The Top 10 Reasons to Monitor Your Brand in Social Media
The Compliment
Compliments can come in many forms. They can be congratulations messages about a
recent award. Or a customer raving about the experience they just had with your product
or with customer service. Social media compliments are the online equivalent of references
or testimonials, and they deserve your attention. Create a Delicious account or use another
social bookmarking utility to save all of these compliments. Include them on your website or
your collateral. Potential clients looking for reassurance on a purchase decision will love to
see what others think of your company and products.
The Complaint
Watch for posts complaining about your products or services, company, and staff. Catching
something early means getting a chance to respond and demonstrate your problem solving
abilities. A posted complaint may also draw out other similar customer experiences, which
provides an opportunity to reach out to them as well. And who knows, impressing customer
with great customer service may generate some positive posts about how you resolved the
problems.
The Expressed Need
The best way to watch for expressed needs is to look for keywords often used to describe
those needs. People make known what they are doing and often ask the general public
for advice when they are about to make a purchase. Both of these situations provide an
opportunity to reach out with an offer of assistance, information, or even a free demo. A
social media poster often appreciates that a company representative is listening and does
not mind an offer of assistance expecially if it’s done in a helpful, friendly way.
The Competitor
If you are watching your industry and relevant keywords, you will probably be the first to know
when a new competitor appears on the scene or when their name is mentioned. This kind of
intellgence can highlight opportunities to reach out to potential customers who are trying out
a competitor or dissatisfied with a competitor’s product or service. You may also discover which industry players are advocates for competitive brands, giving you the opportunity to reach out and gauge their interest in your capabilities. Competitors will also often talk about
subjects they are strategically interested in. Being able to stay on top of those discussions
allows you to anticipate future moves.
The Crowd
Topics will often pop up online that draw huge crowds. There is a lot to be learned from
these discussions, especially when they have the potential to affect your brand. Following
the swarms can give you a better understanding of current sentiment about a certain topic,
and uncover topics that you may need to keep tabs on. Tracking a topic’s viral nature and
how long it generates buzz can give you an idea of its relative importance, and opportunities
to join the conversation at its peak.
The Influencer
Influencers within a space can carry a lot of weight. They gain their power from how frequently
they post on a topic, the number of people who link to their posts, the number of people
gathering to comment and how engaged visitors to their posts become. An influencer’s
audience helps spread opinions on a brand faster, and those opinions can have greater
impact. Often an influencer’s post appears prominently in a topic’s Google search results
where even more potential customers will see it. Knowing who these influencers are and
understanding their opinions of your brands can help you connect with them as advocates,
or to understand why they currently hold a negative view.
The ROI
There has been a lot of buzz lately on how to successful measure online marketing and
outreach campaigns. Much of the focus has centered around the topic of engagement.
While a universal engagement metric has yet to be agreed upon there are still a number
of effective ways to measure engagement and ROI in general. Track the mentions of a
brand in user-generated content before, during and after a campaign. Isolate positive words
associated with a particular brand and gauge the number of times they were used over a
period of time. Alternatively, you could sort all posts mentioning a particular brand or topic
by number of comments or views to uncover the top 50 discussions where engagement was
the highest.
The Crisis
Discussions happening in social media can serve as an early warning system. By using
advanced tools, you can observe new words – especially negative ones – appearing more
frequently around your brands, and guide you to the posts where they appear. Tracking these
“crisis”words over time can also help gauge the effectiveness of any outreach campaigns
designed to address the underlying issues.
The Audit
A brand is the sum of all conversations and is no longer completely controlled by the
company. By analyzing social media, a corporation or agency can score a brand’s overall
user sentiment, determine which words are commonly associated with it, understand which
competitors rank closest in buzz or online mentions, uncover brand advocates, and rank
which social media channels contain the most active discussion. By isolating which sites are
discussing your brand or a competitor’s brand, an audit can also help pinpoint possible ad
placement opportunities for reaching the most valuable and engaged audiences.
The Thread
With so many social media channels, conversations often become splintered. A discussion
can start on one site and quick leap into another making it rather difficult to follow. Following
discussions using associated keywords can help bridge the thread across all types of social
media, connecting the conversation for easy analysis.
Your customers, prospects and peers are discussing your brand, your industry and your
competitors right now in social media: with or without you. Listen, pinpoint the buzz and
participate in the conversation.
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