People are talking about your business on social media. They are saying the things they like about your brand and the product/service upgrades they’d like to see. Are you listening?
Tracking social media engagement has become a priority for brands. Monitoring social media conversations allows brands to track, analyze, and respond to what people are saying about them on social media. But where do you start?
We have developed this guide that explains everything about social media monitoring to help you capture what people out there are saying about your company on social media and respond to their commentary.
What is social media monitoring?
Social media monitoring is the process of keeping an eye on your brand’s mentions on social media and responding to the engagement around it. It’s a reactive strategy that entails tracking all kinds of talk concerning your brand, such as reviews, product questions, and complaints.
Consumers follow their favorite brands online to stay informed about their products, services upgrades and other important industry news. They also use these platforms to express their thoughts and opinions about the brands they are working with. Positive online reviews are good for any business, but negative ones can ruin your reputation. For this reason, you should monitor what users are saying about your business on social media to amplify the positive comments and act on the negative mentions.
Figure 1: Reasons customers reach out to brands. Source: Sprout Social
Social media monitoring also makes a brand’s customers feel heard and appreciated. A study by Sprout Social found that 59 percent of customers reach out to brands on social media because they have a good experience, 47 percent for product or service questions, and 40 percent because of a bad experience. All these customer engagements are essential, and they affect how people perceive your brand. Responding to customer queries increases the chances that a customer will purchase from you. Addressing complaints shows that you care and this will help you attract more people to your brand.
How can you undertake it for your brand?
Social media monitoring is not just about tracking comments on your posts or direct mentions. You should also be on the lookout for posts that mention your company without directly tagging you. These posts will not show up as notifications on your network, hence the need for social monitoring tools.
Here are the best tools for this exercise:
Facebook Insights
Facebook Insights is an excellent tool for tracking user interaction on Facebook. It gives you aggregated information about your followers and those who interact with your posts to help you come up with marketing content that resonates with them. The demographics overview Facebook Insights provides will help you know the type of people who are interested in your business, and this will help you plan for the future.
Figure 2: Facebook’s Audience Insights. Source: Facebook Insights
Facebook is the most widely used social forum and having an active profile on the platform is a wise move for your business. Use Facebook Insights to understand your audience and streamline your marketing.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics provides detailed social media reports that are a boon for any marketer. It will help you understand which social media platforms bring the most traffic, what type of content works with different social media channels as well as helping you calculate the ROI for your social campaigns.
This information will guide you on how to structure your marketing campaigns on social media to ensure they bring the desired results. Set a social media marketing dashboard on Google Analytics to find out how social media users interact with your site and to determine the effectiveness of your social media marketing efforts.
Your CRM software
You can also use your CRM software for your social media monitoring. We recommend HubSpot CRM because it prioritizes social engagements and integrates your social media tool with your contacts database in the CRM. With this CRM, you can easily monitor interactions and conversations around your brand on social media. This will help you understand what your target users want and what you can do to serve them better.
Figure 3: HubSpot Social Management Software. Source: HubSpot
HubSpot CRM allows you to control all your social accounts from the software, and turn your content into social posts, thus helping you manage your social media activity from one central location.
What should you monitor?
There’s no limit to the stats you can monitor, but here are some of the important metrics you need to watch on social media.
Brand mentions
Track all the mentions your brand receives on social media. Doing this will help you figure out what is working and – most importantly – what’s not working for your customers. This information is useful for your product development and marketing teams. It will guide them on the changes to implement to make your products better.
Tracking your mentions will also help you develop meaningful relationships with your customers. When your brand gets mentioned on social, jump in on the conversation and engage with them. Your customers will learn more about your brand, making it easy for you to sell to them.
Brand sentiments
Are people out there saying positive or negative things about your brand? If you are not measuring brand sentiments, you run the risk of alienating your audience and damaging your reputation in the eyes of potential customers.
Social monitoring tools will help you know what your audience feels about your brand, highlighting the changes you need to implement to achieve a positive sentiment ratio.
Competitors
Use social media monitoring to track your competitor’s social media activities. You may have had a successful year, but if your competitors performed better than you, there’s nothing to celebrate.
Analyze your competitor’s social media performance by assessing the type of content they have published and the extent of user engagement. Compare this with your social performance to determine the effectiveness of your social marketing strategy. Identify the areas they are better than you and come up with a plan that will make your company a frontrunner in the industry.
Reviews
Social media monitoring tools will also help track what customers are saying about your business on review sites like Yelp. Such sites allow people to share their opinions about the products or services offered by brands, and if you are not monitoring your brand on these platforms, you are missing out on a lot of useful feedback.
Identify the reviews that are worth addressing, especially negative reviews, to create goodwill with your customers. If any product issues have been mentioned, promise to look at them to enhance the user experience.
Hashtags
Track relevant hashtags to understand what customers are saying about services in your industry. Customers could be using a trending industry tag to air their concerns about specific issues, and social monitoring tools will point to the critical tags that you should be following.
Tracking hashtags will also give a clue who the important influencers in your industry are. Influencers are a great asset for your brand because of their loyal following and tracking the right hashtags could help you identify the best ones to collaborate with.
Why monitor?
Here are the reasons you should implement social monitoring into your social media marketing strategies today:
To receive actionable feedback
Feedback on your products or services is always useful and social media is the right place to receive it. Hearing what your target users have to say about your offerings, announcement, or latest marketing campaigns will help you improve your products and tailor your campaigns to your customers’ needs.
Use the feedback to keep the conversation going and connect with your users in real-time. Thank your customers for positive reviews and act on the complaints right away. Your marketing will be better when you base your decisions on customer feedback since you’ll know what to concentrate on and what to avoid.
To personalize your user’s social experience with your brand
Social media monitoring gives you great insights about your audience, and this will help you develop an effective customer-first marketing strategy that nurtures your target users down the sales funnel towards converting.
Adobe states that 53 percent of marketers agree there’s a need for personalized content. Everything starts with understanding your audience and social monitoring will help you analyze and map your audience’s likes, habits, behaviors and networks.
To prevent social media negativity
Positive social engagements are good for you, but your customers will also use social media to share what they didn’t like about your products and brand experience. In this case, social media monitoring will help you identify instances where your brand has been mentioned negatively, giving you the chance to manage the crisis before it gets out of hand.
Review the feedback for lessons that will help you prevent a similar mistake in the future. Reach out to the affected user, apologize for the error and promise to make it up to them.
The best social media marketing tips
Social media is essential for growth marketing success, but it needs to be done right. If you want the leading insider tips to help you succeed, check out our tips here: Social Media Marketing: Your Ultimate Guide to Growth.
As you can see, social media monitoring is a necessary part of your marketing strategy if you want to present your best face to your audience. It will help you know what customers are saying about your brand, and you will use this information to improve your products or services.
The team at Growth Marketing Genie is skilled in social media monitoring and can help. We know the right tools to deploy to monitor your social media conversations and track engagements to keep brand fresh and interactive.
Are you connecting with the right people on social media? Use these social media marketing tips to improve your targeting.
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