What exactly is brand monitoring?

The internet is vast. People post all sorts of things on the internet. In addition, the advent of social media has made the internet bigger than ever. It is the best means of communicating and reaching out to people. Imagine this, before the internet existed, businesses didn’t really know what customers thought of them unless they used focus groups or saw a drop in sales. Now, consumers are everyone what they think of a business, good or bad. The customer’s viewpoint is readily available. What a brand needs to do is find out where exactly they’ve been mentioned, understand it and respond. This is online brand monitoring in a nutshell.

Why do we need to do it?

Brand monitoring helps in many ways. It is useful in not only understanding customer feedback and suggestions but can also be used as a great opportunity to focus in on areas where you, as a brand can build up a good reputation. You get to know the overall sentiment towards a brand; where it’s doing a good job and where it’s not. Apart from actually knowing who your customer base is, you can also take new product or service ideas from the. This kind of real-time feedback is another huge plus point. Many people worry about negative things about their brand online. However, knowing them helps you build and protect your online reputation.

How to monitor a brand?
Monitoring is about responding. A comment, question, query, complain, etc., you can reach out and reassure your customers that you’re there to solve any problem they may face. With the advent of social media and an increase in the number of blogs, finding a way to stay on top of this is a must. 

There are many tools present to help you monitor a brand online

Trackur is a comprehensive social media monitoring tool that you can use to monitor your brand mentions across Twitter, Facebook, and other top social networks. Viralheat Social Sentiment helps you see whether mentions of your brand on social media are mostly positive, negative, or neutral. Good old Google Alerts lets you save searches for your brand and get notifications via email or RSS when new results are found on Google. Klout is a website that uses social media analytics to rank its users according to online social influence via the ‘Klout Score’, which is a numerical value between 1 and 100. In determining the user score, Klout measures the size of a user’s social media network and correlates the content created to measure how other users interact with that content.

 

 

 

 

Monitoring on social networks:

Twitter:

To keep track of mentions on Twitter, it’s imperative to pay attention to hashtags (#), ‘@ replies’ and mentions. HootSuite allows us to set up streams of Twitter searches for your brand name and keywords related to your brand. Convonix has proprietary software called ‘Iristrack’ used to track Twitter mentions. It helps us know when, where and what is being talked about your brand online. It provides you with an easy visualization of the platforms where your brand has been mentioned.

Facebook:

People can like or comment on a post and can even start a conversation here. We need to get involved in these conversations along with those fans start. Irrespective of how they mention your brand, it is important to respond. Using Iristrack, Convonix has the ability to track Facebook posts. It helps us in understanding the general sentiment towards a brand online and provides you with an easy visualization of the platforms where your brand has been mentioned.

Monitoring Online Searches:

Google Alerts are a great way to keep tabs on any mention of our brand online. Some conversations aren’t happening on traditional social networks. They’re happening on blogs, websites, and in news stories. Google Alert is an excellent way to keep a close eye on any mention online. It is highly relevant because many places where a brand is mentioned aren’t really on any social networks, but on news websites, online media and blogs. Google Alerts let us set the obvious things, such as our brand name and product names, and then specify how and when we want the results to arrive. They can be sent to our inbox, or can be sent to an RSS reader.

Blogs:

Responding to blogs or comments on blogs is hugely important. Many blogs have become popular with people looking to seek support or vent about a particular product. With a rise in the number of blog comments, blogging software that alerts us about each new comment mentioning our brand is a must.

Summary:

A brand’s presence online is very important and understanding the sentiment towards a brand is vital. Apart from marketing your products and services, it is one of the most important things a brand can do. This is important regardless of whether you are experiencing a crisis or receiving any negative attention from media outlets. Hence, monitoring a brand online is a great way to understanding its standing and identifying areas where improvement is necessary.