The 12 essential benefits of monitoring Twitter: 1. Digital Marketing

With between 80 to 90 million unique visitors in the US alone (Statista, 2015), Twitter is a absolute must for your Social Media strategy. 59% of tweeters are under 34, 45% are women and 74% are following brands (Twitter, 2016). Whats more, users, conversations and images conveyed by Twitter are a great asset for your digital marketing. Over our series of blog posts we are going to explain how in 12 key points.

1. Find experts

Although the term expert is often overused, Twitter is a conversation and publication stream for numerous specialists. The network allows you to benefit from discoveries, opinions and conversations of journalists, researchers, practitioners, professionals, enthusiasts and it's not only limited to digital or social media marketing!

But how can you find what you're looking for? In the Twitter search engine tool or via your favorite Social Media Monitoring tool ;-), enter your query as a favorite topic in the language of your choice, for example: "telecom operator", "virtual reality". You will then get a list of tweets. However, it is also essential to follow accounts of particular interest, so that you can integrate them into your Twitter lists.

 

Find experts with Twitter Search

 

The lists are your friends: you can collect the tweeters you are interested in within these lists; with many others doing it, why not do the same: or even better, use their lists too?
For this you can visit expert profiles you have identified and click on their lists, which you can then explore.

More "refined" and less time consuming, the Twitter list search in Google is another way. You will need to enter a query type "lists" virtual reality "site: https: //twitter.com/" and it will then bring up several Twitter user's lists dedicated to virtual reality.

 

Find expert lists using Google

 

2. Anticipate, monitor and understand the buzz

Amongst news sites, Facebook, Instagram and blogs, Twitter is one of 5 web medias bringing the most buzz (good and bad). It also represents, alongside Facebook and Instagram, the preferred social media channels for the spread of viral campaigns, bad buzz and reputation crisis.

 

Airlines Buzz analysis (extract)

 

Twitter is also the ideal media to follow the spread of the viral "memes" phenomena, to see how they are initiated by professional agencies and online users. This is the case for several photos taken at the MWC Samsung press conference, where Mark Zuckerberg's presence, who has long been the focus of controversy, has been the subject of numerous diversions and analysis' with a strong chance of viral spread at stake.

 

Virality and hijacking: The photo from the MWC Samsung conference with journalists geared up in virtual reality headsets (well, not completely).

 

Anticipating a bad buzz or a potential crisis, if not already always easy, is made possible thanks to good preparation. For example, Twitter focuses on many questions concerning After-sales Service (product returns, deliveries, guarantees). By monitoring conversations on Twitter about your products, services and brand means being alert to when certain types of expression are present ("faulty", "late", "poor") or when a particular threshold is exceeded (more than 15 tweets on DnTrump vacuum cleaner) can help mobilize community managers, but also the customer relationship or any other services involved in order to defuse and resolve problems at their source.

 

Be alert to triggers in tweets and key expressions

 

3. Detect business opportunities

In other words, by using the messages of Tweeters who discuss their research, products and services, you will be able to identify leads and interesting people to  offer your services to. In short, online users searching for information before making a purchase. And there are many. For this, it's "enough" to monitor your brand names, product and types of products surrounding your activities, but also those of your competitors. But, to eliminate "noise" inherent within a large volume of tweets about certain products, it is possible to identify your prospects needs through keywords such as "advice", "help me", "I'm looking for" ...

 

Detect leads by monitoring Twitter

 

4. Provide feedback from the ''ground'' up…

... thanks to photo-posting tweeters. If your company has a distribution network (branches, stores, shops, franchises), Twitter is a great tool to go back to the office with direct customer experience feedback from outsourced entities ... or those of your competitors. Visual social networks are leading the way in terms of recruiting new active users (Snapchat, Instagram, Periscope, and to a lesser extent, Pinterest and Tumbr ..). But, Twitter is the vehicle for many images being taken more and more frequently by users to document their shopping or overall experience when visiting your outlets.

 

Collect feedback from customer in-store experiences

 

Keep in mind that tweets with an attached image get an 18% click rate, 89% favorited rate and 150% more retweets. Also, if the image is unflattering for your brand, the  reaction needs to be speedy (but after reflection) to provide a formulated and relevant response.

Stay tuned for our next post, where we'll unveil even more benefits by using Twitter!