Statistics indicate that social media users spend 11.5 billion hours on social media each year. That means that no matter the industry you are in, you need to have a social media strategy. It's also worth noting that they are not only there on social media but also posting, liking, commenting, and engaging with one another on social media.

If customers are mentioning your brand before you join the conversation, it means you are missing significant opportunities. However, you should remember that they mention your brand outside of your official handles. They may even use a variation of your name, including specific hashtags or products. This also means that it can be hard to keep up with the thousands of conversations across different social media platforms. This is why a brand should have a good social media monitoring strategy. In this guide, we take you through the benefits, steps, and tips for creating one.  

What is Social Media Monitoring?

Social media monitoring involves gathering data on critical social media messages and conversations to better understand your customers’ likes, dislikes, changing needs, and wants. It involves using tools to collect data from blogs, forums, social media platforms, and new sites to measure public sentiments, measure brand mentions, and identify potential threats and opportunities.  

Through social media monitoring, you can also respond to relevant conversations concerning your brand. The goal is to discover and respond to various discussions about your brand, including reviews, service complaints, and product questions.

It's also worth noting that social monitoring is different from social listening. These are unique practices with distinct benefits, although they are both integral to your social media strategy. While social media listening answers the question of what, social monitoring answers the question of why. 

When monitoring social media, your goal should be to respond to customer conversations and resolve their issues. This differs from social listening, which offers a broader view of the brand and the industry as a whole, including the targeted interests of your audience. 

Social monitoring, therefore, enables you to join an ongoing conversation. It involves more than just tracking the direct comments and mentions on social media posts. It also monitors the posts that mention your brand without tagging it and are, therefore, not visible in your social media notifications.

Social Media Monitoring Objectives

There are many reasons to conduct social media monitoring, such as:

Managing Brand Reputation

Through social media marketing, it's possible to maintain a positive brand image that will help you address any negative crises and comments. When you track your brand mentions, you can quickly respond to customer complaints, manage your online reputation, and appreciate positive feedback.

Increase Engagement

Through social media monitoring, businesses can engage with audiences in real-time. They can respond to a tweet, Facebook posts, or comments, ensuring a stronger relationship with their customers. 

Market Research

Social media can be a hub of important information. Businesses can leverage social media to get valuable information on customers' preferences, trends, and industry shifts. They can then use the data for product development, improved strategies, and better decision-making.

Competitor Analysis

Social media monitoring can also provide essential insights into your competition. By tracking their social media activities, you can identify their strategies, insights, and gaps and, therefore, remain ahead of the competition.

Handling Social Media Crisis

While social media crises are inevitable, how you handle them can make a significant difference, mainly because in the social media world, one negative post can go viral. The good news is that social media monitoring can enable you to track social media crises and respond fast before they get out of hand. When you track a rise in negative mentions or trending topics, you can understand the full scope of the problem, mitigate any potential damage, and gain consumers’ trust.  

For instance, the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 was criticized because of its battery issues, resulting in the product's recall. Through social media monitoring, they were able to track customer backlash and respond to their concerns. This swift action helped Samsung retain its market position despite the crisis.

Market Analysis and Trend Watching

You can also use social media monitoring for trend analysis, which helps you track the trends in your industry. A good monitoring tool will enable you to track social media mentions on different online sources, such as review sites or news sites. While these may not be considered to be strictly social media mentions, they make some good extras for your social media mentions. 

No matter your industry, you need to observe emerging trends. By monitoring competitor strategies, you can uncover new marketing and industry trends. 

Monitoring on Review Platforms and News Sites

When conducting social monitoring, it would be wise to monitor news sites and review platforms. This will provide valuable insights into public opinion, customer satisfaction, and emerging trends.

Leverage User-Generated Content (UGC)

One tool brands are using to build authenticity with their social media audience is UGC. This refers to the content made by social media users concerning your brand, which can be key to increasing your brand's visibility and engagement levels. In addition to adding credibility to your brand, it can be an excellent source of historical data to help you make better data-driven decisions. 

Benefits of Social Media monitoring

Many times, your social media audience will discuss your brand in their conversations without tagging you, which means you will not get notified about these mentions. By using a social media monitoring tool, you can uncover these conversations that would otherwise have gone unnoticed. 

Additionally, here are a few more benefits of social media monitoring:

Better Brand Awareness

We noted earlier that social media monitoring involves tracking conversations that your audience isn't tagging you in. This can ensure that you engage in meaningful conversations with your customers, increasing the chances of better customer relationships and brand awareness. When your brand engages with customers authentically, it becomes easier for people to remember it. It amplifies your brand awareness, which ultimately leads to better customer loyalty. 

Good Customer Service

Social media monitoring enables you to track customer complaints, questions, or concerns outside traditional channels such as phones, emails, or social media pages. When you stay ahead of the conversations, you can provide adequate and timely responses. Such a proactive approach enhances customer satisfaction, improves your brand reputation, and positions you as a customer-centric brand.

More Competitor Intelligence

Through social media monitoring, you can get insights into what your competitors are getting right and what they are struggling with. You can leverage social media monitoring tools to keep tabs on your competitors’ campaigns, mentions, and customers’ reviews, even when social media users don't tag them. Then, you can use the insights to understand how social media users react to your products and strategies and apply them to fine-tune your plan. 

Identifying Influencers

Social media monitoring can identify influencers who are already vouching for their brand and, therefore, partner with them to increase sales, credibility, and brand awareness. Airbnb is an example of a brand that does that. They use social media monitoring to find influencers with whom they can collaborate. 

Steps in Social Media Monitoring

Before you start social media monitoring, you need to have a good plan illustrating what your social media marketing lacks and how social media monitoring is likely to solve the problem. If you already have a social listening strategy, you can add it to your social media monitoring. 

Here are the steps you need to follow with social media monitoring: 

Have Some Clear Goals and Objectives

Having goals and objectives in advance will determine the social media marketing results you are likely to have. You need to consider what you are trying to achieve and the metric you want to impact. For instance, if you aim to track customer sentiments, you will need to have a tool to do so.

Select the Right Social Monitoring Tool

We have a variety of social monitoring tools, all with different features. When selecting one, create a list of features you find helpful, such as the ability to track certain keywords, hashtags, and influencers. If you will be monitoring your brand across different social media platforms, you need to ensure that you choose a tool that supports that capability. 

While a tool with basic features may be suitable for a bigger business, ensure that it is scalable even as your business grows. Consider also the ease of use of your preferred tool. Make sure you test the functionality and interface before you commit to a very complex tool that may reduce your team's efficiency. Select something intuitive enough to align with your workflows.

Consider the Keywords to Track

Create a list of keywords you want to use the tools to track, such as your brand name and its keyword variations, competitor brands, product names, commonly used terms in your industry, important slogans, hashtags, and even the names of your competitors. Remember also to include keyword variations, misspellings, and other relevant industry terms. 

Avoid using generic terms. Instead of adding the keyword tech, use the term “AirPods,” assuming that is what your brand is selling. Remember that the reason you are doing keyword tracking is to capture as much data for your brand as possible without getting sidetracked by necessary noise. 

Consider also some negative search terms. For instance, if your brand shares a name with something unrelated, add the keywords to the negative search result to avoid irrelevant results. Also, exclude results that appear spammy. 

Enter and Refine Search Results

After getting a list of the search terms to use in the tool, you are now ready to begin the actual social media monitoring. As the tool starts to gather data, make sure you are analyzing the results to keep refining filters and keywords. Pay attention to the insights you are getting. If you are getting a lot of irrelevant data from a particular term, you can modify or adjust the term depending on the effectiveness of the keyword. 

If some search terms need your immediate attention, make sure you set up some real-time data. This will enable you to remain on top of your conversations, particularly during campaigns when you are facing a social media crisis. 

Keep Refining and Adjusting

Social media monitoring isn't a one-time affair. When you begin tracking, you will see a particular trend in the data. When you track those patterns, keep fine-tuning the search terms. If you realize that there is a term that is producing a lot of irrelevant information, remove it or fine-tune it. 

On the other hand, if you realize that there are some conversations you are missing, add new terms to help you remain ahead. Remember that social media trends are ever-changing, and therefore, you need to keep updating your terms to get fresh and relevant data. 

For instance, if you are tracking the term “apple” and you realize that you are getting a lot of data about the fruit, you can refine your keyword to Apple iPhone or Apple Inc. Such a simple tweak can help improve the relevance of the collected data. A good idea would be to observe the trends and keywords around your brand and add them as they arise. 

Study the Results of Social Media Monitoring

After implementing the social media monitoring strategy, you also need to analyze whether your efforts are bearing fruit. You can do that using an analytics and reporting tool to help you track the initially set goals, if it improves customers’ sentiments, increases brand awareness, and boosts awareness. 

Compare your before-and-after metrics. For instance, if you were aiming to improve customer sentiments, you could track how this is changing over a particular period and whether it's improving because of some practice responses. If it isn’t, consider adjusting your responses and your post priorities. 

Ensure that your reporting aligns with the social media strategy. Track your success by checking for changes in customer sentiment, conversion rate, and engagement. If something isn't working, be sure to pivot and use a different approach.

Best Practices in Social Media Monitoring

When doing social monitoring, take note of the following best practices:

Monitor Across Different Platforms

You may not have a presence on all social media channels, but those are the ones where your audience spends most of their time. However, when you monitor, you need to track the conversations, even on the platforms where your brand has no presence. This is important as customers can discuss your brand on various platforms. If you only monitor on the platforms where you have a presence, you might miss some important insights.

Respond to Your Social Media Mentions

As noted earlier, social media monitoring differs from social listening in its reactive nature. Instead of just collecting data and hoarding it, take the necessary actions. Ensure that you have a good approach to responding to both positive and negative posts, and when doing that, remain authentic. This is important in an era where authentic content is winning over polished content.

Have a Comprehensive Social Media Strategy

To effectively monitor your brand, you need an outstanding social media strategy. This should involve setting clear goals and determining the key performance indicators, such as sentiment analysis, customer engagement, and brand mentions. After getting your KPIs, use social media tracking to analyze, track, and respond to the metrics. 

Increase Engagement Through Social Media Listening

Social media listening involves tracking your brand’s conversations, mentions, and trends. This informs your content strategy and enables you to identify the opportunities for audience engagement. A key part of social media listening starts with keyword research, where you track the hashtags and keywords relevant to your industry and brand to find any relevant conversations. If you notice some direct brand mentions, make sure you respond quickly. 

Common Challenges with Social Monitoring

When doing social monitoring, you are likely to encounter several challenges, such as:

• Data overload. Social media activity produces a wide range of data that may leave you feeling overwhelmed. To deal with this challenge, consider using filtering tools that will only provide you with the relevant conversations and mentions affecting your brand. Give priority to specific topics and set some clear goals to reduce the noise.
• Accurate sentiment analysis data. When you automate sentiment analysis, you might fail to capture the nuance behind conversations, such as context or sarcasm. When you regularly review the flagged content or use AI tools, you can be assured of more effective tracking.
• Real-time responsiveness. It can be hard to remain responsive on social media, where the pace is fast and conversations keep changing. You can find that a mention or a crisis goes viral in a few hours. If a situation isn't addressed promptly, it can result in the spread of misinformation or a lot of negative sentiments. A good way of dealing with the challenge is by setting up some intelligent alerts to track noteworthy mentions and keywords to engage in real-time conversations. 
• Global audience monitoring. If your brand is targeting a global audience, you need to monitor social media in different languages. Use monitoring tools that support tracking in multiple languages or partner with experts who can ensure you capture important insights into various regions.

Future Trends in Social Monitoring

Social media monitoring, like any other area of social media, is likely to be impacted by trends. Here are some of the top trends we should expect to see:

• AI predictions. AI will move the needle from what is happening to what will happen. It can do this by analyzing previous conversations better to forecast changes in brand buzz and customer sentiment.
• Better sentiment analysis. You can use a sentiment detection tool to understand the tone. Going back to the previous point, AI will also better interpret mixed emotions, sarcasm, and subtleties to get a better sense of people’s feelings.
• Merger between social listening and CRMs. Another growing trend is the integration of social listening tools with CRM systems, helping users stay better connected. When social data such as sentiments, engagement, and mentions are combined with CRM systems, it becomes easier for brands to offer their customers a more personalized and targeted response, linking the social trends to the customer’s behaviors.
• Competitor tracking in real-time. With brands looking for ways to remain agile in the fast-evolving market, tools are also levelling up to evolve brands to monitor their customer reactions and competitors’ moves in real-time. Whether you want to track the launch of your new product or the impact of a marketing campaign, you can use social monitoring to leverage emerging opportunities, respond to market shifts, and remain ahead of the competition, resulting in faster and sharper decision-making.
• Ability to monitor visual content. Visual content is one of the most popular on social media. This is why social media monitoring tools are evolving to change different visual elements such as product placements, brand logos, and facial expressions in images and videos. For instance, the use of AI image recognition can help determine when a logo appears on the user-generated content or when to showcase products in the influencer’s posts.

Measuring the ROI On Social Media Monitoring

When tracking the ROI of social media monitoring, you need to track your key performance indicators (KPIs) related to your business goals. This is achievable in a few ways:

Tracking the Customer’s Sentiments

Social monitoring tools can provide brands with people’s sentiments about their brand and whether they are happy, unhappy, or neutral. If, after acting on the monitoring data, you notice an increase in positive sentiments, this can be considered a positive return on investment.

If you received negative feedback and made changes to it, increasing positive sentiments, again, this is another ROI. Pay attention to long-term trends, such as customer perception shifts before and after a campaign.

Track Engagement Rate

If the number of likes, shares, comments, and mentions increases, it’s a sign that your social media marketing is producing results. People only engage with the content that resonates with them, resulting in higher brand awareness and loyalty. If you perform social media monitoring and see a spike in engagement, this is an indication that your social media analysis efforts are bearing fruit.

Ability to Address a Crisis Promptly

If you spot and respond to issues quickly, you can reduce the harm they cause to your brand’s reputation. Monitoring tools allow you to set up alerts for certain keywords so that you can easily spot a rise in negative sentiment. You can, therefore, contain the situation before it gets out of hand.

More Leads and Sales

Social monitoring can help drive traffic to your site and convert it. For instance, if you are tracking a promo and notice an increase in the number of clicks, these sales can be attributed to social monitoring, another ROI.

Final Thoughts

The benefits of social media monitoring are clearly endless. From discovering previously undiscovered customer conversions to directing your spending on social media campaigns, there is a lot you can achieve with social media monitoring. If you are getting started with social media monitoring, our guide will provide everything you need to know.