71% of companies1 believe that social media monitoring provides them with valuable consumer insights they can share with other departments. As a matter of fact, social media monitoring tools are the best way to know how your brand is perceived, especially by keeping an eye on what people say about it online.
But social media monitoring can cover more than your brand alone. It also encompasses what's being said about your products, competitors, industries, latest ads, new logo, and anything else that might have netizens talking.
Ultimately, the purpose of deploying social media monitoring software is to collect social data, synthesize it, and subsequently report audience and competitor information to brands that want to understand their environment strategically.
We'll explore why companies should value monitoring their social networks and then list the best B2B tools for monitoring them, so you can start tapping into conversations as soon as you finish reading this article.
To understand why you need it, you must first understand what it is. Social media monitoring is about tracking your audience and industry by monitoring trends, hashtags, keywords, and mentions related to your brand.
You can conduct quantitative and qualitative research by keeping an eye on this data. By blending some of your collected information, you can deduce information such as:
If you've heard about social media monitoring, you might have also heard about social media listening. It is the next step after social media monitoring that allows you to take part in the conversation and turn your information into audience insights. To better understand the differences between Social Media Listening, Social Media Analytics, and Social Media Management, you can read our blog post.
Now that you have seen what is social media monitoring, let’s try to figure out why it is important by providing you with five main reasons.
You know your industry, but you know that it is constantly changing. The same goes for your competitors, do you really know all the new, emerging players? Monitoring the social media landscape can help you effectively identify the current developments in your industry and sector.
This level of monitoring will allow you to know the trends and anticipate potential demand spikes for your products and services. Once you forecast the upcoming demand, you can efficiently strategize ahead of time and take action immediately.
In addition, social media monitoring is also keenly used by brands to stake out their competitors, spot and realize their marketing activities, and anticipate and analyze their actions. Thus, thanks to social media monitoring, you can avoid making the possible mistakes your competitors have made. More importantly, improve the areas where your competitors are doing better than you (for now 😉).
Closely follow what is written about your company and pay attention to the tone of the discussion. Thanks to AI technology, some tools offer sentiment analysis to give you an overview of the general trend. On social networks, information and buzz circulate at an uncontrollable speed once word gets out.
A social tracking tool will inform you as soon as your brand is mentioned in the media. You'll be able to react to discussions, address concerns and highlight positive comments. By responding quickly, you prove to customers that you care about their experience and are implementing ways to turn the few negative experiences into positives.
To be the first to know and get new mentions instantly, you can set up notifications to receive alerts, for example, when certain expressions might cause a crisis.
Having a brand advocate is advantageous to your company as having an extra voice that only shouts the good stuff about you – where it applies to public relations, counts a lot.. Whether it's a thought leader in your industry or an influencer in your sector, they will have an audience that is likely to become yours.
With a simple collaboration with a relevant influencer, your brand awareness can be strengthened and skyrocket. Likewise, it could help strengthen customer relationships and boost sales. So, how do you identify the right influencer?
That's where social media monitoring tools come in, once again. Media monitoring helps you track and find industry experts, bloggers, and advocates that best fit your brand.
For example, in APAC, @mgdalenaf is a food influencer with over 7 million cumulative followers on her platforms. Looking at her profile, you can see that she often tests new or local dishes in restaurants. If you are an up-and-coming restaurant, it makes sense to invite her to your restaurant to share the experience with her followers and bring them in.
Steps to find the best influencer thanks to social media monitoring
Communicating on social networks is important. Being able to measure the impact of your publications to improve them afterward is even better.
With regular social media monitoring instilled, you will be able to actively track the attention your actions are getting in the media. Are you reaching your target audiences? Are you getting the response you wanted? This online monitoring data is a reliable source for strategic decision-making.
To save you time, these tools also provide you with dashboards, reports, and analyses to convince the company's management. With the right data, you can show that your PR strategy is profitable and has achieved concrete results.
Over time, people use social media the same way they use search engines. Thus, keywords from search intent are critical data, just like hashtags. These allow you to identify potential customers.
First, you can identify the purchase intentions "I want to buy the latest iPhone..." and the context, "...for Christmas". If you sequence the mentions to find the buying trends, you can focus your advertising campaign on that and ensure a guaranteed response.
Of course, you'll also need to track your brand keywords. These are anything from the name of your products, services, and slogan that consider common spelling mistakes. This is followed by the keywords of the competitors and the sector.
Once you know which keywords to follow, pay attention to the most relayed mentions. Reply to the comment and show that you interact with the users. You can encourage a user to buy just by replying to a tweet.
Example of Netflix's quick and effective response to an online mention
Some companies like Burger King, Netflix, and Decathlon are known for their online presence. Don't hesitate to join this strategy to turn your followers into customers. And if you want more tips on generating B2B leads through social networks, visit our dedicated post.
If you would like to learn more about social media analytics, read our blog post that presents why social media analytics has become a key success factor.
Sources
1: (EveryoneSocial, 2021)