Social Listening Can Save Your Marketing Campaign

Back in March, McDonald’s Brazil made a super-size blunder in a social media marketing campaign that flopped.

The company launched a social campaign that illustrated the golden arches separated. The goal was to support social distancing measures amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Consumers, however, weren’t lovin’ it.  Many took to social media to vent. Some saw the campaign as virtue signalling.

Others complained about the company not offering its low-wage employees paid sick leave.

Truth is, we often present a version of ourselves we want others to see.

Our public persona is a highly tailored facet of who we are. Social media posts highlight what we want others to know.

But as often is the case, people don’t see us how we want to be seen, no matter how curated our content is on social media.

And the same goes for businesses, as the McDonald’s Brazil example shows. Today’s consumers seek brand authenticity. A business can have the most holistic values, and offer the most socially conscious posts on its Twitter account, but if that content doesn’t match the company’s actions, consumers will pick up on it.

So how can businesses figure out what others think of them? The answer lies in social listening. Social listening involves tracking conversations not only around your company, but also around your company’s competitors.

Social listening helps businesses understand how they’re viewed by others. It also helps them get a pulse of the culture they’re working in.

Why is this important?

For one, it allows you to monitor how well your digital marketing campaigns are being received by your audience.

Listening to what others are saying about your campaign can lead to valuable insights around how to finesse your campaign as it moves forward.

I’m currently working with several SaaS businesses, many of which depend on multiple rounds of seed funding in other to scale.

Venture capitalists want to know the inner workings of a firm and a quick Google search can help them do that. With websites like Glassdoor, it’s easy for anyone to see how a firm is rated by its employees.

While a disgruntled employee leaving a bad star rating on Glassdoor or Indeed is one thing, multiple employees doing the same is quite another.

After all, a firm’s success and future growth is partly predicated on its organizational culture – not to mention more seed money.

And if your company has a lower rating on Glassdoor than that of your competitor, it may raise eyebrows.

A simple social listening exercise can help firms better understand how both internal and external stakeholders view the company. A firm can subsequently act on what it hears.

Social listening helps you understand how others view your businesses compared to your competitor.

Is your software tool getting more love online than that of your competitor? Great!

If not, you can take advantage of the negative feedback and work to address it.

Social listening is a wonderful tool to help your business flourish in our content rich, digital world.

And for the record, McDonald’s Brazil did apologize for its split arches campaign.