Social Media Monitoring for Business: The Definitive Guide

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The Definitive Guide to Social Media Monitoring

for Business

2 The Definitive Guide to Social Media Monitoring for Business

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Table of Contents_____________________________________

Introduction..................................................... 3

Research ......................................................... 4

Building Keyword Queries............................... 6

Tools................................................................ 7

Set Up & Daily Monitoring Tips....................... 8

Gathering Insights from "Listening"................ 9

Conclusion....................................................... 11

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Introduction_________________________________________

If you gotten this far in your social

media research process, you know

the importance of monitoring and

listening within social media. Maybe

you're not quite sure how to start or

are looking for advice on how to

leverage monitoring and listening.

Either way, this guide will give you an overview of what you will need to do in

order to gain business value from the conversations that are happening online.

Before we proceed, here is the difference between monitoring and listening in

social media:

Monitoring is the process of surveying conversations related to your

business and joining the conversation based on certain criteria in social

media guidelines laid out for employees.

Listening is gathering data within social media conversations and creating

trending reports that will provide actionable information for a business.

In the following pages, you will learn how to research topics, the tools available

(free and paid), build keyword phrases that will return accurate results, daily

monitoring routines that work, and create listening reports that will lead to

actionable insights.






Research____________________________________________

Before you can begin to monitor and listen

in on conversations happening within social

media, you will need to conduct the proper

research. Otherwise, you will be guessing on

what YOU think people are talking about.

Most of the time these conversations are

not relevant to your goals. In addition, you

could be missing out on key insights from

conversations if you don't identify the topics

you need to focus on.

You will find that each research activity originates from traditional marketing.

Therefore, this should be the easiest part for traditional marketers. Which leads

to the observation that traditional marketing research is not dead and social

media monitoring and listening is not a replacement but a compliment.

Survey Your Customers

Make sure to develop a survey that will generate insight from customers. After

you have developed a survey, distribute it through e-mail, at check-out, at events,

on Facebook, your website, mobile texts, among other channels.

Once you have gathered enough data to report "statistically significant" results,

you can group each response into topic categories.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you have customers that ask the same questions over and over again? These

are the types of questions that customer service should keep track of. If your

company does not keep track of each type of question, hold a company-wide

brainstorming session. Come up with a list of frequently asked questions, and

group each question into topic categories






Research____________________________________________

Keyword Research

After you have grouped all research into topic categories,

you will need to start conducting keyword research, as

this will be the basis of your monitoring and listening

program. There are many free tools out there, and we

suggest using Google's Keyword Tool. The reason you

need to do keyword research using a search engine tool

is that keywords used in search queries are often used

within social media conversations. (would be an

interesting study).

Come up with a list of at least 10 keywords for each topic category. Some

examples of topic categories can be the following:

Brand Names

Key Executives

Product/Service Lines

Customer Service

Advertising

Sales Opportunities

Your categories don't necessarily have to be set up this way, but it is important

nonetheless to create direction for your monitoring/listening program.

Once you have all the proper topics set up, now the fun (yet tedious) process

begins. Building the raw keyword queries to insert into your monitoring and

listening tools.






Building Keyword Queries ______________________________

The nuts and bolts of your social media monitoring/listening

program is building the individual keyword queries. While this

process is often tedious, it is necessary to get your program

started. In order to build a keyword query, you will need to

become familiar with Boolean language.

Boolean Language Explained

Boolean language is a logic formula developed by British-born Irish

mathematician George Boole. It refers to the logical relationship among

keywords.

So if you are searching for cat food and cat toys, and you only want to see results

that are relevant to BOTH of these keywords, you add what is called a Boolean

operator to your search. For this example, the search query would be "cat food

AND cat toys". AND is the Boolean operator, and you will be served more relevant

results using this approach.

The same concept relates to monitoring and listening. Imagine if you are a sports

retailer in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and you want to monitor only the

conversations that are happening in your local market. If you monitored "sports

equipment", you would be served millions of untargeted results. Now if you use a

Boolean operator within your keyword query, it would look like this, "sports

equipment AND Philadelphia". The results will be more targeted to your local

market.

Based off of your initial topic categories and keywords, start building more

complex search queries using Boolean language. Create an excel sheet to keep

track of all the categories and keyword queries.

http://www.internettutorials.net/boolean.asp






Tools_______________________________________________

Free Tools

There are many free tools on the market place that you can use to monitor your

brand. These tools are excellent for online reputation management and quick

response. All you have to do is enter a specific keyword query, and some will

allow you to add a location and other parameters. Here are some free tools for

you to consider:

Google Alerts

Twitter Search

Social Mention

Addictomatic

Ice Rocket

Topsy

Paid Tools

If you are interested in tapping into social media conversations for market

insights, then you will need to consider a paid tool. The benefit of these types of

tools is that you can customize reports according to your needs, and they present

a broader view of what is being talked about. Some tools for you to consider are:

Radian6

Sysomos

Alterian SM2

Collective Intellect

Lithium

Attensity360

http://google.com/alerts

http://search.twitter.com/advanced

http://socialmention.com/

http://addictomatic.com/

http://icerocket.com/

http://topsy.com/

http://www.radian6.com/

http://www.sysomos.com/

http://www.alterian.com/socialmedia

http://www.collectiveintellect.com/

http://www.lithium.com/

http://www.attensity360.com/






Set Up & Daily Monitoring Tips__________________________

Now that you have done your research, built keyword queries, and chosen your

tools, now is the time to set up your keywords in the tools and begin monitoring

on a daily basis.

3 Steps to Proper Set Up of Keyword Queries

Make sure that your keywords are in an excel document, separated

by topic.

Import or copy-paste the keyword queries into the

monitoring/listening tool that you have chosen.

Wait a day to see if results come in. If they don't come in, try

adjusting the keyword query (hint: try adding a negative Boolean

Operator)

3 Daily Monitoring Tips

Check first thing in the morning

Have a crisis plan in place

Route items for response to appropriate people/departments OR

respond yourself

Prioritize response speed depending on social media guidelines.








Gathering Insights from "Listening"______________________

If your company is striving for customer-centric products and services, there is no better

place to look than the social web. The amount of data that the internet produces

everyday is astonishing. And yes, social media conversations are considered data.

The reason for this is that technology is in a position

to measure and chart out conversations in many

types of formats. Some questions that you might ask

are Who are my customers, Where are they talking,

What are they talking about, Why are they talking

about that, How are they talking, and When are they

talking. Marketers are in the beginning stages of

truly understanding and answering each of these

questions through technology. Let's explain below:

Demographics (The Who): Data is being aggregated across multiple social networks,

including information about the people who interact on all the social networks on the

web. Don't worry about your privacy though, as these social networking giants have the

business obligation to keep your personal information safe, and if they ever did

personally identify you, it is because you opted-in to allow them to do so.

Channels (The Where): Each of your conversations originate on a unique social network.

The social media listening tools will separate each conversation into a bucket, so you

can see what network is hosting the most conversations about the specified keywords.

Semantics(The What and Why): We are only in the beginning of semantics, but it is the

ability to map themes and the meaning of conversations.

Sentiment (The How): Over time, computers have been taught to recognize emotions

(positive, negative, positive) within strings of keywords within conversations.






Gathering Insights from "Listening"______________________

Conversation Trends (The When): Conversations naturally have a shelf life, so it is

another data point that your company will need to look at. For example, say you

are retailer. You might want to look at how early people start talking about

Christmas gifts. This help shape your marketing calendar for the upcoming holiday

shopping season. This is an obvious example, but you can relate this to your own

business, whether it is seasonal or not.

Now what can you use all of this insight for?

Product launches

Reactions to advertising

Optimizing spend on effective social channels that are driving conversation

Measuring customer satisfaction

PR crisis prevention

Plus many other aspects of your business

Use social media listening as a complement to your current market research, and

you will find that many of the insights that you gain from listening will fill in the

gaps of traditional research.






Conclusion__________________________________________

Whether you're performing online reputation management or market research,

social media monitoring and listening is a critical part of a social media program.

In fact, without it, you are missing out on a huge opportunity for your business to

generate leads, customers, and to improve the way you do business.

Now go out there and open your ears to the sea of conversations!






Next Steps________________________________________

If you are interested in growing your business online, contact Social Media HQ today to start

the discovery process.

P.S. If you liked this guide please share it with your colleagues, friends, family,

or whoever you think might find value in it. Click on one of the share buttons

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Photo Credits________________________________________

Pg. 3 - PR2020

Pg. 4 - KOC.Wikia

Pg. 5 - Get Elastic

Pg. 6 - UCLA Library

Pg. 7 - Social Conversations

Pg. 9 - Creative Triage

http://www.pr2020.com/page/social-media-monitoring-tools-comparison

http://koc.wikia.com/wiki/Crest_Drop_Research

http://www.getelastic.com/google-keyword-research-tips/

http://guides.library.ucla.edu/content.php?pid=130524&sid=1119424

http://www.socialconversations.com/tag/social-media-monitoring/

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Social Media Monitoring for Business: The Definitive Guide

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