Why Social Monitoring Is Important (And 3 Tools To Use)

If someone loves your product quite often the first place they will let people know is social media. If someone hates your product or has received a bad experience, most likely they will vent their frustrations on social media. Unless they tag your business in the comment directly chances are you won’t know, and even then depending on the platform used you still may not see it. For example, if a Facebook user mentions your business in an update, if their update settings are not Public, your page will not be alerted. Luckily for you there’s a number of online tools that help you locate comments about your business online, and in today’s article I’m going to show them. Why social monitoring is important Monitoring what people are saying about your business online is important for a number of reasons, such as: Resolving problems – if someone is venting about your product or service, in the future someone may Google your business, come across the user’s comments and be put off. Being able to identify such comments allows you to not only solve the customer’s problem, but also ensure you don’t lose further business as a result. Understand your customers – a reason many businesses struggle is because they simply don’t understand their customers. Listening to discussions on social media or web forums gives you a greater insight into their mindset and how you can better serve them. Create a community – Knowing who is speaking about your business and where ensures you can engage with your customers and create a better rapport. A community feeling and a strong relationship is often a profitable one. So we know there’s benefits to listening to what people are saying about your business on the Internet, but how do you find them? Mention Mention is a great online tool that monitors the Internet like a hawk waiting for anyone to mention your business. It will return links to sites that mention your website and keywords on social media, web forums and websites that link back to yours. Mention offers a 14-day free trial and their entry level package starts from $25 per month. Social Mention Social Mention is free online tool that lets you find what people are saying about your business, top keywords, hashtags and reveals the sentiment behind them. You simply enter a URL or keyword and Social Mention will reveal everything surrounding that word or URL online: Hootsuite Hootsuite is quite possibly the most well known social media management tool on the market for small and medium size businesses. As well as tracking comments about your business and keywords, you can also keep tabs on your competitors, social media influencers and even customers. Hootsuite is best suited if you have an active social media presence on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. Hootsuite offers a free package with entry level plan starting at $9.99 per month. Summary There’s not enough hours in the day for you to scrawl Facebook groups, Twitter search or web forums to see what others are saying about you, your competitors and your industry. If you make a lot of businesses decisions based on trending news or have a large online presence, it’s certainly worth spending an hour or so a week finding out what is being said. As I always say, the more information a business has, the better it can make decisions going forward. PS: Here’s a few more tools that work well with Facebook and Twitter:

• Social Searcher
• Trackur
• Pluggio