5 Steps to Effectively Monitor Your Brand in Social Media
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Joseph Scarpati
Apr 17, 2010, 2:25:02 AM4/17/10
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Article Title: 5 Steps to Effectively Monitor Your Brand in Social Media
Author: Joseph Scarpati
Word Count: 969
Article URL: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=502346&ca=Marketing
Format: 64cpl
Contact The Author: http://www.isnare.com/eta.php?aid=502346
Easy Publish Tool: http://www.isnare.com/html.php?aid=502346
*********************** ARTICLE START ***********************
Most brand teams are monitoring social media these days to uncover what is being discussed by their customers about their product and its competitors. Many brand teams are event hiring social media monitoring agencies to keep tabs on their brands. Hiring such an agency, while valuable, is quite costly. The purpose of this article is to outline five key steps to effectively and efficiently monitoring social media in-house at a low cost that will yield third-party quality results.
Step 1: Outline your objectives
This is the most critical and often the most over-looked step in developing a sound social media monitoring plan. It is your objective that will eventually determine which monitoring tools you use and how you use them. Are you looking into a niche market for your product that you haven’t previously targeted? Or maybe you are trying to understand consumer opinions on a recent product recall? Depending on your objective, you will need to customize your methodology.
Step 2: Outline your methodology
Your methodology is all about choosing the right tools for the job. A simple way to do this is to create a spreadsheet with a list of all free and pay services available to you. Attach pros and cons to each service based on your specific needs (e.g. depth of sources monitored, keyword storage, user-friendliness, etc.).
There is no shortage of terrific free tools out there and there is almost no reason that you should not, at the very least, look into these tools. Google Blog Search, Google Alerts, and Twitter Search are all easy to use and very useful. Ultimately, though, a pay service will be required for more robust analysis and deeper insight generation. Most pay services are reasonably priced (starting at only a few hundred dollars per month for a high quality provider) and provide very good customer service to assist you throughout the process of set-up and ongoing monitoring. Radian6 and SM2 are two tools that I have used with good success, but there are numerous other vendors to choose from (e.g. Scout Labs, TNS Cymfony, and many others). Some will contend that pay services are unnecessary with the availability of so many quality free tools. I disagree, however, as a good social media monitoring vendor will provide you with a tool that, at the very least, will save you hours of aggregating data and, at the very most, provide you with more robust tools for analysis. For a couple of hundred dollars, I find these services to be invaluable.
Step 3: Choose the right keywords and continuously optimize
When setting up a monitoring tool, whether it is a free or pay service, you will need to choose keywords that you want to monitor for. This step is critical in generating clean, useful results. The keywords chosen will determine the quantity and quality of your results.. It is imperative to take a targeted approach as you need to cast a large enough net that you capture all relevant conversation without being drowned in irrelevant material. The keyword list should be developed with the overall objective in mind and should be crafted carefully to uncover as much relevant conversation as possible with as little noise as possible.
Depending on your brand name, this may be a very simple or complex process. For a brand like Toyota, for instance, there is likely to be little confusion. Nearly any mention of the term “Toyota” will yield a result that is specific to the car maker. However, brands like Sure deodorant will need to be much more diligent in their approach. Results for “Sure”, in general, will have little relevance and even keyword phrase “Sure deodorant” may yield poor results. Trial and error will ultimately determine the optimal list of keywords. Conduct a quick audit after a few days to see the results that each keyword is generating and adjust accordingly. By dedicating time upfront to this optimization process, you will benefit in the long run in the form of saved time and quality results.
Step 4: Dedicate time to analyzing your results
It is an absolute must that you dedicate time on a weekly basis to analyze the results of your social media monitoring campaign. The purpose of this endeavor is to gain real-time feedback on your brand from your customers. Checking-in sporadically and without focus defeats the purpose of monitoring social media. My recommendation is to set-up a weekly 2 hour time slot in your calendar that you can dedicate to analyzing results and optimizing your keyword list.
Most social media monitoring tools will allow you to uncover trends based on keywords and source. Many will even tell you the sentiment of the conversation (good, bad, neutral), but this too requires optimization as an automated tool cannot sense tone and sarcasm. Working with other team members on your social media monitoring endeavor will lighten your time burden and yield more insightful results. I recommend having one team member manage the overall process and share results with the rest of the team on a regular basis in the form of a brainstorming session to better understand the implications of the results.
Step 5: Take action!
Ultimately, we monitor social media to gain insight: insight into our customers’ attitudes and beliefs, insight into our brand and how it’s perceived, insight into trends in the market. This is all done with the intention of enabling us to make more informed, more impactful decisions. When you have uncovered a valuable insight about your brand that you can back up with solid findings, use it to your advantage by acting on it accordingly.
About The Author: Joseph Scarpati is a Consultant with Rosetta, a top interactive agency. He has provided social media monitoring services to Fortune 500 clients. Follow him on Twitter: http://twitter.com/joescarpati
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Please consider this free-reprint article written by:
Joseph Scarpati
*****************************
IMPORTANT - Publication/Reprint Terms
- You have permission to publish this article electronically in free-only publications such as a website or an ezine as long as the bylines are included.
- You are not allowed to use this article for commercial purposes. The article should only be reprinted in a publicly accessible website and not in a members-only commercial site.
- You are not allowed to post/reprint this article in any sites/publications that contains or supports hate, violence, porn and warez or any indecent and illegal sites/publications.
- You are not allowed to use this article in UCE (Unsolicited Commercial Email) or SPAM. This article MUST be distributed in an opt-in email list only.
- If you distribute this article in an ezine or newsletter, we ask that you send a copy of the newsletter or ezine that contains the article to http://www.isnare.com/eta.php?aid=502346
- If you post this article in a website/forum/blog, ALL links MUST be set to hyperlinks and we ask that you send a copy of the URL where the article is posted to http://www.isnare.com/eta.php?aid=502346
- We request that you ask permission from the author if you want to publish this article in print.
The role of iSnare.com is only to distribute this article as part of its Article Distribution feature ( http://www.isnare.com/distribution.php ). iSnare.com does NOT own this article, please respect the author's copyright and this publication/reprint terms. If you do not agree to any of these terms, please do not reprint or publish this article.
*****************************
Article Title: 5 Steps to Effectively Monitor Your Brand in Social Media
Author: Joseph Scarpati
Word Count: 969
Article URL: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=502346&ca=Marketing
Format: 64cpl
Contact The Author: http://www.isnare.com/eta.php?aid=502346
Easy Publish Tool: http://www.isnare.com/html.php?aid=502346
*********************** ARTICLE START ***********************
Most brand teams are monitoring social media these days to uncover what is being discussed by their customers about their product and its competitors. Many brand teams are event hiring social media monitoring agencies to keep tabs on their brands. Hiring such an agency, while valuable, is quite costly. The purpose of this article is to outline five key steps to effectively and efficiently monitoring social media in-house at a low cost that will yield third-party quality results.
Step 1: Outline your objectives
This is the most critical and often the most over-looked step in developing a sound social media monitoring plan. It is your objective that will eventually determine which monitoring tools you use and how you use them. Are you looking into a niche market for your product that you haven’t previously targeted? Or maybe you are trying to understand consumer opinions on a recent product recall? Depending on your objective, you will need to customize your methodology.
Step 2: Outline your methodology
Your methodology is all about choosing the right tools for the job. A simple way to do this is to create a spreadsheet with a list of all free and pay services available to you. Attach pros and cons to each service based on your specific needs (e.g. depth of sources monitored, keyword storage, user-friendliness, etc.).
There is no shortage of terrific free tools out there and there is almost no reason that you should not, at the very least, look into these tools. Google Blog Search, Google Alerts, and Twitter Search are all easy to use and very useful. Ultimately, though, a pay service will be required for more robust analysis and deeper insight generation. Most pay services are reasonably priced (starting at only a few hundred dollars per month for a high quality provider) and provide very good customer service to assist you throughout the process of set-up and ongoing monitoring. Radian6 and SM2 are two tools that I have used with good success, but there are numerous other vendors to choose from (e.g. Scout Labs, TNS Cymfony, and many others). Some will contend that pay services are unnecessary with the availability of so many quality free tools. I disagree, however, as a good social media monitoring vendor will provide you with a tool that, at the very least, will save you hours of aggregating data and, at the very most, provide you with more robust tools for analysis. For a couple of hundred dollars, I find these services to be invaluable.
Step 3: Choose the right keywords and continuously optimize
When setting up a monitoring tool, whether it is a free or pay service, you will need to choose keywords that you want to monitor for. This step is critical in generating clean, useful results. The keywords chosen will determine the quantity and quality of your results.. It is imperative to take a targeted approach as you need to cast a large enough net that you capture all relevant conversation without being drowned in irrelevant material. The keyword list should be developed with the overall objective in mind and should be crafted carefully to uncover as much relevant conversation as possible with as little noise as possible.
Depending on your brand name, this may be a very simple or complex process. For a brand like Toyota, for instance, there is likely to be little confusion. Nearly any mention of the term “Toyota” will yield a result that is specific to the car maker. However, brands like Sure deodorant will need to be much more diligent in their approach. Results for “Sure”, in general, will have little relevance and even keyword phrase “Sure deodorant” may yield poor results. Trial and error will ultimately determine the optimal list of keywords. Conduct a quick audit after a few days to see the results that each keyword is generating and adjust accordingly. By dedicating time upfront to this optimization process, you will benefit in the long run in the form of saved time and quality results.
Step 4: Dedicate time to analyzing your results
It is an absolute must that you dedicate time on a weekly basis to analyze the results of your social media monitoring campaign. The purpose of this endeavor is to gain real-time feedback on your brand from your customers. Checking-in sporadically and without focus defeats the purpose of monitoring social media. My recommendation is to set-up a weekly 2 hour time slot in your calendar that you can dedicate to analyzing results and optimizing your keyword list.
Most social media monitoring tools will allow you to uncover trends based on keywords and source. Many will even tell you the sentiment of the conversation (good, bad, neutral), but this too requires optimization as an automated tool cannot sense tone and sarcasm. Working with other team members on your social media monitoring endeavor will lighten your time burden and yield more insightful results. I recommend having one team member manage the overall process and share results with the rest of the team on a regular basis in the form of a brainstorming session to better understand the implications of the results.
Step 5: Take action!
Ultimately, we monitor social media to gain insight: insight into our customers’ attitudes and beliefs, insight into our brand and how it’s perceived, insight into trends in the market. This is all done with the intention of enabling us to make more informed, more impactful decisions. When you have uncovered a valuable insight about your brand that you can back up with solid findings, use it to your advantage by acting on it accordingly.
About The Author: Joseph Scarpati is a Consultant with Rosetta, a top interactive agency. He has provided social media monitoring services to Fortune 500 clients. Follow him on Twitter: http://twitter.com/joescarpati
Please use the HTML version of this article at:
http://www.isnare.com/html.php?aid=502346
*********************** ARTICLE END ***********************
- To distribute your articles go to http://www.isnare.com/distribution.php
- For more free-reprint articles go to http://www.isnare.com --
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