Monitoring: 5 Real Ways our Clients Have Used Signals for Success

Hopefully by now you’ve heard about one of our latest additions to Brandwatch Analytics, Signals.

We’ve already explained how we at Brandwatch are using Signals across the business, but now that Signals has been around for a month or so, we wanted to give you even more inspiration with some great examples of how some of our clients are already using it.

It’s great to see so many of our clients using Signals for such a wide variety of uses – we love hearing your stories, so please do continue to share them with us.

For all of these use cases, all you need to do is set up Signals for any Query that is tracking your key brand and product terms. Then, Signals will find the stories and issues for you. It really is that simple (here’s the user guide).

Retail brand: Quickly diffused negativity using Signals

Signals emails are triggered by all sorts of changes in your data, including when there is a sudden or dramatic shift in sentiment.

Early warnings of small sentiment shifts have allowed one of our retail brand clients to be made aware of breaking stories or issues.

For example, a Signal alerting them to a slight shift towards negative sentiment made them aware that a story they already knew about had now moved out of their own community and onto other channels where they had less control over the message, causing increased negativity towards the brand.

This allowed them to work quickly with internal and external PR teams to provide the right responses, meaning the shift towards negative sentiment was very short lived due to their fast action. They then continued to use Brandwatch Analytics and Signals to monitor the issue in case it worsened again.

Result: Negativity towards the brand was quickly diffused and so short lived, and the issue could then be kept under control, with ongoing monitoring of the relevant channels.

Fast food brand: Created a successful real-time campaign in minutes

One of the great things about Signals is that it does lots of the hard work for you, meaning you don’t have to read through huge volumes of mentions to find the one important story or to know in advance what you’re looking for.

One of our agency clients, working on behalf of a fast food brand, recently used Signals during the airing of a television show which prompted a large volume of conversation about the brand.

Signals allowed them to pick out the nuances in the conversation and highlighted the key stories within the conversation that were growing – whether they were positive, and therefore provided an opportunity for amplification and engagement to further their reach, or negative and therefore needed careful responses and fire-fighting to ensure there was no lasting damage to the brand.

Result: Signals found these stories for them in real-time, resulting in a successful real-time marketing effort without the need for a huge team of analysts sifting through all of the data.

Restaurant chain: Alerted to an incident before the story broke

A restaurant chain became aware of an incident in one of their locations via Signals, as soon as a few people started Tweeting about it.

Internal and external PR teams were alerted immediately so they could prepare a statement for when the story ‘broke’ and went mainstream.

The early warning that Signals allowed them gave them additional time to prepare before the media were alerted to the story – by that point they had a statement and messaging ready to share, helping avoid speculation and to reassure customers that they were dealing with it.

Result: A clear, well prepared public response ensured the brand could help control the message, remove potential for rumours and reassure customers.

Transport sector client: Quashed a potentially damaging situation involving a staff member

A client in the transport sector became aware of a potentially serious incident involving one of their staff members as soon as it started being discussed on social media.

This wasn’t a situation they could have predicted, so without Signals they may have found out much later. Through the early warning Signals provided, they were able to diffuse the situation immediately by tracking down the staff member and speaking with them directly.

They were also able to work with their PR and customer teams to put out a fast public response to quell any rumours before it escalated.

Result: A situation that could have worsened quickly and spread was quashed before it could do significant damage to the brand.

Brandwatch: Monitoring the fast-paced tech industry to stay one step ahead

We ourselves use Signals to prepare our own responses to breaking stories in our industry.

Being notified immediately when a story from a competitor, partner or others within our industry starts taking off allows us to act quickly – whether that’s offering comment to journalists, preparing statements about our own response, or alerting our internal teams to the news so they’re prepared to answer client questions.

For this use case, you’ll need a Query tracking your wider industry and/or competitors, which you can then set up a Signal for.

Result: We can get involved in the big industry stories and be prepared for our own take, or discuss how this affects our clients before news spreads.

Hopefully this has given you some food for thought about how your brand could be using Signals to get ahead. So get clicking and set up some Signals – it only takes 5 seconds (we timed it ourselves!)

Also, please do continue to give us your stories, use cases and feedback. We’re continuously improving and adding to Signals, and every gem we get from our users helps us on that journey to make something even better for our users, and to help inspire others to get the most from it.

Let us know in the comments, send us an email, Tweet us, or send a message in a bottle – whatever you feel like.