Monitoring of brand health can’t be considered comprehensive if your social media listening tools only account for posts containing text. Here are four reasons visual social content must also be analyzed:
1. Images reign supreme on social media. Content Marketing Institute reports 63% of all social media posts are comprised of, or include, images. Not only that, “Content with images gets 94% more views than content sans images.” This includes blog posts, articles, and websites.
Some of these images may be accompanied by text for social listening tools to find – but what of the posts that let images speak for themselves? Without visual listening capabilities, those posts are simply unaccounted for in your social data, meaning you’re working with an incomplete understanding of consumer attitudes toward your brand.
And it’s not just on Pinterest and Instagram that images are being shared. Twitter and Facebook have become more visually focused, especially with the additions of Facebook Live and Periscope. And newer apps like Snapchat are keeping everyone on their toes. This data can’t be overlooked.
2. Your brand reputation is at stake. Visual listening isn’t about being cool, or innovating for the sake of it. Reputational threats abound on social media. If someone is maligning your brand name by misappropriating your logo, you may not know until it’s made the rounds and gone viral.
Being able to identify your logo in social posts, and be alerted when those posts are negative, means you can get out in front of a brewing crisis before it spirals out of control. It also keeps you apprised of social users co-opting a logo for purposes your brand may not agree with – like a political or religious statement. This happened during the Starbucks red cup controversy last holiday season:
3. You’re losing out on potential influencers. Influencers are the social users who are most passionate about your brand. Build a solid connection with them, and they’ll willingly amplify your messaging and bring more fans and business your way.
All social sharing is driven by consumer emotion, but posting images of/with your products or store, or creating memes featuring your logo, is a pretty good indication of the kind of intense sentiment you want in an influencer. Without visual listening you may never know about them.
Not to mention, user-generated content can offer a creative spark that could become your next – and greatest – marketing campaign.
4. You can better evaluate campaign performance. No matter how good the campaign idea, it’s important to follow social reactions in real-time to know if things are on track, or in need of course correcting. Here again it’s about having the most comprehensive data to work with – and that can’t happen if images are discounted.
Social users constantly tell brands what they like, love, dislike and hate through their actions – or inaction as the case may be. For brands to confidently base decisions on social data, their social media listening has to plug into the actions and emotions conveyed through all social posts, not just some of them.
Adding visual listening to their social analytics tool chest opens them up to an entirely new cache of social posts ripe for analysis. And a potential army of influencers ready to enthusiastically share their logo far and wide.
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To learn more about visual listening with NetBase, reach out!
Image from Terry Johnston
