Stats Show the Importance of Monitoring Your Brand's Social Mentions
Successful brands have excellent knowledge of how others perceive them. They don’t leave things to chance. They know not to spend all their time-solving problems at the bottom of the cliff, preferring to know any small issues before they turn into big disasters. Many businesses actively monitor social mentions of their brands, using whatever technology they can access to streamline the process.
We’ve looked at some of the data lately and have discovered stats that show the importance of monitoring your brand’s social mentions. There is little point paying influencers money to say a positive thing about you online if you ignore other dissatisfied (former) customers slagging you off on their social media channels. Even if you don’t agree with what they’re saying, you can at least alleviate the harm they may cause by giving the impression of listening and giving some reaction.
Note that, unless stated otherwise, all the stats in this post come courtesy of YouScan. YouScan helps find and analyze consumer opinions, discover actionable insights, and manage your brand reputation.
Stats Show the Importance of Monitoring Your Brand's Social Mentions:
- Stats Show the Importance of Monitoring Your Brand's Social Mentions
- You don't see 80% of your brand's social media mentions
- 78% of customers use social media to reach out to brands
- 62% of clients say that their customer service expectations grew significantly compared to 2 years ago
- While 87% of organizations are absolutely sure they deliver exceptional service on social media, only 9% of their customers can rate the service highly
- 67% of customers expect their problem to be solved within 1 hour
- On average, businesses miss up to 80% of all brand mentions on social media if they don’t monitor visual mentions
- 38% of all visual mentions contain customer feedback on your product/service
- 89% of customers believe online reviews as much as personal recommendations
- 53% of clients refuse services if the company’s rate is less than 4 stars
- 70% of marketers utilize or consider utilizing influencer marketing
- 51% of clients rely on influencer’s recommendations, with 16% of them thinking that it is the most credible source
- Influencer marketing campaigns return an average of $7 for every dollar spent
- 22% of all images that accompany a brand reflect the same scene
- 11% of people in the images with a brand logo perform the same activity
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You don't see 80% of your brand's social media mentions
You might be surprised at how often people mention your name online, particularly in their social postings. Yet, by default, you are likely to miss most of those mentions. Most businesses are not set up to monitor mentions of their brand name. The major social accounts are designed to automatically notify you when somebody mentions you. You might see some obscure mention in your feed if somebody has bothered to @name you, but if they haven’t done that, you won’t have any idea of their comments.
However, it is worse than that. Quite a few brand mentions occur in visual assets. Again, unless you have special brand monitoring software that scans visual elements in posts, you will have no idea if somebody’s mentioned you.
Yet you really do want to know about brand mentions, too. Anna Fox, guest writing on the Jeff Bullas blog, identified four possible; reasons for monitoring your brand mentions:
- It lets you interact effectively with your followers and promoters, turning them into brand ambassadors and nurturing a community.
- It lets you quickly spot and prevent a potential reputation crisis.
- It lets you turn both happy and unhappy customers into brand advocates.
- It lets you measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns – more brand mentions are the most important signal of growing brand authority.
If, like most businesses, you fail to see 80% of your brand's social media mentions, you a missing a vast amount of helpful information.
78% of customers use social media to reach out to brands
More than three-quarters of your customers choose to use social media to communicate with you. If you don’t monitor for these mentions, you are extremely likely to miss these references.
Your customers expect you to see and act upon their comments. They use social media well, and they expect the brands they interact with the do likewise.
Of course, it is a two-way process. As Nicole Votolato Montgomery in HubSpot observes, “ten years ago, marketers thought of social media as little more than a content distribution channel, but today, social media platforms are the most sophisticated ad delivery networks in existence.”
62% of clients say that their customer service expectations grew significantly compared to 2 years ago
Running parallel to the use in social media as an essential communications channel is an increase in customer expectations. People are less sticky with their customer loyalty nowadays. They expect to receive the best performance and move between providers if somebody can offer them a better deal.
Salesforce has noted how customer recommendations have changed over recent times. “Historically, customers have expected basics like quality service and fair pricing — but modern customers have much higher expectations, such as proactive service, personalized interactions, and connected experiences across channels.” And if they find a firm lacking in these areas, they are now very vocal in the public arena of social media.
While 87% of organizations are absolutely sure they deliver exceptional service on social media, only 9% of their customers can rate the service highly
This stat shows an obvious discrepancy between customer and brand perceptions. Customers expect brands to perform at a much higher level than the brands do themselves.
This can be an alarming statistic, from a brand’s point of view. According to a Salesforce stat, “76% of customers now report that it’s easier than ever to take their business elsewhere — switching from brand to brand to find an experience that matches their expectations”. There is a real danger that the brand that sits back, resting on its laurels, will see its customer base walk to better-organized opposition.
67% of customers expect their problem to be solved within 1 hour
This stat really does emphasize the impatience of the modern consumer. And it is impossible for a firm to solve a problem if they don’t know of its existence.
This is particularly so for Millennial customers. They have grown up with computing devices since they were toddlers. They expect near real-time service. This is one of the reasons that so many firms now have online chatbots that instantly answer the easy questions and direct people to the relevant person for more complex issues.
On average, businesses miss up to 80% of all brand mentions on social media if they don’t monitor visual mentions
Social media is rapidly becoming more visual. The days of everybody typing their messages by text are well gone. Buffer quotes data from social media scientist Dan Zarrella that shows that Tweets using pic.twitter.com links were 94% more likely to be Retweeted, and you will find similar results from virtually all social media networks.
In the current world, people tend to write shorter posts while posting more photos – it’s faster, and audiences seem to prefer a more visual approach. Many influencers don’t tag brands unless they are paid for it, so you need a visual analysis tool to pick up these untagged mentions.
Therefore, brands will inevitably find that they have many visual mentions and are likely to miss these unless they employ some form of visual analysis software.
38% of all visual mentions contain customer feedback on your product/service
If you are missing all the visual mentions of your brand, you inevitably miss essential customer feedback on your product/service. Sure, a portion of your brand mentions are neutral, and missing these will do little harm, but the remainder provides vital feedback to you on how your company is performing.
It may not be unduly harmful if you miss positive references either, although these may lead to missed opportunities, but you miss negative feedback at your peril.
89% of customers believe online reviews as much as personal recommendations
Customer reviews have grown in importance over the past decade. Indeed, according to Bright Local’s Local Consumer Review Survey 2018, 86% of consumers read reviews for local businesses (including 95% of people aged 18-34). They also found consumers read an average of 10 online reviews before feeling able to trust a local company.
Source: https://www.brightlocal.com/research/local-consumer-review-survey/
Brands often learn this the hard way, and after a series of poor reviews must spend considerable time and resources trying to lessen harmful effects. Sure, even the best business has the odd disgruntled customer, but if you let poor reviews pile up on Yelp, Google, Amazon, or other relevant review sites, your business will have problems attracting new customers before long.
In terrible situations, where brands either ignore bad reviews or don’t know of their existence, firms, have been known to have to change their business name and marketing, or even be forced into liquidation.
53% of clients refuse services if the company’s rate is less than 4 stars
This stat shows the importance of good ratings. Even a median score of 2.5 to 3 stars is considered unacceptable by many consumers. This is particularly so for firms that sell online. Why look at a firm with less than 4 stars when you have a whole world full of potential suppliers, many of whom proudly display their 5-star ratings for all to see.
There is another reason why brands want 5-star ratings. Google uses the grade as a factor in its search engine. Higher rated firms appear higher up the rankings in a Google search than other firms. This may not matter for a café in a small town, but it has a significant impact on firms that rely on people finding them via an online search.
70% of marketers utilize or consider utilizing influencer marketing
We’ve already talked about the vast popularity of influencer marketing in previous articles, including our State of Influencer Marketing 2019: Benchmark Report. In that, we found that influencer marketing is expected to grow to a $6.5 billion-dollar industry this year, twice what it was in 2017.
The same survey found that nearly half of respondents intend to spend at least 20% of their marketing budget on influencer marketing.
51% of clients rely on influencer’s recommendations, with 16% of them thinking that it is the most credible source
Successful influencers offer valuable information to their followers. Indeed, they genuinely influence their followers’ shopping decisions. It is no surprise that 92% of our State of Influencer Marketing 2019: Benchmark Report survey respondents believed influencer marketing to be an effective form of marketing.
Sometimes influencers receive a bad press, from dissatisfied brands claiming that influencers are overrated and ineffectual. Most of these critics have had bad personal experiences, mainly because they picked the wrong types of influencers. Just because somebody is popular and has a famous name doesn’t mean that they will automatically influence their followers’ behavior. Genuine influencers first establish a reputation for expertise in a particular niche, and their followers clearly rely on their recommendations.
Influencer marketing campaigns return an average of $7 for every dollar spent
It can be challenging to determine an exact ROI for influencer marketing, and different surveys have produced mixed results. One thing that is common to all studies, however, is that influencer marketing produces excellent results for the average firm, exceptional results for the best firms who perform all the necessary checks and analysis, and zero or negative returns for the small number of firms who bumble into it, without setting goals and without doing the requisite homework.
22% of all images that accompany a brand reflect the same scene
Marketing tends to be repetitive. You’ll often see the same pictures used repeatedly. Sometimes this is done quite deliberately to associate a brand with particular imagery in people’s minds.
11% of people in the images with a brand logo perform the same activity
Again, this makes sense from a marketing point of view. Most people in pictures connected to MacDonald’s logo are probably eating. Similarly, many posts and other imagery that incorporates the Starbucks logo are probably drinking coffee.
Even “complaint” posts probably feature similar types of images. If you made a complaint about a problem with your coffee at Starbucks, you would likely include a picture including a cup of coffee, just as you would for a “happy picture,” where you and your friends enjoy your drinks.
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