What are Social Media Monitoring and Its Importance to Internet Marketing?

Social media monitoring is the process of listening to what people are saying in relation to your business. It usually refers to automated tools that use keywords to find, among millions of conversations on social media, any conversation related to your business, industry, or competitors. It should be utilized to learn about your target market, to engage, and collaborate with them.

Importance of Social Media Monitoring

The world of social media can be compared to a huge cocktail party where everyone is talking. Each of them came with a desire to communicate, share, and interact with one another. A small group could be talking about your competitor, your industry, or you. Some of them could be looking for a product like what you have and if you are not listening to that conversation, you could be missing out a great opportunity.

Apart from what has been mentioned, you can use social media monitoring for the following purposes:

1. To get an immediate alert when someone says something bad or good about your brand.

I once encountered an issue with a program I just purchased. Out of frustration, I tweeted about it. A few minutes later, I received a call from their customer service and offered to help me with the technical issue I encountered. The problem has been resolved after a few minutes and I was never happier with my decision to purchase the software.

Later on, I went back to Twitter and found people adding comments about it. I tweeted back and told them that the developer came to the rescue and issue has been resolved.

Imagine if the developer wasn’t listening and multitudes of negative comments were made, each one sharing their own bad experience. How could that one tweet affect a business?

2. To quickly respond to customer queries.

Nowadays, when consumers plan to purchase something, they use Facebook or Twitter to ask for opinion about certain product. Of course, they want to know if it’s going to be worth their money. If you have been monitoring such conversation, with some tactics, you can respond and offer some information to help them get an informed decision. Without social media monitoring, it will be impossible for you to be there at the right time.

3. To figure out what the market actually needs so that you can devise a way to fill the gap.

What’s the best way to succeed in business? – To discover what the market needs and be the first to provide it. Online or offline, the rules are the same.

4. To identify people who are in need of your product and help them make their choice.

Social media is built to build relationships. However, you can’t be all over the place conversing with everyone at the same time. You need to choose where you can best utilize your resources. By monitoring the social media, you can identify where influencers, target and existing customers, and potential business partners hang out.

5. To get a good idea about your competitors – what the market are saying about them and how you can do better against them.

They said that in order for you to win the battle, you have to know and understand your enemy.

When Subway joined the fastfood industry, it did not follow McDonald’s. They focused their research on what McDonald’s failed to give their customers – healthy choices. Subway is now the world’s largest restaurant chain outranking McDonald’s.

If you understand the importance of social media to your business, monitoring it is vital to your strategy. If you are just tweeting because everyone else is doing it without understanding the rationale behind, it’s just a waste of time. Monitor your social media campaign. It will surely lead to your business success.