With the daily flood of information, it is difficult for companies to stand out from the crowd. Every day 1.4 billion people log into their Facebook accounts and over 95 million images are shared on Instagram.
In one second around 30 million WhatsApp messages are send out, 3,3 million Facebook posts are published, and more than 500 hours of video material is being downloaded on YouTube.
Having the right Social Media Strategy is a critical element that enables your company to excel, despite this large amount of data. With the help of Social Media Monitoring tools, companies have the possibility to collect, control and learn from this data.
Eminence, your local digital marketing pioneer, has put together some important ways in which you can make better decisions with the help of these monitoring tools.
What is Social Media Monitoring?
Social Media Monitoring also known as Social Listening is a method where you search for relevant information through various social media platforms, for example via YouTube, Facebook, Instagram or smaller platforms like blogs or rating portals.
With the help of social monitoring tools (such as Hootsuite and Ubermetrics), companies can see how they are perceived, how often they are mentioned and also how their online reputation is compared to their competitors. Once you have collected this data, you can analyse trends and insights about your clients’ behaviour. This analysis can be done automatically and in real-time. The analysis is mostly presented in dashboards, to better visualise and understand the complex content.
Why we should use Social Media Monitoring?
The use of social networks is steadily increasing. With the speed of the Internet, more and more data is being spread – shared images, articles, posts and reviews leave their mark. This gives companies the possibility to analyse data and better understand their target audience.
The benefits of Social Media Monitoring
With Social Media Monitoring you can reach a wide audience. The process is quick as the whole system is automated and the data can be monitored and analysed in real time. The proceedings need fewer budgets, less time and less personal resources. Moreover, Social Media Listening tools enables qualitative analysis such as sentiment analysis and the identification of new trends.
Read also : Why is Social Media so important?
What kind of data can be analysed on social networks?
Quantitative data provides us with numbers that we can use to prove research findings, whereas qualitative data delivers us details and in-depth information, which enables us to understand the overall extent. Measuring both data is crucial to be able to conduct a successful Social Media Marketing Strategy.
With quantitative data, the following factors can be measured:
Number of mentions: What is the frequency a keyword (a product, brand, or hashtag) is mentioned on the Social Media?
Potential coverage: What is the approximate amount of the target audience that was reached through an advertising medium?
Number of interactions: What is the number of interactions the user made with your content?
Quantitative data can be divided in two categories, descriptive and actionable data. Descriptive data indicates a trend or key figures. For example the number of new subscribers, engagements, impressions or clicks.
Actionable data answers the following questions: Where do my subscribers come from? What kind of content receives the most interaction? At what time does my website get the most impressions?
Qualitative data helps you to understand the numbers you have collected.
The sentiment analysis shows you if a keyword, a sentence or a name is perceived in a positive, negative or neutral light. This is particularly helpful for the evaluation and perception of a product or service.
With the trend analysis, you can analyse the tendencies of your posts on Social Media and find out how your target audience perceives your product or services.
How can you collect this data?
Most of the Social Media networks have their own statistical and analytical tools (Facebook Analytics, LinkedIn Analytics), which are perfectly suitable to understand the performance of your profiles. On the basis of this data you can understand the performance of your posts and the development of your account. Some companies offer the possibility to manage all your accounts from one platform. You save time and effort, and in addition you can benchmark your competitors and compare their impact of media strategies to yours. With Hootsuite Insights you can monitor more than 25 Social Media networks, blogs, news sites and other online sectors. Real time updates inform you about any unusual activity status.
The different elements of Social Media Monitoring
E-reputation
When it comes to the e-reputation of your brand or services, try to understand how your company is perceived.
Crisis management
If a crisis is on the horizon try to react as fast as possible. Special tools will help you to measure the sentiment as well as the dimension of the crisis.
Competitive Intelligence
Analyse the communication, news and the reputation of your competitors. Identify important topics, which are stimulating the market and discover relevant themes your target audience is talking about, in order to detect new technologies and trends that could be topical for your company.
Business Intelligence
Discover new business opportunities, by observing each aspect of your product or company and monitor the interactions taken by your community.
How to get your Social Media Monitoring started?
Determine the channels you want to use
Depending on your objectives, you need to choose the respective Social Media channels. Which platforms work well for your product or service? Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and/or Twitter?
Define your digital objectives
Do you want to get to know your clients better and be one step ahead of your competitors? Transform your commercial objectives into measurable social KPIs and track them with the suitable tools.
Eminence, your local digital partner, can help you to establish an extensive audit and accordingly define your target audience in order to establish a successful Social Media Monitoring Strategy.