Social Media Monitoring
Keep your eyes open!
With social media data in real time you are always up to date. Monitoring and benchmarking of your social media presence help you manage your media marketing appropriately.
What is Social Media Monitoring?
Social media monitoring or social listening is the continuous monitoring of the social media activities of competitors, customers, target groups and influencers relevant to the organization. It means that you are always aware of what user-generated content on particular topics related to your brand is circulating on the web. The information can be important for sales and marketing activities and for product development – for instance, in order to identify trends, develop campaigns or protect your reputation.
If negative comments are picked up early, a shitstorm that could damage your reputation can usually be mitigated or even averted. In addition, social media monitoring enables you to keep track of your competitors and initiate a prompt response when necessary.
While social media analysis is performed occasionally or on a one-off basis, monitoring takes place in real time. However, the data gathered during monitoring forms the basis for an analysis.
Analyse user-generated content
Worldwide, the number of people using social networks is enormous.According to the social media providers, there are in 2019
2.32 billion active Facebook users worldwide
330 million active Twitter users worldwide
15 million XING users in DACH
13 million LinkedIn users in German-speaking countries
15 million Instagram users in Germany
A huge amount of user-generated content is created daily on these social channels and many other social media platforms. From individuals, celebrities, politicians, influencers or companies.
Social networks often report the current events faster than traditional media. While you wait for information from the newspaper to the next morning, social networks give you information and pictures about political events, sporting events, catastrophes, corporate scandals, positive customer experiences, or emerging shitstorms, and much more in a short amount of time.
Reasons for monitoring social networks
Protection of your reputation item icon Brand
Brand Management
Identification of trends and topics
Monitoring competitors’ activity
item icon Customer acquisition
Identification of influencers
It’s not just about being there
A company or user profile on a social network can be set up in minutes. However, organizations should not act on the principle of “It’s all about being there” and register for an account on every channel and with every media provider.Instead you should focus on being active only in the social channels relevant to your target group.
A company or user profile on a social network can be set up in minutes. However, organizations should not act on the principle of “It’s all about being there” and register for an account on every channel and with every media provider.Instead you should focus on being active only in the social channels relevant to your target group.
Social listening, on the other hand, should cover as many channels as possible. For example, if you focus on the B2B platforms, you might fail to notice that your customers or business partners are posting negative comments about you on private Facebook or Twitter accounts.
Manage your corporate communication via two routes:
Posting
on the platforms relevant to you
Receiving
extended to other platforms
Always be prepared to respond appropriately to received utterances. When criticizing de-escalation is announced. But also a reaction to a praise is welcome by users.
Social media listening – When and where?
The when question is easy to answer: as soon as possible. Don’t start by actively posting articles in social networks and then thinking about social monitoring later. Tackle both from the word go. Ideally you should start with monitoring in order to identify the social platforms on which your target group is active.
Your organization isn’t active in social networks at all? No problem. Your target group is still active. Is it a small group of buyers of a niche product? Even a small number of users can pose a risk if comments go unnoticed and unanswered. Don’t let such arguments deter you from social listening.
The answer to the where question depends on your particular circumstances, topics and target groups.One thing is clear: social listening shouldn’t be dumped wholesale on IT just because particular software is needed for a structured approach. Marketing, PR and communications, and also sales, customer services & support, product development and market research are the right departments to talk to about monitoring what is going on in social media.
Sales
What are our customers or business partners interested in?
Marketing/PR
How does the market respond to our campaigns and press releases?
Customer service
How can we provide the best customer services and support?
Communications
What are customers and watchers saying about us?
Product development
Can we adapt our products in accordance with customers’ wishes?
Market research
What current trends can our products and service pick up on?
What data protection requirements must I consider when monitoring my social media presence?
Social media monitoring has no data protection implications if only publicly accessible data is collected and analysed. So if a user authors content that is publicly visible, this content can also be analysed. Posts that are intended, for example, only for the user’s friends and are labelled as such cannot be read by the social media monitoring tools permitted in Germany.
When choosing a monitoring tool, make sure that it complies with Section 4 of the German Data Protection Act (BDSG) and can therefore be used in Germany. If in doubt, consult the provider.
The right way to use social media monitoring
Many social media monitoring tools such as Brandwatch are quick and easy to set up. Some provide a free trial. Some are even free. However, just performing media management, analytics and monitoring is not in itself enough.
If you are not to be swamped by the flood of information, the incoming data must be meaningfully structured, for example according to topics, channels or user groups. And you must be clear from the start about how you will respond if “Situation X” occurs. If you come across a major complaint in a social network but are not prepared to respond to it promptly, you have failed to utilize the benefits of the social listening tool.
What data will social media monitoring provide me with?
A good tool for monitoring social media activities does not just deliver data. It evaluates and structures it to make media management and analysis easy. Ideally it will be possible to identify trends in the specified KPIs at a glance.The metrics for each issue you are exploring should be specified separately and will depend on the organization’s goals and strategy.
Possible metrics include:
Posts over time
When was what published about my brand or topic?
Share of voice
What is my brand’s share in the mentions of a particular topic?
Types of posts
How are the various shares distributed over the different contribution types such as texts, pictures and videos?
Engagement
How much interaction of what sort have the contributions evoked?
Tonality
Do reports tend to be positive, negative or neutral?
Influencers
Who are the people who have posted, and where have they shared information?
Do you compile the relevant key figures depending on the desired analysis? For example, are you targeting market analysis or reputation management? A dashboard helps you to keep track of all relevant figures and developments. Different graphic evaluations are possible: from tables over different diagrams up to virality maps, which represent for example the distribution of tonalities or channels vividly.
When responding, timing is crucial
When it comes to social media monitoring, the time at which you become aware of a posting is crucial. If you discover a negative customer review on a social network on a Friday evening, a response on Monday morning may be too late.If every post and every response must undergo a time-consuming authorization process before it is published, you will lose valuable time in averting a possible shitstorm. You should therefore attach importance to lean processes in your social media activities.
Don’t leave your monitoring of social platforms until it is too late. If a shitstorm has erupted, it can cause irreparable damage.In some cases a shitstorm on social media has developed into a scandal that has spread to traditional media – from online to offline.
A social media monitoring tool may not necessarily prevent the shitstorm but it can help and support you identify the problem promptly and contain it by responding appropriately.
Finding the right tool
There are a large number of social listening tools on the market. This makes it extremely difficult for users to find the tool that is exactly right for them. Not every software is suitable for every application.
When choosing a tool, some of the points to consider are:
- What channels can be monitored?
- What department in the organization will use it?
- What prior knowledge do users need?
- How can the information be processed?
- What are the costs of using the tool?
- Does it offering a Free Trial?
- What human resources does use of the tool require?
- Work processes
- Can positive and negative tonalities in contributions be identified?
- What filter options are available for restricting results appropriately?
- How up to date is the data?
- How accurate is the tonality analysis?
LexisNexis® Social Analytics provides you with a user-friendly social media monitoring tool that can be adapted to your personal needs. Filter options, tonality analysis (also sentiment analysis), email alerts and many other useful functions make your real-time media monitoring efficient. Never miss out on important information again! Take important decisions on the basis of reliable data and keep in close touch with your target groups and audience.
Frequently Asked Questions
Answers to some popular questions
What is Social Media Monitoring?
Social media monitoring or social listening is the continuous monitoring of the social media activities of competitors, customers, consumers and audience, target groups and influencers relevant to the organization.
What is a social media monitoring tool?
What is a social media monitoring tool? A social media monitoring tool delivers data about social media activities. It evaluates and structures this data to make analysis easy allowing companies to make better Marketing strategies. Social media monitoring tools such as Nexis® Social Analytics and Brandwatch are easy to use.
Why social media monitoring is important?
It is important for-
- Protection of your reputation
- Brand Management
- Identification of trends and topics
- Monitoring competitors’ activity
- Customer acquisition
- Identification of influencers
How does social media monitoring work?
Social Media Monitoring uses tools to crawl social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and more like it to index data and provide insights on Brand, Marketing Campaigns, Customers and Competition to allow companies to make better informed decisions.
What are the benefits of social media listening?
Following are the main benefits of Social Media Listening or Social Media Monitoring:
- Discover what is being said on social networks about your brand & products
- Leverage social media conversations to better understand your brand positioning.
- Monitor social media proactively to protect yourself and your reputation from possible crises.
What´s the difference between social listening and social monitoring?
Social media monitoring is searching and collecting data from social networks while social listening includes analyzing the data in order to define a strategy to take prompt action is.
Get in touch
E-mail: marketingbis.asia@lexisnexis.com
Telephone number: +65 6349-0110