Do you ever wonder what people say about your company online? Yes, you can check reviews, but those are usually generated with the express purpose of your brand reading the content and can have a certain level of bias. Social monitoring, or social listening, allows for another layer of digital content review by evaluating company or brand mentions across social channels by other users or companies, and provides insights into your strengths and weaknesses.
Building a Connection
Let’s say a consumer tweets about how one of your products helped them. If they didn’t tag you in the post, their tweet wouldn’t pop up in the notifications tab. Social monitoring tools will check if your brand was mentioned even when not tagged so you’ll know to engage with likes and comments, improving brand awareness and building a connection with the user. If an influencer shouts out your brand and they have a lot of followers, you also gained their followers’ attention, increasing the chances they’ll follow you or check out your page.
If a customer posts negative comments about your brand, you can work to flip the conversation into a positive. By giving advice or recommending a solution, the customer feels heard and other followers will hear your brand’s wider perspective on the issue. Overall, listening to customer feedback and giving user-friendly responses help optimize perception of your brand.
What Are Other Brands Saying?
Taking the time to be a detective and sort through posts to see what competitors say about your brand can enhance your digital presence. If a competitor posts something negative, light-hearted comments keep the banter funny, and the audience intrigued. For example, Wendy’s and Burger King sparred on Twitter in a harmless but competitive manner, gaining attention and engagement for both companies.
Another brand or influencer posting something nice about your brand creates an opportunity to collaborate. You might never know some of the feedback other brands have unless you captured the conversation by social monitoring the right keywords.
Monitoring the way other users are talking about your company outside of your official brand language can also be insightful for picking up new keywords or context.
Social Monitoring Tools
Like most digital tactics in marketing, there are tools to help you do this job more efficiently. Through social monitoring tools, such as Hootsuite Insights or Agility’s Social Media Intelligence, you can see any comment or post that mentions your brand on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. By filtering through keywords in real-time, posts with those keywords will pop up, providing the opportunity for rapid response. Social monitoring also allows you to track the amount of mentions your brand has received over a short period of time, giving you insights into negative changes or feelings toward your brand. It’s easier to fix a problem when looking at posts real-time before they go viral and become bigger issues.
Monitor Your Brand
Overall, social monitoring can have a positive impact on your brand. Through real-time posts, you can respond to feedback from customers or other brands, showing support by addressing questions, or issues. Take control of the conversation to avoid a future crisis and discover new collaborators and partners. Social monitoring shows you the conversations you can’t always see with basic social media platforms’ analytics and insights.