The Talkwalkers are coming..How can social listening protect your brand in a crisis and help provide PR opportunities.

Jim James: 0:11

Today, we're going to talk about social listening with Sophie Clark of Talkwalker. It's amazing how Talkwalker is using AI to help companies and brands understand what's being said about them across all channels, not just in text, but also in photographs and videos. Talkwalker is one of the leading companies in social listening, and they've kindly agreed to share with us more about their company and how their technology works. According to Sophie, their headquarters are in Luxembourg, but they operate all over the world. They've been around for almost 10 years now. In that sense, they're quite an established player in the social listening market. Social listening is a way of tracking and breaking down conversations that are happening online. These days, there are so many different conversations happening online that sometimes, it's quite hard to break them down and analyze them, and so that's where a social listening platform like Talkwalker can really help, particularly if you're a brand, because it's a great way of specifically tracking the conversations happening around your brand, or perhaps the industry that you're in. You might want to open up new doors for you and your business, and you want to understand how the industry is growing and developing, so Talkwalker can help you discover new opportunities there. Sophie says a crucial way to use social listening is around crisis management. At the moment, there's a lot going on; there are potentially some negative conversations happening around certain brands. And so, if you're using a social listening tool like Talkwalker, you can track and flag those conversations quickly and deal with them before they get out of control. One area that they can help with is around the sentiment of conversations as well. That's where you can really if there are more negative conversations happening around your brand, and you can dig deeper that way. Currently, Talkwalker tracks 187 different languages, which is amazing. It's definitely a global tool in that sense. In terms of AI around sentiment analysis, Sophie believes it's pretty spot-on in most of those languages. The way that Talkwalker works is you can put in some keywords and search for it. It depends what your aim is in terms of social listening. If it's around brand protection or understanding your brand position in the market, you would probably search for your brand. People will talk about it in different ways, so you can search for all the terms that people might be using that are related to your brand. Talkwalker has image and video recognition as well, so you can upload and search for your brand logo. They have a library of logos already, so even if you're not searching for your own brand, you can still search for other brand logos. For example, when doing competitor analysis, if you're Coca Cola and you want to see how Pepsi is doing, you can search "Pepsi" and "Pepsi logo," and see how they compare. So, there's a brand engagement or brand perception element, where you could type in your brand and search for the image to see how your your brand logo is being used in conversations. You might find that it's popping up in places that you didn't know, perhaps in a good way, perhaps in a bad way. And then in that case, you can take steps to rectify that and make sure you're not having any negative sentiments towards your brand. Also, if people are posting videos on on YouTube and your logo appears in the background, it would show up as a mention. Amd from a compliance point of view, this could be really very important for anti-piracy, counterfeiting, unlicensed use of photos and logos, and more. According to Sophie, Talkwalker tracks all main social channels, including Weibo and WeChat, though they don't track TikTok yet. They track essentially any content that is out there in the public domain. However, they only track strictly non-paywall conversations. I then asked how often this tracking occurs, and she answered that the search occurs in real time. Talkwalker is continuously pulling information that's out there on the internet whenever you search. Say I were to track the work we do with Ineos for their Grenadier 4x4 launch in Asia (which we have coverage of in Indonesia, Vietnam, and Malaysia), when I asked how the dashboard perspective would be like for me to be able to track those keywords in different markets, Sophie said it depends on the package. They have a basic level alert service, which is similar to Google Alerts, and it's completely free. You can set up an alert every time your brand or a particular trend is mentioned. You can choose to get them either daily, weekly, or as soon as they happen. They also have the Talkwalker Quick Search element, which is their next package after the alerts. It's a really good way to do some research on your brand and your trends. As Sophie said, you can search for your brand, and then within that you will see different widgets. Initially, you can see the dimensions, engagement, and reach your brand is getting in a given time period. You could search for the last seven days, the last month, three months, that sort of thing. They also identify influencers, the people who are talking about your brand or whatever you're searching for, and the people who are talking about it most and get the most engagement. She says that's a good way to identify people, if you're looking to do an influencer marketing campaign and you're looking for the right people to work with. It's a good way to start your search, essentially, and see who's talking about you, and then you can do a bit more research as to if they're talking about you positively, if they're working with your competitors, that sort of thing. You would see the channel in which they're mentioning you, so if they're tweeting about you, for example, it will show you the tweet. With their Quick Search element, you can also look for influences, you can look at the demographics of the people who are talking about you, the percentage between females and males, the interests of those people, their occupations, and so on. This information is pulled from public profiles, so if if you mentioned on your Twitter bio that you are a student who loves animals, then it's going to pull that information. Again, all the data that comes through Talkwalker is publicly available. I asked for a case study of a client that's made good use of Talkwalker, and Sophie first began by talking about application. They work around what they call their PMP framework, short for Protect, Manage, Promote framework. These are the three main areas that companies use Talkwalker for. One example, she says, was when Hong Kong Airlines accidentally sold their business class ticket at a knockdown price. They were able to detect that this was happening, because they'd set up these alerts to track the conversations. They saw a peak in conversations which was unusual, so they dug deeper and saw that the conversations were around the fact that there was this great price on a business flight. Another way people use Talkwalker is for sponsorship For an agency like mine, EastWest PR, Sophie says we ROI, particularly around sports matches, because you can see exactly how much exposure your brand is getting by the different channels that the image is being pushed through. In terms of the profiles of clients that use Talkwalker, Sophie says they cater to a wide range, from multinational companies to SMBs, and this versatility comes from the fact that clients will be using it in slightly different ways. There's different benefits you can gain depending on the size of your company. Their pricing model is a fair pricing model that's based on data consumption, so the more volume of conversation around a brand, the more data that Talkwalker estimates you'll need, and then they price it accordingly. Obviously, bigger multinationals might need more data than an SMB. Again, they have the free alerts and free access to Quick Search, and then they have the basic entrylevel package, which is 6,000 or could purchase a package that we could use for our clients, $9,6000. But then after that, the packages are tailored per client based on the amount of data they would need. though there are limitations within the package, such as data Talkwalker is not the only company that offers this allowance, how many mentions you're searching, historical mentions, and things like that. Again, that will be discussed w th you upon setting up your ackage, to ensure it fits exactl your needs, how you'd be using it, how much data access you'd eed, etc. service, but they are definitely one of the more established companies on the market at the moment. Sophie believes that what sets them apart is their use of artificial intelligence, which is all developed completely in-house. That means that if any of our clientsneed something specific or if they are finding limitations within the product, Talkwalker can really work closely with them and develop that partnership. So, the product is always evolving depending on what their customers need, and on the AI front as well. Sentiment analysis is one of the areas where you can track your brand reputation, and theirs is one of the best compared to others in terms of accuracy and the ability to detect, for example, sarcasm. A basic text read by a computer might not be able to detect sarcasm, but with their kind of AI and technology, it an have a more accurate readin . If you are interested in learning more about Talkwalker, you can visit their website. You can sign up for a free demo where they take you through the product, so you can understand exactly how you'd be using it and all the benefits that come with it. I've gained so much insight into social listening from my talk with Sophie, and I've learned how useful a tool Talkwalker is for you and your business, not just when it comes to crisis management. It's a great way to analyze what's being said about your brand or company, whether it's positive or negative, and then from there, you can plan your public relations strategy and grow your business.