PR ON THE GO March 11, 2024

Public Relations: The Key Driver for Social Listening

We asked our PR and growth experts about the most sought-after source of data insights in 2024: Social listening. The experts explain how public relations campaigns lead to media intelligence from traditional media monitoring and social listening, and why PR activities are the main driver for tapping into this gold of strategic insights from audience data and sentiment.

• Organic PR activities increase the engagement data
• PR derives and contextualizes sentiment for meaningful engagement
• PR campaigns are the catalysts for buzz
• PR initiatives serve as the starting point for online conversations
• PR activities directly influence the narrative surrounding a brand
• PR activities act as a motivation for social listening
• PR activities create opportunities
• PR facilitates authentic interactions
• Create a dynamic environment
• PR activities directly impact reputation and customer engagement
• PR is about creating and sharing a brand narrative
• Tying PR and social listening accelerates learning

Organic PR activities increase the engagement data

Emily Reynolds-Bergh, Owner at R Public Relations

"Social listening gives companies a clear picture of their audience's likes, dislikes, and sentiments towards the brand. Although it can be difficult to aggregate social listening data, the most crucial element to any social listening campaign is dedicating weekly time to browsing news articles and social media posts mentioning the brand. Organic PR activities can drive engagement both on social media and in digital and print publications, which will thereby increase data for social listening."

PR derives and contextualizes sentiment for meaningful engagement

Paige Arnof-Fenn, Owner at Mavens & Moguls

"First, media monitoring ensures you know every conversation that’s occurring about your brand. It helps you control the narrative, especially as you grow the business. Second, it can provide valuable insights into competitor happenings, leading to new launch and collaboration ideas for your brand depending on what works for your competitors. Finally, it gives you a holistic sense of what reporters on your beat find newsworthy, and it can help you tailor your campaigns to secure better coverage moving forward."

PR campaigns are the catalysts for buzz

John Kadias, PR & Marketing at CubiCasa

"At their core, PR campaigns aim to deliver the right messages to the target audience, engaging them in meaningful ways. Whether it’s about introducing a new product, managing a crisis, or enhancing the brand’s presence, these campaigns generate significant discussions on social media and beyond. Here's where the role of social listening becomes pivotal.

Social listening involves monitoring and analyzing the conversations about your brand, campaigns, or the broader industry online. It's akin to having a digital ear to the ground, capturing the essence of public opinion, understanding the audience's perception of your brand, and collecting valuable insights on their preferences and needs.

Why do PR activities play a crucial role in this process? Consider this: PR campaigns are the catalysts for buzz. They initiate the discussions that provide the raw material for social listening. Without these PR efforts, the specific, valuable chatter would be much less. PR is designed to connect with the audience, evoke emotions, and elicit responses. When the audience engages, their discussions—whether through tweets, posts, or shares—offer direct access to their unfiltered thoughts and feelings.

Analyzing this feedback allows you to gauge the audience's sentiment (be it positive, neutral, or negative), spot trends, and preempt potential crises. This insight is strategic gold, enabling informed decision-making. You can refine your communication tactics, adjust your campaigns, or even overhaul your strategy based on real feedback from your audience, albeit indirectly.

In summary, PR acts as the ignition for the conversation. Once ignited, social listening helps you gauge how to sustain, amplify, or, if necessary, extinguish the flames. It’s about harnessing insights from audience data and sentiment to steer your PR and marketing strategies more effectively, ensuring they truly resonate with your audience."

PR initiatives serve as the starting point for online conversations

Magee Clegg, Founder & CEO at Cleartail Marketing

"In my role as the founder and CEO of Cleartail Marketing, I've experienced how public relations (PR) drives the success of social listening strategies within the B2B space. PR initiatives, such as launching a new service or sharing success stories of client achievements, have often served as the starting point for online conversations that provide valuable insights into our audience's needs and preferences.

For instance, in one campaign, we shared a case study about a client who experienced significant growth thanks to a tailored digital marketing strategy we implemented. The online response was immediate, with discussions occurring across social media platforms and industry forums. By employing social listening during this period, we were able to gather feedback not only about the perceived value of our services but also about what potential clients were looking for in their digital marketing partnerships. This information was instrumental in refining our offerings and developing targeted content that spoke directly to the needs of our audience.

Additionally, through targeted PR activities, we've positioned ourselves as thought leaders in cost-effective marketing strategies for B2B companies. By actively participating in industry discussions and contributing valuable insights, we've fostered an environment where our audience feels engaged and heard. This, in turn, has made social listening more productive by increasing the quantity and quality of the data collected. Insights from these conversations have guided our content creation process, enabling us to produce material that not only attracts more leads but also promotes deeper engagement with our brand.

To sum up, PR activities are crucial for enhancing social listening efforts as they stimulate discussions, garner interest, and collect audience sentiments and data. By understanding and engaging in these conversations, businesses can obtain strategic insights that drive growth and innovation. In our experience at Cleartail Marketing, integrating PR with social listening has been a key factor in deepening our understanding of the market and refining our approach to meet our clients' evolving needs."

PR activities directly influence the narrative surrounding a brand

Keran Smith, Co-Founder & CMO at LYFE Marketing

"We've found that by keeping a finger on the pulse of our local ecosystem when working with dynamic sectors like high-growth tech startups, for example, we gain invaluable insights. Knowing which startups have recently secured funding, the active VCs and angels, and details on successful exits allows us to craft engaging content for our clients that's tailored for social media and SEO. This approach ensures the content is relevant and also significantly boosts visibility in local search results.

Google, for instance, is incredibly efficient at indexing local content, offering a tangible edge for brands looking to be well-versed in their community's dynamics. The strategy here is twofold: meticulously select the media sources to monitor and develop a rapid-response approach for disseminating content. Timeliness cannot be overstated; being the first to report or comment can set you apart. Establishing personal relationships within a network, if able, further enhances your ability to stay ahead, ensuring you're not just a participant but a key player in your local ecosystem."

PR activities act as a motivation for social listening

Victor André Enselmann, Founder at Modeva

"Public relations campaigns are like stirring up a conversation online. When I launch a PR campaign, I create buzz and excitement around my brand or product. This buzz attracts attention on social media platforms, where people start talking about my brand, sharing their opinions, and expressing their sentiments. For example, when I launched a new product, I ran a PR campaign that got people talking on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. By monitoring these conversations using social listening tools, I gained valuable insights into how people perceived my product, what they liked or disliked about it, and what improvements they suggested. These insights helped me refine my marketing strategy and product features to better meet the needs and preferences of my audience. So, PR activities act as a motivation for social listening, providing me with a rich source of data and sentiment analysis to inform my business decisions and strategies."

PR activities create opportunities

Tim XU, Marketing Director at GO4MOULD

"Public relations campaigns play a crucial role in leading businesses to the sought-after source of data insights in 2024: social listening. By strategically crafting and executing PR activities, businesses can generate buzz and engagement, which in turn drives conversations on social media platforms. These conversations serve as a valuable source of data insights on audience preferences, sentiments, and behaviors.

PR activities, such as media coverage, influencer partnerships, and thought leadership content, create opportunities for businesses to tap into this goldmine of strategic insights. By actively monitoring and analyzing social media conversations, businesses can gain a deeper understanding of their target audience, refine their marketing strategies, and make data-driven decisions to drive growth and success."

PR facilitates authentic interactions

Mia Liang, Marketing Director at Reflective Tape Manufacturer

"In 2024, social listening reigns as the most sought-after data insight source. Public relations campaigns act as the conduit to this invaluable resource by fostering direct engagement with audiences across social platforms. PR activities generate conversations and feedback, fueling social listening tools. This symbiotic relationship enables real-time access to audience data and sentiment.

PR activities are the main driver to tap into this goldmine of strategic insights because they facilitate authentic interactions, offering unparalleled depth into consumer behavior and preferences, ultimately shaping effective marketing strategies and brand positioning."

Create a dynamic environment

Draven McConville, CEO at Klipboard

"One important thing that drives social listening is spending money on public relations campaigns. These campaigns create a dynamic environment where brands can connect with their target audience and start relevant conversations. Public relations campaigns are a great way to get people talking and interested by using interesting stories and material. Brands can get their word out to more people and be seen on more social media sites by smartly using PR activities. By being proactive, companies can listen in on talks, learn useful things, and stay in touch with how their audience feels and what they like. Public relations efforts also give brands a chance to build credibility, trust, and relationships with key stakeholders, all of which lead to brand loyalty and advocacy. In today's highly connected world, where customers expect brands to communicate honestly and openly, brands that want to use social listening as a growth and success tool must invest in PR efforts."

PR activities directly impact reputation and customer engagement

Kevin Ameche, President at RealSTEEL

"PR activities are designed to shape and influence public perception of a brand, directly impacting its reputation and customer engagement. When executed effectively, these campaigns generate substantial online buzz, reflected in social media posts, comments, reviews, and discussions across various digital platforms. This chatter becomes a rich data source, providing real-time feedback on the public's reception of the campaign and broader brand sentiments.

Social listening tools analyze this data, offering insights into audience behavior, preferences, and pain points. By understanding how a brand's message is received, companies can adapt their strategies to better align with their audience's expectations and needs, enhancing customer experience and loyalty."

PR is about creating and sharing a brand narrative

Dmitrii Kustov, Marketing Director at RegexSeo

"PR campaigns play a key role in shaping a company's narrative and public perception. And social listening is the monitoring of digital conversations, which helps you understand what is being said about the company, i.e., it allows you to determine how effective your efforts are. By tracking reactions and discussions you not only get feedback in the form of reactions and interactions, but you can also identify any potential problems and crises before they escalate. In addition, social listening provides a wealth of data about your target audience's preferences, behaviors, and opinions. You can then use this information to tailor campaigns to your audience's interests and needs better. For example, it can inform your organization's content strategy. By understanding what topics and types of content resonate with their audience, organizations can create more engaging and relevant content.

One might think that social listening inherently has no strong connection to PR efforts because data on audience sentiment can be obtained without launching PR campaigns. However, in fact, PR efforts are one of the main factors that make it possible to obtain this huge amount of this strategic information. First, it comes from the fact that the main goal of any PR effort is to directly interact with the target audience through multiple channels, many of which are not utilized in other types of marketing strategies. That is, you send your message and content to more channels, thereby generating more data. Second, at its core, PR is about creating and sharing a brand narrative. By tracking how audiences perceive and interact with these stories, organizations can gain insight into which narratives resonate the most. So, the answer to the question of why PR campaigns drive greater response and, as a result, allow social listening to be used more effectively comes down to the fact that PR activity is not just broadcasting a message; it is a directed dialog with the audience. This dialogue promotes public attention and provides a continuous flow of data and insights that can be used to make strategic decisions, ensuring that communication strategies are aligned with the needs and sentiments of the audience, thereby ensuring better outcomes for the organization."

Tying PR and social listening accelerates learning

Noel Griffith, CMO at SupplyGem

"Over my career, I've found that strategic public relations campaigns are the key driver for gaining valuable social listening insights. When you actively work to shape brand perception and engage key audiences, you inherently gain access to a wealth of data on how your messages and brand are resonating.

For example, a few years ago we launched a new product and wanted to understand initial reactions. Our PR team orchestrated a series of media interviews, social media activations, and events to build buzz. During and after the campaign, we monitored social channels and media coverage closely. We discovered that while media and influencers were enthusiastic, a subset of customers expressed confusion over certain product features. We quickly issued clarifying statements and updated our marketing materials to address these concerns.

Had we not run an integrated PR campaign, we likely wouldn't have gained visibility into these initial reactions and risked longer-term negative word-of-mouth. PR activities are the engine that powers social listening programs by giving people a reason to talk about your brand. The insights gained help shape strategies, accelerate learning, and build goodwill. Overall, there is no better way to stay on the pulse of stakeholder sentiment than tying PR and social listening together."

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