Last week I wrote about creating a buzz through social media. Today I want to talk about the other side of creating a buzz, monitoring your brand through social media.

Someone’s probably already told you that there is a conversation going on about your brand. You can ignore the conversation and hope it goes well, or you can listen and join in. It’s your choice, but obviously I believe that joining the conversation is the better option.

Where should you monitor? It depends on the size of your brand. If you are a national/international brand, you need specialized tools to gather all the mentions of your brand in one place. Here’s a good post from Social Media Examiner which discusses some of the more popular tools.

If you are smaller, look at where your audience tends to hang out and go there.

I still recommend accounts on most of the major social media platforms because you’ll want to be able to respond when people talk about you. Remember to respond to both the good and the bad. We like to get feedback when we compliment as much as we like to hear from you when we criticize.

How will you spend your time? Listening, mostly. As you listen, analyze and look for patterns. Does one demographic talk about you the most? Is it good or bad? You might want to plan a campaign to address them specifically.

As you listen and analyze, interact with your audience. The more accessible you are, the more you’ll hear, and that’s good, even if you hear the bad stuff. If you are accessible, the bad stuff won’t be as bad. When people feel they are being heard, they are much softer in their criticism and more likely to thank you for addressing concerns.

How do you get business from this role? That’s easy. If you have the reputation of responding promptly, people will naturally come to you. Remember that we like to do business with companies we know, like and trust. A good monitoring program will feed all three of those.

That’s the end of this series. I hope it’s made you think of your role in social media and how you can make it work for you more effectively.

I’ll add to it when I run across new roles. Things are changing so rapidly that I’m sure it won’t be long before I see some new ones emerging.

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