Monitoring is the act of observing, keeping tab and track of your brand online.
The main aim of monitoring is to quickly discover what people are saying or doing about your brand online and to engage them as quickly and precisely as possible. This is applicable at all levels; whether to get close to the consumers or with other businesses in the industry. It is a strategy that helps your brand to grow and it gives you an idea of how popular the brand is.
Social media is full of news these days. A look at the homepage (when logged in) of any of the major social media sites will give you a firm idea of what is going on. In the same way, your customers can easily find out what you are doing without you even knowing it; which is one reason why you should take social media seriously. The truth of the matter is that you need to make use of online tools if you want to achieve success in today’s ICT propelled world.
Monitoring your brand on social media is hectic, especially if you operate a small business on a tight budget; but using certain tools would help tremendously.
Let’s begin with the free tools and then the paid tools later.
Free Apps to monitor social media
Google Alert: Google is the leading search engine; so, expect a big help from it. Google alert is one of the best tools to monitor your brand. Simply type in the keywords linked to your brand and let it play its magic. It delivers reports in batches. I have my personal names on this service so as to get updates whenever I am mentioned – individuals can try this out.
Technorati: The claim to fame of this site is that it is one of the oldest and leading search engines for blogs. Having been around for quite a while, it can play a good role in blog content monitoring.
Jodange: This is also a useful tool; in addition to facilitating the tracking of your brand, it evaluates the feelings of the public about the brand too.
Lexicon: Lexicon gives you the demographics of what is being said on Facebook. It captures the feeds where the keywords are mentioned.
Monitter: Twitter is one of the top social media sites and Monitter shows you the discussions on twitter along with the trending topics.
Trendrr: Anyone who uses Twitter must have seen the trending topics on the homepage. This tool gives you access to see the trends of your brand and how it is competing with other brands. It offers a free account with the essential features but if you want certain features, then you would have to get the premium account.
Tweetburner: There are 140 characters in a tweet; and as such, you can’t afford to waste them by writing the complete link. So, Twitter uses the url shortener to shorten it. This tool gives you the data by tracking those urls and it is really of great help.
Paid apps:
Radian6: This collects the data from social media sites, analyses it and then gives you a report of consumers’ feelings for the brand or any of the products.
Cision: When used alongside Radian6, it allows you to gather a new level of information on dashboard.
If you employ some of the tools for monitoring your brand, then you are on the right track.
Remember, the act of monitoring is only a part of the process of building your brand. It also involves using the data you collect to adapting, improving and making your brand more customer friendly. It is a good time to start listening and applying what you learned here.
Will you be monitoring your brand on social media? Feel free to let us know what you think. Your feedback is always appreciated.