You’re extremely worried.
A lot of effort that you put into it just went to waste.
It has been days and you’re just now hearing about this. Why didn’t you know about it sooner or just when it happened so you could do some damage control?
You’re thinking about what you’ll tell your boss about the negative feedback circulating on the web after the last launch.
Well, only if you were doing social monitoring all of this panic could’ve been avoided and you would’ve been able to control the situation by now without losing calm and control.
If you’ve ever faced a situation like this in your company or would never like to come across one, let’s take a deep dive into what is social monitoring, how to do it, what to monitor and how it benefits you.
What is Media Monitoring?
The concept of media monitoring is nothing new. Humans are interactive as well as curious by nature. When we put our work out in the world, we like to know what people are saying about it. Whether it is appreciated or not and if there is room for improvement.
The same concept applies to businesses. With social media usage on the rise, in the US alone 82% of the population had a social profile in 2021. People find it convenient to connect with their peers online through a simple message.
It is also easier to find like-minded people to have discussions, join groups of your interests and engage in other conversations that you like. Along with all that, people are talking about their best experiences with a brand (or worse), they’re giving companies feedback and recommendations online, tagging them in their complaints, and much more.
This is all because it is much easier to do so since there’s no waiting on the call to connect to the relevant department or waiting for a reply to the letter you wrote to the company.
With all these conversations happening, social media monitoring is crucial for businesses in 2022, of all sizes and especially B2B companies. But you may be wondering how and what to monitor? Let’s take a look at that.
How To Do Media Monitoring?
There are several ways to do media monitoring with the most convenient being using a tool like Notifier. With its easy-to-use interface, you can conveniently set up a searcher or multiple searchers for all the keywords you’d like to monitor.
You can get instant or daily alerts for the matches right in your inbox or through slack among other options. You can also view the results through your Notifier dashboard. The tool lets you monitor results across many social platforms including Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, and Facebook among others.
Other ways that you can do social media monitoring include:
Doing a Manual Search
Every social platform has a search option. If you’re wondering what anyone is saying about your brand or you’d like to track a particular keyword, you can simply search the term and look for the results.
For instance, a quick search on Twitter about Nike will reveal all the tweets in which the brand is mentioned. However, a manual search like this can be time-consuming as you have to repeat the same thing on different platforms.
Setting up Google Alerts
You can also do social monitoring by setting up a Google alert for your search terms. It will send you an email every time a new result is discovered on the web. This is a feature set up by Google itself but is limited in its usage.
What To Monitor?
Now, you know what is media monitoring and how to do it, it’s time to learn what to monitor? It is important to know this because it affects a lot of other decisions in the company.
Brand Mentions
The first thing to monitor is your brand mentions. If you’re tagged in a post or tweet on any platform you will receive a notification. However, it is not necessary that everyone is tagging your brand or even typing the right spelling.
All untagged mentions can get lost until you have a searcher set up for your brand name on a tool like Notifier that monitors all the results across platforms.
Other things to monitor apart from your brand name include:
- Campaign-specific hashtags
- Slogans and tagline
- Active members of your company
- Variations and misspellings of your brand name
Your Competitors
Media monitoring is ethical and legal as it monitors everything on social platforms that is public. Tracking your competitors can give you useful insights into their marketing and business strategy, what’s working or not as well as access to opportunities.
You may learn about where they are lacking and may find an opportunity to even introduce your brand as a useful alternative. Companies today operate in a competitive environment and it is useful to know where you stand compared to your competitors. Media monitoring can help you with these insights immensely.
Industry-Related Keywords
Monitoring your industry is also important. Industry-related keywords can give you a holistic view of the business landscape in your niche and where it is headed. This can be useful for your future business decisions. You can monitor key industry phrases or frequently used hashtags to keep up with industry trends.
Benefits of Media Monitoring
Any business that is serious about its online reputation and cares what its customers think of them, engages in media monitoring. It has become an integral part of marketing analytics due to its many benefits.
Crisis Management
For one, media monitoring allows brands to timely respond to customers’ queries, feedback, and complaints. With no brand mentions going unnoticed, you can leverage the opportunity provided by social media to interact with your customers and prevent any potential crisis.
Even an angry customer who tags a brand with a complaint can be won back over only if brands are quick to respond and have a crisis management strategy. This is only possible through media monitoring. With the right approach, you can learn to be proactive and not reactive.
Finding Potential Customers
When you’re tracking your competitors, industry news and trends, and the right keywords across different platforms, it gives you insights to find potential customers as well. You’ll gain knowledge about where your potential customers are having discussions and conversations and their pain points.
Once you’re able to identify all that you can have a better strategy to engage them, reach out to them, and introduce them to your product.
Identifying Influencers
When you engage in media monitoring you will also find out the influencers or journalists in your niche. That can be beneficial in two ways. People get influenced easily and if you find the right influencers in your niche, you can reach out to them with a brand collaboration.
You may also be able to track influencers who are not fond of your product and in that case, you can reach out to them and try to change their mind.
Reputation Management
Media monitoring can help brands manage their online reputation effectively. You’re only as good as how you’re perceived online and you can manage this only if you know the general sentiment about your brand online.
Once you are aware of what is being said about your brand online, you can take action to fix it. This is important to build a strong rapport with your customers, clear the air where necessary and show the human side of your brand. If you don’t know what’s going on, you can’t take action to fix it.
So don’t let your brand mentions slide by you. Avoid panic and manage your online reputation with ease through media monitoring. Start your free trial today!