Are you Visual Listening?

Brands are starting to realize that they must look at different methods to follow trends on social media in order to avoid being left in the dark. They realize the conversation is no longer in black and white, it is now in full colour and can only be followed in its entirety by using the science of Visual Listening.

The ancient Chinese proverb states that a picture is worth ten thousand words, but with 1.8 billion images being posted on social media sites daily, it would seem that for this generation a picture is worth much, much more than that. Facebook alone reports close to 250,000 image uploads every minute, which is a sure sign that images are becoming the favoured form of online communication.

Unfortunately, this is not good news for brands!  According to the Duke School of Business, marketers spend an average of 30% of their overall marketing budget on social media. Yet they are missing a massive part of their brand conversations simply because they do not know how to see what is right in front of their eyes.

Many companies have invested heavily in social listening products over the last number of years, hoping to understand more about their customers and to engage with them. But what happens if the information that they need is trapped within an image? What happens if the keywords and texts you have invested in are no longer enough? What happens if social listening is only painting half of the picture?

So what is Visual Listening?

Visual Listening is a Social Media Monitoring tool based on Visual-AI technology. It allows brands to track the number of times their logo or product appears in social media.

Why is Visual Listening so important?

1: Brand Insights:

Visual Listening can give brands new insights into where their brand is mentioned and how it is mentioned. It allows brands to understand their “share of voice” and compare themselves to their competitors. There should be no limit to the number of logos which can be recognized. This is very important as it gives a true and accurate picture of data captured.

2: Influencers:

Brands have the ability to identify their top influencers. We often don’t buy from brands unless we trust them, yet 90% of people will buy because of a recommendation from an influencer or a friend. Visual Listening offers brands the ability to directly view and connect with their biggest influencers.

3: Brand health:

Your brand is your most valuable asset, so you would want to hear if something negative was being said about it. Visual Listening keeps you up to date with “in-the-moment conversations” – giving you the opportunity to respond to or resolve things before they go viral.

So how does it work?

Visual Listening monitors logo detection within images shared on social media. It allows you to see the conversations which are happening about your brand and help marketers understand when and how consumers share relevant brand images.

What is important when it comes to choosing a Visual Listening tool?

For the data that is captured by a Visual Listening product to be significantly meaningful there are two key factors which must be considered:

• Precision: Precision ensures that every time you think your logo is detected, it actually has been. This resolves the problem of ‘false positives’.
• Hit Rate: This is even more important. A high level hit rate will detect every time your logo is mentioned on social media, not just some of the time. This enables brands to gain comparable data to competitors or even to their own sub-brands. Think of it as a spell check, you want it to work all of the time not just some of the time.

Social media is changing. Isn’t it time you let your images do the talking?