? Which features get the most love or hate? What are people expecting from you? Get the answer to all of these questions when you listen in on conversations about your brand.
Use social media listening tools to keep track of the most important conversations about your brand. Look for conversations in which you get a ton of praises so you can jump in and thank your customers. See if they’re asking people any questions about your products and provide them with the right answers.
This type of responsiveness could pave the way to becoming a meaningful and well-loved brand. And it could also help you provide exceptional customer service.
Be sure to look for complaints so you can respond quickly and appropriately. This makes a lot of sense because 51% of social media users have called out a brand on social media. And 52% do so to raise awareness about the issue, while 50% want to save others from a similar experience.
Now you know how your brand listening efforts could help you uncover the biggest issues customers face with your business/products. You could then use these insights to make necessary improvements to generate more meaning around your brand.
Show people that you’re listening and that you want to fix things. This will, in turn, prove that you’re not indifferent towards your consumer products. Also, it shows your willingness to learn and work with your audiences – creating a two-way engagement model.
4: Listen in on Trending Conversations
Social media listening also helps you keep track of other conversations your audience is engaging in. Use this to find out what they’re talking about and what piques their interest. You could identify the topics that are important to them and the values they uphold.
Then make the most of these insights to fine-tune your social media strategy. For example, let’s say that your target audience is engaging with a new meme format. You could find a way to use this meme format in a way that makes sense for your business.
You might even be able to identify the influencers they look up to and the trends they’re participating in.
For Postmates, it made sense to jump in on the TikTok cloud bread trend. The food delivery service shared a recommendation on Twitter of a café that makes the trending sweet treat.
Get Ready to Go from “Meh” to “Yeah!”
With valuable insights about what matters to your audience, social media analytics give you the perfect way to combat brand indifference. Use it to find out what makes your audience tick and how you can drive more meaningful conversations. Make the most of the tips above to build a brand that matters to your target audience.
With Crowdfire, you can find curated content, schedule your posts, engage with your audience, deep-dive into analytics and create custom reports. Now introducing Social listening. Try it for free.