Table of Contents – Social Media Monitoring Insight

• Introduction
• Social Media Monitoring and on E-commerce?
• Significance and Advantages
• Tools for Social Media Monitoring
• Conclusion

Introduction
In rudimentary terms, social media monitoring is nothing but the process of using tools to identify and analyse what is being said about a brand, product or an individual. It basically captures the social media conversations that are relevant to your brand. It is a continuous process as it involves not only looking out for mentions about your brand but also responding to it, formulating strategies, taking corrective action, obtaining feedback etc.

It goes by various other names as well, like, Online or Buzz Analytics, Social Listening, Social Media Measurement/ Management, Social Media Intelligence, or to sum it up and simply put- SMM.

An important point to note is that Social media monitoring is not just engaging in directs mentions on your posts. It widens to posts or comments that mentions your brand without tagging you.

How does Social Media Monitoring Work and What are its Effects on E-commerce?
Generally, it is an algorithm base tool that crawls sites and continuously indexes them. Crawling is the most popular technique for data acquisition and is also well known for its easy operation based on prevalent Object-Orientated Programming (OOP) Language. Conveniently, the most popular social networking sites like YouTube, Flicker, Facebook, Instagram, etc. are friendly to crawling techniques.

When it comes to E-commerce business, this tool can prove to be utmost helpful as compared to traditional marketing techniques. Obtaining feedback from customers is easier, which further helps in developing a well-ordered relationship with them. Also, by getting to know their tastes and preferences, you get to make changes to your product and draw up strategies for the future.

Once you gather an understanding about how the public perceives your company, you can;

• Build brand credibility and authenticity.
• Use the positive feedback received in further marketing and promotion of your company.
• Analyse and identify the best and worst social media marketing campaigns.
• Use the negative feedback to recognize errors, take remedial action and prevent future oversights in your business.

What are its Significance and Advantages?
The principal benefit of Social Media Monitoring is that it makes your customers feel that they are being heard, valued and supported. Here are some other advantages of using this tool in your business:

• Allows researchers to gain insights into a brand’s overall visibility and impression on social media.
• Can be used to measure the impact of social media campaigns conducted.
• Helps identify opportunities for engagement and establishment.
• Aids in assessing competitor activity and share of voice, and even to detect impending crises.
• Further, it provides invaluable information about emerging trends, consumers’ thoughts and preferences on specific topics, brands or products.

What are the Tools Available for Social Media Monitoring?
The way to make social media monitoring to work is by scanning groups of people of interest and make out what they have to say about you, your products and services, and even your competitors. When you have the relevant data, you can analyse the particulars to make informed decisions about how you can promote and market yourself or your brand on social media so as to achieve maximum benefit. This is only possible by using the right tools.

These tools are programs that monitor and keep track of everything about user behaviour. It can help you track keywords, hashtags, URLs etc. Here are some of the most commonly used monitoring tools:

Keyhole

Monitors your Twitter and Instagram accounts.
Provides real-time and historical information.
Comes with heat maps that show activity levels.

Digimind

• Measures sentiment.
• Your brand vs. Competitor analysis.
• Keyword perception- Positive, negative or neutral.

Simply Measured

• Keeps track of a number of metrics.
• Receive insights on competitor fan pages.

24ieye

• Track of brand mentions
• Monitor competitors activities
• Results with sentiments and importance

Hootsuite

• Track activity across a number of social networks and platforms.
• Manage social media accounts and scheduling of posts.
• Delegation of tasks.

Conclusion
With so many social media platforms on the rise, it may nearly be an impossible task for businesses to measure their brand performance, without the help of third-party tools. Effective Social Media Monitoring enables you to always keep your brand at the top of the game. Be it media campaigns, diversification, response to customers etc, it helps maintain a positive brand image among consumers and also identify potential influencers.

Becoming proactive, rather than reactive in terms of customer relations is more important now than ever before. So, don’t miss out on an opportunity to enhance your business functions in its entirety.