Best Practices for Social Monitoring

Have a goal in mind. How are you going to filter out the relevant conversations from all of the online noise. In its social insight analysis, Mashwork focuses on a theory to either validate or discredit, the firm’s CEO, Jared Feldman, told TechRepublic.

Track engagement levels. If a customer is taking the time to comment thoughtfully on content you have shared? When a customer shares a brand’s content with a friend or colleague, they are giving it their stamp of approval. That’s a great compliment and should be the goal of every engagement.

Keep current on terms. Don’t be afraid to change and delete terms as you learn more about the conversations about your industry and its buyers online. Your work on this front is also going to help you in improving the search impact of your landing pages too.

Join a conversation. Don’t talk at social media users. Show you are listening. Give a personalized, appropriate response to users. Consider the context. If someone is simply venting to a friend online, it may be a better idea to keep your distance.

Don’t intrude in a conversation. Explain why you are listening. Make clear you are doing this to offer the best user experience to your customers. After all, when it comes to social media, consumers aren’t keen on brands eavesdropping. According to a 2013 J.D. Power survey, 51% of consumers don’t want companies to eavesdrop on their conversations, and 43% believe monitoring invades their privacy. The majority of consumers, 64 percent, insist that they want companies to respond to social comments only when spoken to.

Remember language is a tricky thing. Context matters. Software analytics can only do so much. Rely on human analytics to parse the actual meaning of a posting to determine, for instance, whether “bad” is being used in a positive or negative sense.

Check often. There is no one golden rule as to how often you should monitor or listen. Yet, considering social media is a goldmine of real-time insight, it’s unlikely to be as powerful a tool for you if you’re only listening in on a weekly basis.

Share your findings. You’ll likely uncover information you can share with the rest of your team. Marketing can offer brand insights to sales, product development, legal, or human resources. Altimeter’s Susan Etlinger told TechRepublic of research findings showing at least 13 departments can utilize social media insights in their various contexts.