13 Best Social Media Monitoring Practices and Strategy in 2024

Brands are not just defined by their best features and unique selling points. A large part of it has to do with how the buying public perceives them. After all, the content, comments, likes, and dislikes posted by people online shape the images of companies. Whether positive or negative, these affect brand support, loyalty, and returns, especially when made by influencers. As such, brands need to stay on top of the sentiments of their target audience to inspire brand allegiance. This paves the way for social media monitoring.

Social media monitoring tools enable brands to learn about their customers’ sentiments and interests online. By searching for keywords such as brand names and hashtags, marketers can see posts and reactions to brands across various social media sites. The platforms also help users recognize influencers and analyze the demographics of a brand’s followers. However, despite the solutions’ effectiveness, smart strategies are necessary to truly make these work for brands.

In lieu of this, we compiled 13 social media monitoring best practices for you to make even better impressions with your target markets. These cover searching for the right terms, tracking brand mentions, and monitoring the competition. This guide also provides tips on leveraging influencers and responding to crises.

Most people are often on social platforms nowadays, according to the latest social media statistics. As of January 2022, there are 4.62 billion active social media users. Given the staggering number of potential customers online, brands worldwide followed suit and have centered their marketing efforts on obtaining online followers. Digital and content marketing solutions have enabled companies to effectively connect with their audience, with 90% of social media users buying from the brands they follow.

However, simply posting appealing content won’t cut it in today’s landscape. The social media business sphere has gotten crowded as more than 200 million businesses currently leverage Facebook. To gain a larger share of followers, marketers now perform social media monitoring to learn not just the interests of target markets but also how people perceive brands.

It’s important to note that 59% of consumers reach out to businesses when they have a great experience, 47% do for queries, and 40% would want to report a bad experience. Not properly responding to any of these posts could likely lead to people losing trust in a brand. With social media monitoring, brands can track these and grant appropriate responses to posts. Moreover, they can spot the exact reasons why people buy from competitors and furnish strategies out of the reasons.

Brands will clearly benefit from this. And so, we have prepared over a dozen social media monitoring tips for you to apply.

13 Best Social Media Monitoring Practices

1. Know Your Audience

Before a marketer begins tracking keywords, they should know whose content, comments, and reactions they’re monitoring. Some of the social media mentions might belong to segments that historically do not convert. So, their opinions, whether good or bad for the brand, won’t likely impact sales or the brand’s reputation. Also, casting the net too wide compromises accuracy and costs too much time.

In this case, you can leverage a social media monitoring platform or an integrated marketing solution to view the demographic information of your followers. This includes their gender, age ranges, location, and social media pages followed. From the data, you can discern the types of people who engage the most with your brand and products and group them into segments. The segments, in turn, serve as bases for the identity of your potential audience and subjects of social monitoring. After this, you can monitor people belonging to those segments and take note of their interests.

With the segments to track already set, brands can create a social media monitoring strategy. Account for what you are searching for (product inquiries, public comments, service requests, etc.), the types of keywords to target, and the response protocols. Make sure to apply the tone of your content to your responses but always maintain warmth and professionalism.

Competitor brands, especially those with similar product lines, also play a role in determining your audience, discovering new segments to target, and applying new marketing tactics. In addition, social media platforms Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter provide follower insights to business accounts.

2. Track Brand Mentions

The primary element tracked in social media monitoring activities is brand mentions. These are the instances when social media users mention your brand in posts and comments. Tracking linked mentions is simple since these come with social media notifications. However, those without tags or links, especially posts from non-followers, require a social listening tool to pick up. This becomes even more complex for businesses with branches in multiple locations. As such, 9 out of 10 brand mentions go unnoticed.

A nifty social media monitoring tip here is to search for brand mentions with and without links. No thanks to the short attention spans of web users, many do not have the patience to link brands to their posts, and this strategy takes care of that. For brands with quirky or long names, misspellings should also be searched for. The same goes for products with unconventional names.

In the case of multinational brands, another possible source of unnoticed mentions is language. Brand mentions coming from other countries may also take the form of foreign characters while the surrounding context might not be understandable. Therefore, knowing the language translations of your brand and products for all the countries you serve is critical. Google Translate and other translation apps help in this regard.

3. Monitor Brand-adjacent Terms

Non-followers on social media won’t likely mention your brand as often as your followers do, although they likely post about the category your products belong to, especially if they belong to your target market. There is also the fact that people tend to look for products or establishments “near me” since Google Business Profile made this type of search more convenient. As such, 81% of product searches are non-branded. This clearly underscores the need for tracking brand-adjacent terms.

In doing such, identify the category your brand and products belong to. For instance, FinancesOnline can track keywords like “software review” or “software search” while Adidas would likely monitor “shoe” or “sportswear.” Seeing category mentions lets you know the types of people who are potentially interested in your offerings. You can mold some of your upcoming promos in accordance with their interests or micro-target with suitable offers.

If your brand is targeting a specific location, narrowing down your search to that area helps. Specifics about the product the locale prefers could be mentioned and, therefore, incorporated into your promo and sold goods. The data can also be leveraged when your brand intends to hold an event in the area.

4. Check Branded Hashtags

Marketing campaigns tend to use hashtags to expose products to a wider audience, create excitement around brands, and gauge the success of each event. After all, in using them, 50% of brands experience increased engagement on Twitter and also had a higher rate of interactions on Instagram. And so, searching for branded and campaign hashtags comes as a priority for social media marketers.

You can partially quantify the success of a campaign or event by monitoring campaign hashtags, particularly their number, the captions that precede the hashtags, and if the brand trended following an event. Also, keep an eye on promos like giveaways or discounts that come with hashtag use and the reactions of the people toward them. These can be leveraged for succeeding events should the participants receive them well.

A social media marketing tip is for marketers to not limit themselves to monitoring hashtags when performing due diligence in campaigns. Doing so might lead to underrepresented facts and figures. A 2020 report reveals that 75% of people aren’t inclined to use branded hashtags. Instead, 26% would rather post reviews about products on third-party sites. This means you should still track brand mentions and brand-adjacent terms to get a better view of campaigns.

5. Don’t Prioritize Longtail Keywords

Longtail keywords are keyword phrases that make regular keywords more specific. For instance, the keyword “red sneakers” can become “red sneakers with white stripes classic Nike shoes discount sneakers.” Searching for phrases like this narrows down compendiums of social media information and can lead to the desired user-generated content. On the customer side, they also get to see the items they want faster, which is why 70% of internet searches are longtail keywords.

So, how come they shouldn’t be prioritized as much as the other entries on this list? The answer lies in context. There are many different ways to phrase information and those differences can lead to distinct sets of entries. Many results that are relevant to your campaign might get excluded, thus compromising the integrity of your research. Instead, leverage these searches as supplements to your main keyword tracking, particularly if there are too many entries to digest.

6. Utilize a Good Social Media Monitoring Software

There are countless social media monitoring solutions on the market and finding the most suitable product for your brand’s exact needs takes time. As such, we have compiled five of the leading platforms available.

HubSpot MarketingVISIT WEBSITE

HubSpot Marketing is an end-to-end marketing system that streamlines most, if not all, marketing activities. It comes with custom workflows with automated stages, lead management tools, customizable landing pages, and powerful analytics. The platform also has a built-in marketing funnel and provides comprehensive social media monitoring solutions.

Semrush

Semrush is a multifunctional SEO software that maintains a vast keyword database and carries solutions for keyword research, brand monitoring, traffic analysis, and content analysis. It also has an SEO writing assistant that helps users optimize content from the get-go and a social media tracker that enables marketers to view targeted posts and comments.

Mayple

Mayple is a multifunctional marketing tool that enables brands to monitor their campaigns across various channels. It carries solutions for digital marketing, preparing marketing strategies, and live campaign monitoring. What’s more, the platform lets you work with vetted professionals who can help in all aspects of marketing and promotions.

LucidyaVISIT WEBSITE

Lucidya is a powerful social media monitoring system that turns social media content and comments into actionable insights. To quantify social media performance, the platform utilizes solutions for content engagement analysis, competitive benchmarking, and sentiment analysis. It also analyzes trending hashtags, competitors, and tweet volumes.

InflueNexVISIT WEBSITE

InflueNex is a flexible influencer marketing system that speeds up search for influencers, analyzes their engagement, and manages their profiles. It makes communication with influencers easy with features like group messaging and one-click contact. What’s more, the platform maintains a database of over 2 million influencers, which allows you to bookmark your top picks.

A quick look at your campaign key metrics in HubSpot Marketing dashboard.

7. Learn from Your Competitors

Sometimes the biggest marketing opportunities come from your competitors. Their B2C and B2B marketing strategies may contain parts that can enhance or complete your own plans. They also play a role in identifying new markets, ways to entice each segment, and most importantly, finding more competitive advantages. As such, you can spy on the competition using a social media monitoring system, as it zeroes in on the social performance of their campaigns.

One of the most reliable social media monitoring tips is to inspect the brand mentions and brand-adjacent terms of your competitors. In doing so, you will learn the public sentiment regarding their products and promos. Areas that generally receive positive feedback can be leveraged to fine-tune your strategies. Meanwhile, elements that often come with negative feedback are to be avoided. You can even connect with their dissatisfied customers and provide them with better offers.

Moreover, you can track their branded and campaign hashtags and their influencers to see how their events perform. The most talked-about segments, live acts, and products serve as benchmarks for your own events.

8. Identify Influencers

COVID-19 may have slowed down influencer campaigns in 2020, but as the world recovers from the pandemic, so will influencer marketing. And it has made a roaring comeback since the reopening of most economies. This led the influencer marketing industry to be valued at an estimated $13.8 billion by the end of 2021, representing a$4.1 billion year-on-year increase. Influencer marketing is still highly relevant. In fact, identifying and leveraging influencers on your vertical potentially works wonders for your brand.

Social listening helps you to identify influencers from regular posters. Influencers generally stay in their niches, regularly posting content within a given spectrum along with a constant set of hashtags. Going by this statement, you can set your software to track keywords adjacent to your brand and products as well as the most used keywords related to your vertical. You will notice several accounts that consistently post and use hashtags about the subjects you searched for. From there, visit their social accounts and verify if they have a boatload of followers. You can then offer marketing deals to them or their handlers.

Another social media monitoring strategy to find influencers is to monitor your competitors. Keep in mind that over 90% of marketers believe that influencer marketing is effective, so at least a few of your competitors leverage it. To find their influencers, have your social media monitoring platform track their brand mentions and brand-adjacent terms. Again, those who regularly mention the brand and produce brand-related content are likely to be influencers. Take note of them and seek deals with bigger influencers in your shared vertical. You can also hand them juicier offers so you can snag them once their deals with your competitors lapse.

9. Create a Unified Inbox

Social media monitoring solutions not only track online mentions but also centralize the messaging on various social media platforms. And this comes as a huge advantage in terms of responding to customers. A recent study suggests that people expect their brand messages to be responded to in 10 minutes or less, which is a major challenge to companies with hordes of followers across all social profiles. Rifling from one platform to another to supply appropriate answers to a wide range of concurrent queries leads to errors and many unanswered messages.

A unified inbox centralizes all these interactions and enables you to see them on a single screen. This gives your agents enough time to supply each query with the best possible response. You can also install a chatbot or leverage a marketing automation solution to make the responding process even more convenient. Furthermore, alerts can be set per segment so responders would know which messages to prioritize.

10. Interact with Your Customers

There are instances when you have to directly communicate with your customer base for you to get the information you need. You can respond or react to top comments and quickly provide answers to customer inquiries, suggestions, or complaints. After all, being interactive and responsive to your followers makes them 21% more likely to buy from your brand.

Social media monitoring enters the fray by providing you with insights on how to fashion replies that your customers will value. By looking at how your followers communicate and their interests based on their digital interactions, you can apply a tone that balances fun, warmth, and professionalism. In this way, your followers will relate to your brand more, which leads to loyalty, recommendations, and purchases. Some social listening platforms also allow you to group followers and set up template responses to speed up your responses.

Moreover, you can start discussions by posting content that elicits meaningful responses such as quizzes, games, or fun presentations that make your followers pick from your range of products.

11. Get to the Bottom of Negative Responses

When it comes to negative feedback, hardly anyone comes out unscathed on social media. There are many possible triggers, including delivery issues, product errors, poor customer service, a bad incident involving a brand, and trolling out of loyalty to a competitor. Sometimes even incidental circumstances such as a brand’s ad appearing next to controversial content can draw criticism.

Thankfully, a few negative posts and comments shouldn’t hurt a brand. However, if these remarks start to occupy a significant portion of conversations, brands should quickly look into the source of the negativity. After all, according to recent digital marketing software statistics, the consequences are dire. Eighty-six percent of consumers hesitate to purchase from a brand that has many negative reviews. Moreover, 49% of consumers unfollow brands with substandard products and poor customer service and 45% do the same with brands that post too many ads and irrelevant content.

Social media monitoring plays a huge role in this regard. By tracking brand mentions across all major social platforms, you can observe the public sentiment on your brand. If there is a large number of negative posts and comments, find out what people are complaining about the most and note all of them down. Treat them as negative reviews rather than personal attacks.

Part of the social media monitoring best practices is to reply to negative comments that have gained traction with a short apology before asking users to send a private/direct message regarding the problem. The public apology shows your followers and the visitors of your page that your brand is committed to resolving their concerns. As for the actual problems, try to resolve them as quickly as possible. If a resolution cannot be given at the time, manage their expectations and assure them that all will be fixed in time.

12. Keep Tabs on Your Market’s Unique Interests

Social media monitoring doesn’t always have to be about brand mentions and related keywords. Sometimes you might stumble across opportunities that can potentially drive more interest. Skilled marketers track the trending topics within and the common interests of their target segments since some of them can be incorporated into a brand’s products and promos. This also paves the way for collaborations with popular groups or personalities, which draw further interest. In fact, 72% of retailer partnership programs improve customer retention.

For instance, a shirt company performs social listening and discovers that short-form poetry is popular on Instagram among their targeted segments. It can seek to collaborate with Instagram poets like Rupi Kaur and Amanda Lovelace and have their works printed on shirts for a new product line. Should the latter agree, the partnership leads to a big earning opportunity and an uptick in brand interest coming from the social media promotions of the collaborators.

This is just one example. Countless possible collaborations can be discovered if you regularly check the interests of your followers.

13. Stay Within Your Goals

In some cases, you will find an endless stream of brand and product mentions, and it will take more than a day to track and respond to many of them. Attempting to do so potentially compromises the agility of your campaign. After all, delays cause brands to lose time, money, partners, and customers, and the latest project management statistics back this up. A 2021 survey reveals that 1 in 6 projects extends beyond their schedules by 70%. In addition, 25% of projects fail because of faulty time estimates.

To shorten your monitoring time, make the goals of your searches clear beforehand, so you can quickly filter out irrelevant mentions and content. Moreover, set the priorities of each goal and mark the results of each search so you can quickly review them. You should also stick to your brand’s aims and identity to avoid overservice. Rather than spending too much time on social listening, just obtain the results that you need and devote the extra time to craft an effective social media content plan.

Monitor Before Producing Content

The current social media monitoring best practices revolve around checking for brand mentions and brand adjacent terms and leveraging conversations that your target audience defines your brand with. After all, public sentiment drives the actions of your leads with regard to your brand. Generally, positive findings signal loyalty and likely purchases from your social media followers while predominantly negative ones point to crises that a brand needs to quickly resolve.

Quantifying its overall benefits, social media monitoring serves as an intelligence hub for brands to produce effective content since it gives you a peek at the exact interests and concerns of your market. As such, it is good practice to perform social listening prior to producing content. This ensures that your outputs are always on point before feeding them to your content marketing platform.

After learning about social media monitoring, you might want to know more about scheduling content. Take a gander at our guide to the top social media scheduling tools.

By Louie Andre

B2B & SaaS market analyst and senior writer for FinancesOnline. He is most interested in project management solutions, believing all businesses are a work in progress. From pitch deck to exit strategy, he is no stranger to project business hiccups and essentials. He has been involved in a few internet startups including a digital route planner for a triple A affiliate. His advice to vendors and users alike? "Think of benefits, not features."