Understanding the Measure of Social Monitoring

how to better understand social media monitoring

Customer relationships now form the core of all business transactions. When you don’t understand your consumers or where your audience lies, you lose your competitive edge. Yet, when it comes to companies paying attention, only 31% of prospective customers think B2B brands provide a personal value. 

Your customers have a voice, are not afraid to use it, and are increasingly vocal online. Let’s face it, it is a lot easier to issue grievances online than in person. You need to catch those immediately before they fester and keep your customers satisfied

The internet offers a vast array of opinions, but there is a means of collecting them all into one repository. Like putting your ear to the rails, this is called “social monitoring” and it involves hearing what everyone is saying about your brand. Kind of like a fly on the wall. You do this and your social return on investment will soar. 

The following are some key ways you can measure how social monitoring can be a success for your company: 

Approachability 

The value that lies within social monitoring includes making yourself more approachable to your customers. The bottom line is that most people simply want to connect with you on their social media channels (which vary depending on the audience). There are 2.34 billion people that have accounts on a multitude of social media platforms, and 76% of Facebook users (the largest network) log in every day. It’s simply more convenient for them to connect there. Therefore, if you don’t have a brand presence on social channels, you better get on it or you’ll be dust in the wind! Being an approachable company means you need to have a multi-channel strategy that puts you where the people are. 

Efficiency 

Social monitoring allows a business to discover customer inquiries, concerns, and interactions in real-time. When you are on social media channels, people should be reaching out all the time to communicate. This can be anything from: 

• Commenting 
• Liking 
• Tagging 
• Sending personal messages 
• Posting on your timeline 
• Retweeting to your brand 

When you have a 360-degree view of all these activities in real-time, you can address them faster—and that’s the pure definition of efficiency. 

Relevancy 

If someone was knocking on your door to congratulate you, would you ignore it? Social monitoring allows you to never miss an opportunity to engage with customers. 96% of people that discuss brands online, don’t follow them. So, engagement is critical to further success—but more importantly, it builds an active community around your brand. They could be your best brand advocates. Listening to social channels will enable you to quickly identify brand-relevant messages. This is customer experience gold. 

Messages that establish relevancy with your brand can be anything from a direct shout-out, to someone posting your product on Instagram. The idea is that when people are doing this, they want their props right away. Who wants to wait for a high-five? 

Advocacy 

Sure, influencer marketing is great, but brand advocates are truly your people. Influencers usually ask to be paid, but your brand advocates do it for the love of your brand. They are your quintessential “word-of-mouthers” in a tough competitive landscape. To put it into perspective, a recent survey Nielsen found that while 92% of people trusted the opinion of brand advocates, only 18% of people trusted influencers. 

Social monitoring allows you to interact with your key brand advocates in a consistent way. You’ll know each time one of them pops up or is saying something about your company. Then you can further promote that on all your social channels and use it as an opportunity to thank them. It’s a total win-win. 

Flexibility 

Social media monitoring allows you to A/B test your way through the trials and errors of your product/service. People will tell you what’s working and what’s not. In the olden days, you had to wait months for results, and by then a product could be well into development. Now you can know within minutes if something isn’t working, or better yet, have your customers predict what will work in the future. Go on a brainstorming journey with the people who are going to buy your stuff. 

Southwest Airlines has a team of 40 customer service experts in Dallas that monitor their social media round-the-clock. It is called the “Listening Center.” For the airline, expedient responses are critical and every year they receive up to 3,000 inbound posts a day. While some are negative, and some are positive, they consider social monitoring an essential tool for meeting customer needs. 

Competency 

Want to know what your competition is up to? Social monitoring  provides insight into the market you are in, so you can make more informed decisions. If your competitors are taking great risks, but making big mistakes, perhaps you don’t need to go that route. You can easier mitigate the risk. Paying attention allows you to stay informed about what is going on in your industry, so you can make easily meet goals. 

Social monitoring can also inspire you through competition. Perhaps you discover that another brand will release a similar product before you. Maybe you want to make some changes in development or slide up your release date. Social monitoring essentially empowers you against your competition. 

In Conclusion 

Modern consumers are smart and informed people. They generally have very pointed questions and high expectations. And why not? It’s a digital world and everything moves at the speed of light. You can use automation tools within a customer relationship management system (CRM) to not only monitor your audience, but store their data, analyze trends, and even score leads. 

Sure, social monitoring will make you money but it’s more about the people and the inspiration. Large conglomerates (like Southwest Airlines) have already caught on to how important it is to actively monitor your customers in real-time. Ultimately, social monitoring can give your business more: 

• Approachability 
• Efficiency 
• Relevancy 
• Advocacy 
• Flexibility 
• Competency 

Understanding the measure of monitoring is about comprehending just how important it is in modern business. Social media isn’t going anywhere, and statistics show it’s growing at exponential rates. Get on that train before it leaves the station or you’ll be forced to hitchhike towards social selling innovation.


I hope you enjoyed this article about the importance of social media monitoring and social listening services.

Interested in more articles about social media marketing?

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- 10 Social Media Marketing Mistakes To Minimize

- Why Social Media Marketing Is Crucial For Business

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