Impact of Social Listening in Media and Entertainment industry

The media and entertainment industry has always been a trend-setter, especially when providing customers with value bundle. The most successful media and entertainment brands have repeatedly tried to find a formula for successful content. Still, they have never shied away from breaking the mold to win over their target audience.

Movies, music, TV series, streaming content, games, and everything in-between are shaped by public opinion. Therefore, millions are invested in monitoring public sentiment and customer preference for media offerings and entertainment options every year. Social media is poised to play a massive role in this. Here's how:

Audiences Are Going Social

In 2022, there will be 4.62 billion social media users globally, which is roughly 58% of the world's population. And every year, this number is growing at an average rate of 10% CAGR. These unique users spend about 2.5 hours every day consuming informative and entertaining content on different social media platforms. 

Quality information rich in insights is available on social media platforms for brands to access and learn from. At the same time, these users are voicing their opinions about brands and sharing their experiences with the virtual social community.

These communities and forums are shaping up hotspots for tracking customer conversations and monitoring brand engagement. This is why the impact of social listening is steadily growing in the media and entertainment industry.

Monitoring Customer Behavior

Social listening enables media brands to monitor customer behavior on native and third-party social platforms. The topic or brand-specific mentions and reviews on social media reveal how consumers interact with their preferred media and entertainment brands. 

Based on how and when users consume content, brands can determine the most suitable days of the week to launch new content. The streaming platform features such as: skip intro, next episode, add to watchlist and content recommendations have also evolved through meticulous study of user behavior. 

Understanding Customer Likes and Dislikes

Box-office collection, ticket sales, TV ratings, and unique users streaming specific content are quantifiable indicators of customer likes and dislikes. But all these are measures that indicate product performance after millions were invested in the production and distribution of content. And the learnings based on these statistics are still not accurate for future content planning.

With social listening, customer likes and dislikes can be identified proactively. Social listening can help identify the topics of interest to people, the creators that are being sought, the content aspects that are falling out of favor, and more. Data representing mentions, likes, shares, saves, and reviews can be gathered from multiple platforms and analyzed to derive strategic insights.

Designing and Delivering Personalized Content

Personalized content curated for the niche preferences of a customer is gaining popularity, especially with the rise of streaming services. With the help of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), interactive content is being produced and gaining popularity with customers.

Media and entertainment service providers can determine what content personalization is desired based on customer behavior and preferences. Personalized content and unique consumer user experience can be designed and distributed to attract new customers and retain old ones.

Managing Sustainable Customer Engagement

Customers prefer independent viewing without the obstruction of ads or limited scheduling. At the same time, customers value co-viewing features and content recommendations based on their previous choices. There is a marked shift from information towards infotainment, and even in conventional formats like movies, TV series, advertisements, books, and magazines, this value proposition is being sought out.

Structured big data analytics supports social listening to derive valuable insights for media and entertainment industry . And such a shift in market preference is not only captured by qualitative customer interviews or a few selective reviews.

Subsequent strategies are being devised to engage customers with relevant content.

Improving ROI

Social listening can also explore different ways to monetize entertaining content and improve the overall ROI of the entertainment industry. Even mega-production houses like Disney had learned it hard when the 'Baby Yoda' character unexpectedly kicked off after the 'Mandalorian' series launch. There was a sudden surge in public demand for Baby Yoda merchandise, and the company was unprepared to meet this demand.

Social listening, however, made Disney aware of the customer expectations, and the company initiated accelerated merchandise production and distribution to capitalize on the unique market opportunity. Similarly, social listening can help media brands explore suitable ad placements, ad frequency, sponsorship relevance, and monetizing different aspects of their offerings.

Promoting Effectively

Social listening also impacts how the media and entertainment industry promotes its offerings. Conventional promotional formats like outdoor ads, trailers, and brand tie-ins still form the bulk of their marketing budgets. But media brands are learning to engage their customers on social media platforms in real-time.

Brands like The Huffington Post and Marvel have planned successful promotional campaigns for their assets on social media platforms. And resultantly have generated positive word of mouth to support their sales. Both positive and negative public sentiment can be tracked through social listening, and brand communications can be planned to promote for maximum impact.

Final Thoughts

In conclusion, social listening is already having a significant impact on the media and entertainment industry. But with the rise of Social Media 2.0 and the Metaverse, customers and brands will be decidedly moving into the virtual realm. Preparing to engage customers on social platforms and integrating their feedback into future offerings is the only viable way ahead for media and entertainment brands.

To read more about social listening and how it impacts various industries, visit our website.

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