What types of insights can I get from Social Listening?

While there are many use cases for Sprout’s Listening tool, some of the most common among Listening customers are Crisis Management, Industry Insights and Market Research, Competitive Insights, Brand Health and Campaign Analysis. In this article, we’ll highlight some ways you can use Listening to monitor critical conversations and gain valuable insights.

Crisis Management

Early detection is essential for having your best foot forward during a crisis. Missing out on early warning signs or not understanding the full extent of a crisis can be the difference between managing a crisis and having it ruin you. 

Sprout's Listening sets up users for early crisis detection, whether by identifying spikes, changes in sentiment or unfamiliar trending words. Social listening enables users to track the growth of conversations and understand why people are upset.

Sprout customers have used Listening to change product roadmaps in response to a crisis or controversy. The insights and agility of topic creation within Sprout set up leadership, PR and legal teams with the information they needed to best handle a crisis.

Learn how to create a Crisis Management Listening strategy in this guide.

Industry Insights

Keeping a close tab on your industry is essential for businesses to stay informed and competitive within their market. Monitor new trends and relevant parts of a conversation by tracking themes within an industry, including specific products, companies or controversies. Analyzing top words and subjects within an industry can also reveal new relevant themes.

Sprout customers have used Listening to inform executives about industry trends. Executives were then able to use those insights to make better-informed business decisions and increase sales.

Learn how to create an Industry Insights Listening strategy in this guide.

Market Research

Market research is expensive and time-consuming in traditional channels. Social Listening gives you access to millions of conversations across social networks and the web. Use Sprout’s topic creation tools, themes and data visualizations to quickly glean insights. You can share Listening Insights with stakeholders, even if they aren’t Sprout users.

Sprout customers have used Listening to research areas of possible market expansion and answer questions about specific audiences. Listening gives you insight into conversations and trends that may otherwise be hidden.

Learn how to create a Market Research Listening Topic in this guide.

Competitive Analysis

Monitoring your competitors is essential in owning your market. With Social Listening, you can track your competitors’ moves to better understand their share of voice and other metrics. The Competitive Analysis template helps you track relevant industry terms, top conversation trends and content among your competitors.

Sprout customers have used Listening to track campaigns, sentiment, share of voice and have even gained content inspiration from competitors. By identifying new conversations among competitors, you can respond and increase market share faster.

Learn how to create a Competitive Analysis Listening Topic in this guide.

Brand Health

Keep track of how people are talking about your brand, your products and your leadership team. Social listening helps you understand how people perceive and discuss your brand. These insights can inform your brand team, product team, leadership, Human Resources, content team and customer service.

Sprout customers have used Listening to monitor new trending types of conversations, analyze sentiment, gather product feedback, identify brand influencers and understand the high-level themes associated with their brands.

Learn how to create a Brand Health Listening Topic in this guide.

Campaign Analysis

Campaign reporting helps social media teams understand the true impact of a campaign. Using Social Listening, you can understand the volume of conversation from your initiative, measure the response and uncover top trends and subjects within the conversation.

Sprout customers have used Listening Topic Insights to understand activity around marketing campaigns, events and product launches. You can also use this analysis to identify the most influential people talking about a campaign and find potential brand ambassadors and influencers for future partnerships.

Learn how to create a Campaign Analysis Listening Topic in this guide.