Social Media Monitoring Basics from the Call Center
Social media monitoring is one of the most important aspects of any social media strategy. However, it’s not enough to simply check for conversations on the big social networks and call it a day; you must learn where your customers congregate and have meaningful conversations about your brand, and focus your social media monitoring efforts there. Before your business’ social media monitoring efforts can be effective, you must learn two things: what to monitor and where to monitor.
What To Monitor
Once your business has decided to start engaging in social media monitoring, the first step is decide what to monitor, i.e. which search terms will lead you to relevant conversations about your brand. Some of these search terms will be fairly basic: your business name, products, industry-specific terms, and slogans. If your search terms are too broad, then you’ll be wasting time and money sifting through the results. If they are two narrow, you could be missing out on potentially valuable information.
In order to make your search terms more effective, you will need to gain a broader picture of your customer-base. You should also include the brands, products, and slogans of your competitors as well. Experimentation is a huge part of this process. The only way to determine if you’ve chosen the right search terms is to use them in practice. Ultimately, only retain the search terms that lead you to online communities, social networks, and blogs where your customers discuss your business.
Where To Monitor
Once you have figured out what you’re looking for, the next step is to determine the online venues where your customers congregate. Again, there are obvious first steps here. You can begin with your business’ official social network profiles or company blog. There also may be groups on Facebook or “trending topics” on Twitter that are referencing your business specifically, your competitors, or your industry as a whole. Additionally, you should use your search terms to find blogs or forums that discuss your brand.
Once you have tapped into your customer community, it will become easier to find other websites or social media groups. You might be able to find more blogs by following links in comment sections or forum posts. Maybe a news story will point you in the direction of further valuable customer communities. And your jobs isn’t finished once you have found where your customers gather; social media monitoring is only effective when it is done over an extended period of time. Otherwise, you won’t be gaining an accurate picture of what your customer-base is thinking.
Social media monitoring is an intensive and time-consuming process, but one that can be beneficial to all aspects of your business. Stratus Contact Solutions specializes in using the best social media monitoring and analytics tools available today to improve customer service procedures. We have years of experience providing call center support to businesses all over the world, which we combine with our social media knowledge, allowing us to analyze customer habits and preferences. Contact us today to learn more.