How to Monitor Social Media Conversations

Monitoring the activities over social media has become a hot topic lately. With an overwhelming success of online social media marketing platforms such as blogs, forums, micro-blogs and other social networking sites, people have open source to express what is in their mind and influence the thinking and behavior of other people. Monitoring the social media is keeping the track of all the discussions and conversations going on in the online business marketplace.

Monitoring of social media comprises of figuring out the objectives through listening, refining the discussions, analyzing and taking action. Moreover, monitoring of social media can be utilized by brands to improve product and service, customer service and feedback, marketing research and communication.

Listening

Listening of what people are talking about your brand, your competitors and the industry has foremost importance. People and their opinions influence consumer behavior. In order to show your customer service and to show that you value customer, watch out for any complaints against you or your competitor. In online world, prospective customers check other people opinions before making purchase decision.

Participating

Not only listening is necessary, participating and engaging in conversation with people online is also necessary. If you respond timely to any complaint or question, it will increase a consumer faith in your brand. Even if your brand has not talked about it’s essential to know the key influencers and what are they talking about. Start to discuss at places where you see potential and relevancy and establish your footprint so that you are equipped for any future talks of your brand.

Responding

During monitoring process, you understand the happenings and can implement relevant responses. If you respond properly to the queries, it will take you a long way to spread the good about your brand.

Using Applications

Many paid and free social media online applications are available to keep track of the conversations going on. It could be as simple as setting an alert through Google, Yahoo etc, searching for your brand name or the relevant keywords on Twitter, Social Media aggregators like Social Mention, Same Point, Back type and many others. There are several social media monitoring applications that can help in monitoring and analyzing your brand. For instance, radian6, Collective intellect and TechrigySM2 are some famous applications