Monitoring is an essential part of any Internet or social media strategy. Even if people aren’t talking about your products or company, they’re probably having conversations that would be helpful — either for product development, customer service or marketing. Listening is a huge part of the value of social media and monitoring can help you keep up on the important conversations. Here are the essentials you should be monitoring:
- Company Name – Watching for mentions of your company name can help you keep track of when people are asking questions, asking for feedback, or making comments. These conversations are vital because they often show up when customers are searching for your company name on search engines or within their own social networks.
- Product Names – Your product names may be more popular than your company name or that just may be how your customers talk about you. Keeping track of what’s said about your products is important for the same reason as keeping track of what’s said about your company.
- Personal Name(s) – If you’re a small company or your name is big in your industry, it can be helpful to monitor for mentions of your name. If you give any presentations or do any speaking, this will be vital for getting feedback and for finding out what people really thought. I also find this helpful for watching for responses to blog posts (or when people are “borrowing” my content).
- Industry Keywords – These can be tough because what you call things may not be the same as what your customers call things. If you’re a B2B company, there may be several different names depending on where you are on the value chain. It’s important to learn what the right keywords are (what customers use) so you’ll know when they’re talking about topics of interest to you. We’ll talk more about finding these keywords later in the week.
- Profile Name(s) – When you’re active on social media, you probably have profile or usernames that you’re using instead of your full company name (you may have multiple if there are several people in your company engaged on the social web). Add these names to your monitoring so you can tell when people are addressing you or talking about you on these specific networks.
- Competitor’s Names – Social media can be a valuable resource for finding out what consumers think about your competitors. Add their names into your monitoring for some valuable market research.
- Competitors’ Product Names – For more market research, also monitor for your competitors’ product names. Find out what customers think about them as well as what your competitors are saying.
Later this week we’ll discuss how to find keywords to monitor.
What else do you monitor on social media?
(image by Mara 1)