The COVID-19 pandemic has forced businesses, regardless f they are big or small, to seize their operation. A lot of businesses were left with no choice but to let their employees work from home as governments implement stay at home orders.

Moreover, since people are locked down inside their homes, they rely on social media to keep themselves updated about brands and products that they need to purchase. Brands are aware that their customers can no longer go to physical stores to buy their needs. Instead, they opt to have their purchases delivered straight to their doors. 

You can say that the landscape of the market has already changed for brands. This is why brands are now utilizing social data in order to get in front of their prospective customers.  

Reasons Why Social Data is the Key for Brands During the Pandemic

Social data helps businesses become functional now that the COVID-19 pandemic has paralyzed them. While people are staying at home to remain safe from the virus, brands can reach them using social media platforms like buying Twitter followers. In fact, consumers are always on social media to see what is new in the brands that they follow or if there is something that they could purchase from those brands.

Here are what brands say why social data is beneficial for brands now that there is a pandemic:

Brandwatch

Brandwatch is a digital consumer intelligence company. It specializes in social listening, social media monitoring, consumer, as well as market insights. 

According to its Vice President of Global Communications Victoria Miller, conversations on Twitter provides them with insight into what people feel and what they are doing to cope up with the rapid changes.

From March 1 to May 14, conversations that revolve around good deeds increased by 170 percent. Americans donated food, made reusable masks for medical personnel, and promoted buying from local shops to help small businesses. These are only some of the most popular conversations about good deeds on purchased followers on Twitter.

Furthermore, Miller noted that people are dealing with a significant change. Yet, they are adapting to new circumstances. In fact, most of them are even taking new activities. Miller also added that it is incredible to watch how people’s ways evolve through social listening. 

Insights and conversations also helped customers to rethink how they engage and support brands. In return, brands are now changing how they will permanently keep in place.

Sprinklr

Sprinklr is the Customer Experience Management (CXM) platform for large organizations. CXM, in addition, is based in New York. The company uses its Artificial Intelligence capabilities in order to analyze 600 million tweets. It does this to learn more about the conversation happening on Twitter. 

According to Paul Herman, the VP of Product Marketing for Sprinklr, Twitter provides organizations with the opportunity to understand a conversation’s past context. It also aids in understanding the insights of a past conversation. Through these, brands can anticipate how these conversations must evolve in the future. 

Furthermore, this company discovered that some of the new and unreported symptoms of COVID-19 initially popped up on Twitter. These symptoms were loss of smell and taste. In addition, a significant number of healthcare workers were relying on Twitter to vent out their frustrations over the lack of PPEs. in return, this helps government officials identify which areas need essential resources. 

Herman also emphasized that such also highlighted a sense of urgency for companies to move towards a more holistic approach when it comes to customer experience management. According to him, research is one thing. However, research combined with customer care and marketing as a holistic function is something more. 

People are now expecting brands and government agencies to be present for them when the situation improves. For Herman, this means that brands and government need to be present where people are. In addition, they have to speak to customers in a way that is human and will build customer trust,

Sprout Social 

The large amount of the COVID-19 conversation, as well as the data that it is able to generate, is a representation of an incredible moment in social listening’s history. This is according to Patrick Cuttica, the Director of Product Marketing at Sprout Social. Notably, Sprout Social is a company specializing in deep social media listening and analytics. It caters its services to more than 20,000 agencies and brands.

Cuttica also added only a very few events can impact every industry, country, and every person on this planet. For this reason, he thinks that the most unique thing now is the scale of what the conversations look like and the impact that it has. 

The pandemic has also changed the way healthcare companies engage with patient communities who use Twitter as a platform for communication. Recently, Sprout Social introduced a new product under their social listening suite. This product is the COVID-19 Featured Topic. It allows Sprout customers to dimension overall data for the social conversation that is set around COVID-19. Moreover, its aim is to understand how this social conversation is impacting brands. For instance, healthcare customers can define what the potential trends are by using associated terms like hospital access, elective surgery, and pregnancy when using this tool.

Conclusion

Cuttica noted that there is a growing concern or uncertainty among patients around the topics that involve them. Moreover, hospital systems could become ahead of this uncertainty if they will proactively clarify using social content. 

Moreover, brands should use their Twitter data in order to help shape up their marketing content. Their Twitter data could also help them to stay up to date and on the pulse of the conversation that involves them.

Furthermore, Cuttica said that Twitter is an amazing platform in terms of showcasing these stories, as well as driving the global conversation. This is because people come to this social media platform to find information, In addition, people use Twitter to create connections and share opinions during these times when they are isolated.