Tutorial for Writing Detailed Social Media Monitoring Plan

A great thing about social media is that it gives you an opportunity to connect pieces of information that may have not even looked related to each other, and you may also learn many things that you’ve never even known existed. You can find lots of information on social media, and it may come from different places: individuals, communities, influencers, etc. The diversity of content on social media, however, also has its flip side.

The number of internet users is expected to reach 4.41 billion by 2025 so if you want to find information relevant to your brand, it can be a tricky task because there’s too much content on social media platforms. Besides, using relevant information to obtain actionable insights can be even more challenging. However, you can make this task simpler if you have an effective and clear social media monitoring plan. With the right strategies, you’ll be able to react to mentions that you consider important as soon as they appear online.

Social media monitoring is more than just replying to the posts that mention you. The most effective monitoring strategies enable you to not only monitor the conversation that happens on the surface but also better understand the facts, tendencies, and motivations behind it. Social media monitoring offers numerous benefits. You can use it to find ideas for good content or to curate your content for your audience. You can also improve your customer service and products, and quickly detect new growth opportunities by monitoring your competitors’ actions.

An effective social media monitoring strategy can help you get ahead of your competitors, especially given the fact that 49% of brands don’t use social monitoring. However, writing a social media monitoring plan can be a difficult task. If you were a student, you could simply google “pay someone to write my paper” or “do my homework,” but social monitoring isn’t something that you can just delegate to someone else.

Your social media monitoring strategy should be tailored to your business. You should set clear objectives, decide what social media channels you’re going to focus on, and choose the right tools. This guide will help you learn more about social media monitoring and come up with a detailed and effective social media monitoring plan.

#1 Decide what you should monitor

You can focus on many different things, and you should determine what types of searches will bring the desired results. You may need to spend some time experimenting before you find the solution that fits your objectives. For instance, you may search for your company’s name, and you may also search for its variations, as well as possible misspellings. You may also monitor mentions of your company’s key members, your slogans, and specific campaigns. Besides, you may monitor keywords and key phrases related to your industry and common industry hashtags. You can also monitor your competitors’ mentions to learn from their success and use their weaknesses.

#2 Determine your objectives

Obviously, you won’t be able to come up with an effective social media monitoring plan if you don’t know what exactly you’re looking for and what insights you need. An interesting thing about social media monitoring is that you often cannot know what you’ll find. You may get different opportunities depending on the information that you find. For example, you may get an opportunity to build a useful relationship, create a good piece of content, or address a problem.

Here are some of the results that you may want to consider, along with the opportunities that they provide.

• Feedback

You can find feedback on your products or services. This sort of information is always useful, especially when you get it from social media where people discuss brands casually. You may or may not respond to feedback — the main thing is to listen because it can help you improve your products and services. Sometimes, there’s no need to respond to feedback immediately, and in some situations, you may need to respond as soon as possible.

• Pain points

Posts on social media can help you determine common issues with your product or understand how you can improve your customer service. You may also learn about common problems related to the industry, in general. Once you’ve gathered such information, you can decide what to do with it. Depending on the type of information, you may use it for problem-solving or content creation.

• Sentiment

You can determine whether people mostly say good or bad things about your company. By monitoring sentiment continuously within a certain period of time, you can spot patterns and understand what factors have the strongest influence on the changes in sentiment.

• Trends

Many industries have seasonal trends. For some businesses, their sales may even be influenced by weekly trends. By monitoring social media, you may find opportunities to draw attention to your brand at the right time.

• Questions

If you see that many users ask the same questions, you can use this information as an opportunity to create helpful content that will be appreciated by your target audience.

• Content

One of the best benefits of social media monitoring is that you can use insights from social media to better understand what content will be appreciated by your potential and existing customers. The things that people write about you on social media can provide you with many creative ideas and help you find the best topics for your content.

• Links

You can monitor links to your sources and use these insights for your SEO campaigns.

• Influencers

Proper monitoring can help you find influencers who create content that is directly related to your products or services, as well as those who have a good reputation in your industry. Thanks to social media monitoring, you can find opportunities for very beneficial collaborations and partnerships.

#3 Choose the right tools

Effective social media monitoring is impossible without the right tools. When planning your strategy, you should also determine what tools you’re going to use, and you may need to dedicate some time to choose because there are too many options available. Some solutions are simple and some can perform multiple functions so they can be used in different situations by companies with different goals.

A great example of such a comprehensive tool is Mentionlytics. It can not only help you get many mention insights but also help you improve your brand reputation and find leads and influencers. You can discover what people say about you on social media, blogs, and virtually any other website. When you see that someone mentions your brand, you can quickly join the conversation. Besides, you can track your competitors’ activity so that you can immediately react to any changing circumstances.

Your Plan Shouldn’t be Set in Stone

Once you’ve planned everything properly and started to monitor social media, it’s important to keep in mind that your plan is only as good as it’s effective. Your social media monitoring strategy should correspond not only to your expectations and needs but also to the circumstances, and you must always look for any opportunities to improve them. All kinds of media, especially social media, can be unpredictable so you should quickly adapt. You may need to experiment with different searches and try focusing on different platforms to find the ones that deliver the most valuable insights.

You should also keep in mind that simply collecting the necessary information doesn’t offer any benefits — you must put some effort into synthesizing the information that is really useful and analyzing it. Therefore, it’s important to have clear objectives and to stay up to date about all the latest trends in the industry. This way, you’ll be able to understand what information is most valuable so that you can quickly start to use it in practice. Social media monitoring is a continuous process, and you should approach it in a dynamic fashion.

Wrapping Up

Social media monitoring is a complex process that involves tracking mentions of your brand on various social media platforms. By monitoring social media, you can get tons of useful information, including the overall users’ sentiment, the most common problems that people experience when using your products or services, your potential customer’s pain points, and the feedback from the existing users.

If you want to benefit from all this valuable information, you should begin social media monitoring well-prepared, with clear objectives, priorities, and effective tools. In our guide, we considered some of the key factors that you should take into account when writing your social media monitoring plan so that you will know what to focus on. With a good strategy, you’ll be able to continuously improve your products and services, keep up with your competitors, and create effective content.

You can use social media monitoring to build strong relationships with your target audience and to find influencers from your niche who can boost your social media marketing strategy. No matter how detailed your plan is, you should revise and improve it regularly so that you can address the quickly changing environment in the industry and react to it accordingly.

Originally posted on Mentionlytics:
https://www.mentionlytics.com/blog/tutorial-for-writing-detailed-social-media-monitoring-plan