Social Media Monitoring 101

What is Social Media Monitoring?

Social media monitoring is tracking and listening to conversations of your brand, product, or industry across social platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. This helps you understand how people perceive your brand, identify potential opportunities, and stay ahead of the competition.

Why should you monitor social media?

Social media monitoring can provide a wealth of insights that can help you improve your marketing strategy. It can help you identify customer pain points, understand customer preferences, and track your competitors’ activities.

Additionally, it can help you identify influencers in your industry, build relationships with them, and leverage their reach to reach a larger audience.

In today's world, it's even more critical to monitor social media conversations because online audiences can drive trends that directly affect your brand and its reputation.

How do you monitor social media?

There are many social media monitoring tools are available to help you monitor the internet and track engagement.

Some of the most popular tools for social media monitoring include Hootsuite, Sprout Social, and Meltwater. Other tools for social media monitoring include Brandwatch, NetBase and ourselves - PeakMetrics.

Oftentimes, organizations deploy multiple tools for different purposes. For example, HootSuite is great for managing and scheduling social posts while at PeakMetrics, we focus on helping organizations understand emerging trends or "narratives", particularly narratives that could be damaging to your brand's reputation.

How can I ensure my social media monitoring efforts are effective?

Social media monitoring is an important part of any successful digital marketing strategy. To ensure your efforts are effective, here are a few tips:

1. Set measurable goals: Before you start monitoring, decide what you want to achieve and set measurable goals. This will help you track progress and determine if your efforts are effective.

2. Monitor regularly: Make sure you monitor your social media accounts regularly. This will help you stay on top of any changes or trends in your industry.

3. Analyze the data: Once you’ve collected data from your monitoring efforts, take the time to analyze it. This will help you identify areas of improvement and opportunities for growth.

4. Engage with your audience: Engaging with your audience is key to successful social media monitoring. Respond to comments, answer questions, and share relevant content to keep your followers engaged.

How can I protect my company's brand through social media monitoring?

Social media monitoring is an important part of protecting your company's brand. It involves tracking conversations about your brand, products, and services on social media platforms. This helps you stay on top of customer feedback, identify potential issues, and respond quickly to any negative comments.

To get started, you should create a list of keywords related to your brand, products, and services. Then, use a social media monitoring tool to track these keywords and monitor conversations about your brand. This will help you identify any potential issues or complaints that customers may have.

You should also set up alerts to listen for any mentions of your brand, products, or services. This will allow you to respond quickly to any negative comments or feedback and address any issues that may arise.

Finally, it's important to be proactive in engaging with your customers on social media. Respond to any questions or comments they have, and thank them for their feedback. This will help to build trust and loyalty with your customers and will help to protect your brand's reputation.

More advanced tools, like PeakMetrics, allow you to zoom out and see the conversations in context so you can understand when an emerging trend is about to become a real threat to your brand reputation.