Social Media Monitoring

It is critical for brands to monitor social media so they can understand their customers overall response, determine key words, competition, find out advocates and also pinpoint ad placement.

Discussions on social media can serve as an early warning system before an issue goes mainstream and if caught soon enough the issue can be avoided. Brands are able to fight content with content to keep them in “good light.” Brands must watch for complaints; if they are caught early enough it provides a chance to show how responsive the company is. Social media provides an opportunity to reach out and build relationships with customers and to showcase a brand’s customer service. Monitoring compliments can help generate potential customers as well. When people need help or advice it gives the brand the opportunity to help out and answer questions, and potentially gain new customers. Keeping up with competitors will highlight opportunities to reach out to potential clients if people are dissatisfied with the service they are receiving. Furthermore it allows you to stay in the game and learn about trends in the industry.

Additionally social media has the potential to give brands better understanding of industry issues and who the thought leaders are for that industry. Understanding thought leaders and influencers for the industry allows a brand to target people to reach out to or to further understand. It can point them to an issue or topics they should continue or start to monitor.

Conducting Google blog searches, monitoring Twitter and Facebook for mention of the brand/company/competitors can and will keep brands in the know. You can also set up a Netvibes account, which will monitor many sites for mention of certain topics, brands or keywords. 

Everybody’s doing it, but they aren’t all doing it right.

These are just a few tips/suggestions I have for business who already use or are just beginning to use social media.

Your social media platform can and should show the personality of your company and ought to reflect the company in a “human” way. Customers like to know they are engaging with people just like them, so you don’t want to seem to professional or distant. Social media gives us a way to interact in a more casual or regular way, which also encourages fans/followers to interact more with the social media platform.

Businesses know they need a social media presence, but one of the biggest mistakes they can make is having these accounts and posting blindly without a strategy. Goals should be set before the social media brigade starts. You should know exactly what you want to accomplish and how you will use these sites to accomplish your goal (ex: twitter for questions and answers or facebook for launching new products). Also, having a social media calendar is a great idea especially for companies just starting out or using new platform such as blogging. For each day/ week a new theme can be used mapping out what to talk about and even at what specific times, making sure all topics are introduced, nothing is left out and nothing is repeated.

Another thing businesses use social media for is to tell people about their goods and services, however giving updates every day about every single product is boring, and if people want to know about that they can check out the company website. You must be social; keep in mind what the costumers are interested in (what else you can use to spark conversation between sales pitches) and what will make them respond. Talking about you all the time is not effective, but providing information that people can and want to engage with can be.

If you are not going to check or respond to customer feedback, I would suggest to not even bother having an online presence. Interacting with consumers is very important; it can ultimately make or break the company. Social media profiles are another way for people to learn about your company and if they are contacting you and not getting any kind of response the credibility of your company and customer service diminishes.

Balancing between too much and too little can be challenging and I suggest setting a schedule in order to avoid the stress. Consistency is key to successful social media engagement. No one wants to follow a company who has excessive tweets, and you don’t want to be that company. On the other hand, no one wants to follow a company who never interacts, the balance is what makes is successful.

A Few Benefits of Blogging for Small Businesses

There are many ways to receive inexpensive exposure for your small business but getting the word out involves more than a few tweets a week and asking people to ‘like’ you on Facebook. Reaching out to the online media world may be just what you need to get more exposure. This will take more time and effort but the return on investment (not necessarily money, mainly just time) will bring you exposure without emptying your wallet.

Blogging about your small business can help boost credibility as well as SEO rankings, which means it can put your brand higher in search results that are relevant to your business. Also, commenting regularly on relevant articles is a great way to get your name into the eyes of your target audiences and key reporters.

Bloggers and journalists are constantly searching for relative and interesting stories. I just learned about a neat website called HARO (Help a reporter out) where people are searching for media pitches. It will help you find outlets and blogs that cover specific categories because they categorize pitches and send them to writers who will be interested in your topic, helping you narrow down your search even more. I think this website is great because you can get your media pitch to people who are interested and its free. Taking time away from cold pitches and focusing on specific reporters can help you save time, energy and money.