We are using digital media channels more than one would have imagined a few years ago. We express our thoughts, behaviors, emotions, liking, and disliking on social media channels while connecting with people and brands. Therefore, regardless of their size, businesses require constant monitoring of their target market to gather the market’s pulse at all times.
In today’s era, monitoring social media of your brand using @mentions is not enough. Besides this, it consumes a lot of time to swap between multiple applications to see that you are on top of each platform. To skip these manual procedures, you need a social media monitoring strategy to keep the reputation of your brand sparkling.
An effective social media monitoring strategy will guide you on essential parameters that you should be focusing on to develop an operational plan grounded on your vision for your brand. Consider this when adhering to your 5 ps of marketing – a research strategy you likely implemented at the very beginning.
But before diving any further into the technicalities, let’s understand what social media monitoring is?
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Social media monitoring
Social media monitoring is different from the world of social media platforms. For example, suppose you have a presence in the market online. In that case, your customers are expected to talk about you on various social media platforms, websites, review sites, blogs, and other digital channels where they share their views and thoughts.
Now you might be curious about who is talking about you and your brand specifically? What are their opinions and thoughts about your product or service? What are their questions or complaints related to your product or service? To figure out these questions and attain brand equity in the market, you need social media monitoring.
Social media monitoring is not only about people commenting on your social media posts or @mentions on your posts. It includes posts where you have been mentioned without being tagged. These posts do not come directly to your notifications, but you need to monitor where you have a digital presence and create a buzz.
Social media monitoring can be referred to as an act of “hearing” what the digital world is saying about your brand or business to achieve worthy insights about your product or service.
But do not get confused with the terms social media monitoring and social media listening. Both are different from each other as monitoring means to respond consequently. In contrast, social media listening means having a complete look at @mentions and market trends to make a valuable decision for the future.
Why social media monitoring is important for your business
The most significant step for social media monitoring is knowing what is going on around you in real-time. Social Media monitoring helps you to keep an eye on the changing trends of the industry.
So now that we have established what social media monitoring is, let’s discuss some of the key reasons why you need a social media monitoring strategy for your business:
1. Building a strong brand
Social media monitoring helps you to know what people on the internet are actually thinking about your brand. For example, do they know your brand exists online? Do they know about the products or services that you offer to your customers? Is there any misunderstanding or confusion in the minds of your customers about your brand?
To overcome all these problems, you need to follow a social media monitoring strategy. It will help you to know and rectify if there are any hindrances between your brand and customers. Make sure that your brand’s name is on the top of searches by online store optimization techniques.
2. Maintain your reputation and respond simultaneously
A social media monitoring strategy notifies you of how people judge your brand. In today’s era, speed is considered the soul of the internet, specifically on social media platforms where you need to respond quickly to positive and negative comments simultaneously.
In addition to marketing your reputation online, you must be aware of all the questions and feedback given by your customers and respond to them at once, whether it includes a positive or a negative discussion.
3. Raise your brand equity with key opinion leaders (KOL)
Key opinion leaders are considered as leaders of thoughts. Their thoughts and ideas are worthy in the market space. You can have virtual meetings to understand your target audience and how to enhance relationships with customers. Social Media monitoring can help you to find the best Key Opinion Leaders for your brand.
4. Identifying market trends
To keep your brand up-to-date and fulfil your customer’s demands, you should know market trends and if any new competition is arising.
This goal can be achieved by following a social media marketing strategy. First, it helps you to find out current market trends and possible future trends. Second, it also allows you to find your brand’s competitors and how they operate in the market. Finally, it also helps your brand to gain experience and avoid any critical mistakes.
5. Measure the efficiency of your connections
A social media monitoring strategy helps you to find the best ways to communicate with your customers effectively. It measures all activities that attract your customers and what repels them. As a result, you might be getting closer to the actual behaviors of your target audience and gain insights that you would never have noticed or considered otherwise.
Social media monitoring gives you a clearer picture of your product or service has gained a central position in the market? Is the response from your customers the same as you would have expected? All these goals can be achieved by following a social media monitoring strategy that helps you to make reliable decisions.
6. Develop new and fresh content
To gain your customers’ attention, you need to develop new and fresh content according to the market trend and make it even more noticeable with the help of additional features such as Instagram hashtags. Social media monitoring helps you to find out current topics in the market and how to capitalize your content on these trends. You can also follow your competitors’ ideas for motivation.
7. Deliver improved customer service
Customer service is one of the main components that can help you to enhance your relationship with customers. In today’s modern era, customers have unique ways to directly contact their brands by tagging on posts, giving feedback, live chat on the website, or explicit messages via different social media platforms.
Social media monitoring continuously keeps a check on all your social media platforms which helps you to respond to your customers at the right time.
8. Study to identify your customer’s hidden thoughts
Sometimes your customers do not deliver the actual message on a company’s official platforms. Although you might have excellent customer service, the authentic voice of the customer is not raised. Have you ever thought to know each and everything customers are talking about your product behind your back?
Social Media Monitoring helps you keep an eye on each social media platform and the complete digital sphere. It can be considered a technique to knock into the views of your target audience without really asking how they feel.
9. Keep an eye on the negativity
There is no such thing as all praise and no negativity in the digital world. You need to know the good and the bad. Unfortunately, as your brand grows, there are going to be haters along with fans.
Social media monitoring gives you an excellent chance to convert your haters into fans by noticing the unwanted fuzz roaming around the web. It can be very harmful to your reputation if not handled properly. This monitoring helps you to seize the fire before it is extended, restricting the damaging consequences to your brand’s reputation.
10. Surveillance of your opponents
They say that keep your friends close but your enemies closer. This phrase holds true in the business world as well. You should always check your competitors’ activities, the way they work, the strategies they adopt, how they communicate with customers and respond to them. This monitoring will help you to maintain a competitive advantage in the market. It will also assist you in improving your weak points and level up the playing field with your competitors. You may even learn something and find out what to post on your Instagram account or on other social media platforms.
11. Defining SMART Goals
You can craft SMART goals for each social media platform to work effectively. Regardless of your brand’s size, and if it is new in the market or has been for many years, you need to listen to what people are saying about your brand at all times. Only then can you create SMART goals for your brand.
Wrapping up
According to the above discussion, it is clear that manual handling of social media monitoring is a complex task. It will require many employees and too much time, but even then, all goals cannot be covered in real-time. Fortunately, many social media monitoring tools can help achieve your goals without consuming a lot of time and money.
