Social Media Monitoring: What key benefits you should expect

Social media monitoring is a powerful tool, offering you and your colleagues the ability to tap into real, honest perceptions about your brand.

A powerful tool

Simply by setting up queries around specific keywords, you’re rewarded with an unlimited amount of organised data that can, if used wisely, positively inform your products, services and strategies. In other words, it’s the world’s largest focus group right at your fingertips. 

Let’s deep dive into some of the specific benefits you can draw out of such a tool.

#1 You'll be the first to find out

Social media monitoring is also known as social listening, and it’s just that – the chance to listen. It’s an opportunity to hear from your customers and prospects; what they are saying to their friends and family without tagging you. The last bit is key – social media monitoring centres around what’s being said about your brand indirectly, when you’re not in the room. Perhaps they’d like you to open a shop near them, perhaps they don’t care for your returns policy, perhaps they’re dissatisfied with their current broadband provider (and you just happen to be a competitor waiting in the wings). 

There are very few customers who will tell you honestly what’s on their mind, and even fewer prospects who will take the time to let you know how you could be doing business with them. If you’re not listening, you won’t know what opportunities you’re missing. Don’t be the last to know what’s being said, and make sure you funnel those insights back into your company to inform your business. Knowledge is power.

#2 The early bird avoids the social media crisis

Early visibility of what unhappy customers are saying about you is crucial to an effective, stress-free resolution for all involved. And one that doesn’t result in your brand releasing a public apology video on YouTube. Whether it’s catching a small customer service issue before it escalates, or picking up on a journalist who’s really not loving your product, social listening allows you to be there before anyone else. Offering some helpful advice at the right time can make all the difference, and can nip any brewing social media storms in the bud. Oh, and it’s excellent customer service too. Win-win. 

If you’re using a tool such as Orlo, you’re able to detect a customer service issue that’s less than positive, and forward it to a Customer Service agent’s inbox to deal with before it escalates. Should the issue require attention from management, or another department, you can simply pass the message on either by assigning or emailing, making the right people aware of what’s happening. It keeps everyone in the know, and allows you to fix the issue, before your customer broadcasts her bad experience to the entirety of her follower base…and then it goes viral.

#3 Win friends & influence people

The secret to a good relationship centres around both people listening to each other, so it follows that winning over influencers also starts here. Social media monitoring enables you to find relevant influencers in your industry, and consistently listening in to what they post about allows you to tailor messages and pitches to their specific interests. If you know that influencer x always tweets about his insomnia, and you sell pillow mist, then that’s surely a match made in brand partnership heaven?

Social media monitoring also makes it possible for you to be on point with your influencer outreach. You’ll be alerted every time your defined influencer posts about your company, or about an issue that your brand cares about, giving you the perfect chance to swoop in and woo them. 

Helpfully, Orlo offers users the chance to set up app alerts if, for example, a key influencer posts about your company, whether negatively or positively. And even more usefully, those alerts can be directed to the right person in your organisation to deal with, allowing for instant resolution of the issue.

#4 Get the edge on your competition

We may have saved the best until last, and we’d like to let you in to a little known fact about social media monitoring. The smartest social media managers out there are doing something really powerful – monitoring their competitors on social media. They’re taking advantage of the ability to see the content of their campaigns, and just how they are performing, in real-time. It’s a source of inspiration… and sometimes a chance to feel smug because your results are better. It allows you to identify key opportunities and any gaps to be filled. Are your competitors remiss in responding to their customer complaints? Get in there yourself and see if you can poach that unhappy customer. Just think about how much effort your business invests in acquiring new customers – surely it’s worth setting up a few search parameters around your main competitors? 

The secret to monitoring success

With great power comes great responsibility, and with great parameters comes great social media monitoring. It offers so many benefits for the taking, but only for those who know how to build a good listening query. Those who fail will be left with thousands of irrelevant results for the brand that has the same name as you, but is based in California while you’re in Sheffield. Or results from media outlets that you’re not particularly interested in. Small tips and tricks are the difference between hours spent trawling through results looking for gold, and five minutes a day perusing your monitoring results and cherry-picking a few for you and your colleagues to action. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t come across many Social Media Managers with nothing to do. A tool such as Orlo, with all the training and support that comes with it, makes your job easier and saves you time that could be better used elsewhere.