In today’s digital age, it’s incredibly important to track social media and the conversations happening on there. These insights can help brands improve their products, services, and customer relationships and safeguard their reputation.
💡 Read Media Monitoring: The Ultimate Guide
This blog post explores the significance of social media monitoring for businesses in today’s digital landscape. It features real-life use cases from Determ, a media monitoring company that provides real-time social media tracking and analysis. We will examine how businesses can utilize social tracking better to understand their target audience’s interests and preferences, monitor mentions across owned and earned platforms, and take proactive steps to address crises.
What does it mean to track social media?
Social media tracking or monitoring refers to the process of collecting, analyzing, and responding to social media conversations related to a particular brand, product, or service.
Social media has become an integral part of people’s daily lives. It has also become an important tool for businesses to reach and engage with their customers.
Monitoring social media can provide businesses with valuable insights. These insights can help them improve their products and services, build stronger customer relationships, and protect their brand reputation.
Social media monitoring is a part of social media listening. Social media listening is a more general category that pulls data from social media platforms. The data helps businesses see how customers interact with their brand, products, and industry as a whole – including competitors.
This process is more complex and involves mitigating risk. It also informs the organization on how best to strategize and respond to customer needs.
Read Social Media PR: 5 Tips and Tricks for Small Businesses
Why should you track social media?
Here are some specific reasons why social media monitoring is important:
Reputation management
Social media monitoring allows businesses to track what people say about their brand online. This helps them identify potential issues or negative comments and respond to them promptly and appropriately.
Customer service
Many customers turn to social media to voice their complaints or seek assistance. By monitoring social media, businesses can quickly respond to customer inquiries and provide support when needed, improving customer satisfaction.
Competitive analysis
Social media monitoring enables businesses to monitor their competitors and stay current with industry trends. This information can help companies to identify new opportunities or make informed decisions about their marketing strategies.
Brand awareness
By monitoring social media, businesses can identify influential users and engage with them to build brand awareness and reach a wider audience.
Crisis management
Social media can provide real-time information during a crisis or emergency. Monitoring social media during such times can help businesses respond quickly and effectively to mitigate the impact of the crisis.
Use cases for tracking social media by Determ
As social media grows in popularity, businesses use monitoring to gain insights. Determ, a media monitoring company, leads this space by providing real-time tracking and analysis.
This chapter explores real-life social tracking use cases from Determ and how insights can improve products, build customer relationships, and stay ahead. These examples show the importance of social media monitoring for businesses in the digital landscape.
We will omit exact details and names due to client discretion.
Trending topics
One of the best ways to leverage the power of social tracking is by using a feature called “word cloud.”
This feature enables businesses to track trends on social media through monitoring a topic, and finding related broader themes. By doing so, companies can detect other keywords and phrases commonly associated with the topic they are searching for.
For instance, one of our clients, which is a beauty company, was launching a Vitamin C serum. So, they searched for the keyword Vitamin C and used the word cloud to discover words mentioned alongside. Or to be exact, other products or ingredients.
Read How Determ’s Word Cloud Helps You Find Brand Information
What they discovered was that the audience often mentioned SPF alongside Vitamin C. This is because Vitamin C makes skin sensitive. Thus, the audience was empasizing using SPF in the mornings. These products are used in concoction so their customers reap all the benefits of the Vitamin C, and none of the downsides.
They then used this valuable insight to launch targeted marketing campaigns that tap into this trend. This helped the company gain a competitive edge in the market. By leveraging the power of social tracking and the word cloud, businesses can gain a deeper understanding of their target audience’s interests and preferences and use this knowledge to improve their marketing efforts.
Channels & locations
Another effective strategy is to monitor mentions across owned and earned platforms using these tools. This means comparing where your brand has a presence (owned media) to where your customers are talking about you (earned media). By doing so, businesses can identify any discrepancies and determine if they are utilizing their platforms most effectively.
According to a recent study, social media usage varies significantly by location. For example, Facebook is still prevalent in the United States. However, it has decreased in popularity in other countries like the United Kingdom and Canada. By utilizing media monitoring tools with location-based capabilities, businesses can better understand which platforms are most popular in specific regions and tailor their social media strategies accordingly. This can help to ensure that paid campaigns are placed on the exact platform where potential customers in the specific location are active. This ultimately leads to higher engagement rates and conversions.
For instance, one of our clients was campaigning for elections, and needed to be aware of their popularity across regions. This way, they were mindful of where they could lose elections and then proactively took steps where and when necessary.
Crisis response
In today’s digital age, crises can quickly spiral out of control on social media. That’s why media monitoring tools are crucial for businesses to detect and address potential issues early on. These tools, like Determ, allow companies to set alerts for specific keywords or phrases that could potentially trigger a crisis. This allows them to react quickly and prevent a situation from escalating.
For instance, one of our clients experienced a crisis when their global headquarters posted a message on social media. Given the post’s topic, it reflected poorly on their local section. Within days, the crisis had gone viral, and many customers called for a boycott of the brand.
However, the client was able to react quickly to the situation by turning on their alerts in our media monitoring tool. This way, they monitored every mention of the campaign online. They issued a press release to apologize and explain their intentions, which they could track through the media monitoring tool. They could also map our the platforms where the crisis was mostly discussed negatively about.
By keeping track of general mentions, they could also monitor the situation and determine when the crisis was beginning to calm down. This proactive approach to crisis management highlights the importance of media monitoring tools in today’s social media landscape.
Competitor mapping
Staying on top of your competition and their social media strategies is crucial in today’s competitive market. Media monitoring tools like Determ allow businesses to map their competitors and measure their share of voice in the market.
For example, one of our clients in the beauty industry used Determ to analyze their biggest competitor. They focused on mapping out their share of voice by interactions on social media. They found that their competitor had the biggest engagement on Instagram and earned mentions. Another deep dive into the mentions, revealed that giveaways from local pharmacies generated the most engagement for their competitors.
Armed with this knowledge, our client was able to identify the influencers (ie. pharmacies) and social profiles they needed to reach out to to promote their content and boost their engagement. This use case highlights the importance of competitor mapping and media monitoring tools to stay ahead of the game in today’s competitive landscape.
What is Determ?
Determ is a media monitoring and analytics tool. It allows businesses and individuals to monitor online mentions of their brand, competitors, or industry in real-time.
The platform scans over 100 million sources. This includes social media platforms, blogs, forums, and news websites, to provide users with insights into how their brand is being discussed online.
Determ offers a range of features, including customizable dashboards, real-time alerts, sentiment analysis, and competitive analysis. Users can set up customized searches and filters to track specific keywords or phrases. They can also receive instant notifications when a new mention is detected.
The platform is used by businesses of all sizes, as well as public relations and marketing agencies. They use it track their online reputation, measure the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns, and stay up-to-date with industry trends.
Determ is known for its user-friendly interface and powerful analytics capabilities, making it a popular choice for businesses that want to gain valuable insights into their online presence.
