For whosoever believes social media monitoring is an “interesting & simpleton exercise” indeed isn’t wrong! However, it only gets simple and interesting once you have a primer. So without any delay, let us proceed with a beginner’s guide on Social Media Monitoring.
Understanding Social Media Monitoring
Before we begin, it is essential to understand why we need social media monitoring Simply put, the conventional “word of mouth publicity” has shifted to online discussions and conversations today. Your brand and products are already being talked about online, either in mainstream conversations or through passing references. Most companies are capitalizing on this free flowing “social chatter” by engaging people to talk about their brands through polls, online discussions, quizzes, sharing brand FAQ’s and the like. This is technically termed as social media engagement.
Once you know how to monitor social media, this comes handy to you. Here’s how you go about it.
1. Master Logical Searching
The first step is to learn how to go ahead with your online searches. This means updating yourself on facts such as the use of “OR” to differentiate two keywords simultaneously searching for both in a single search in social networking sites like Twitter. However, the same logic is not applicable on BackType. Hence, learning about such engines and developing the searches accordingly is essential.
2. Listing Possible Keywords
Make a list of all the possible keywords pertaining to your product, brand name, market trends, and other market players i.e. anything and everything that you can lay your hands on. This long list might end up in multiple search results that you can always filter as per your requirement later. Let us explain this with an example. Let us take the brand Reebok. In this case a useful keywords list would include the following:-
- Brand name – Reebok
- Products – Reebok CrossFit, RealFlex, EasyTone, ZigTech, Reeshine and the like
- Brand Competitors/ Market Players – Adidas, Nike
- Market related keywords – Sport wears, Unisex Deo’s, Sneakers, Casual wears
- Keywords related to brands – Reebok brand launches, brand launch party, branding events, ad campaigns, brand ambassadors and many more
It is this keyword organization that allows you to make more sense of the online conversations and searches. It helps to sieve through “social clutter” and leads you to better social media optimization.
3. Set up a Monitoring Plan
This is the most important part and your main objective too. As you gather all the possible and probable keywords you get a clear picture of all that you can monitor. Now it’s all about organizing the same. This will help you not to confuse your brand’s information with your competitor’s news. Few types are monitoring are listed below:-
- Brand/Product Monitoring – Includes all the keywords related to products and the brand.
- Competitor Monitoring – Includes all relevant keywords for your brand’s competitors and their latest news and events
- Market Monitoring – This includes keywords related to the market scenario, for instance, if your brand belongs to the sports apparel section you monitor news such as sports apparel trends, market share, latest designs and the like.
What else can you do with Social Media Monitoring?
Apart from gathering relevant information pertaining to your brand and competitors social media monitoring has other utilities. It helps you in image management. You must have heard about a PR cell or a Corporate Communication Department managing all the public relations affairs for an enterprise. With social media monitoring you can do the same online. As you search through you might come across negative news about your brand having an unfavorable impact. Gathering all the data will enable you to strategize your online reputation management plan.
Engaging your online audience in interesting discussions and conversations with the desired value addition, will help you in social media marketing too. If your content is attractive, has news and add value to people’s timeline they will most likely share it with others. As a result, your brand name seamlessly passes from one user id to the other, and reaches its desired end i.e. the audience at large.
