Guess what. Your customers and potential customers are talking about you online - and there are many reasons to pay attention. Monitoring is a critical first step of an overall social media strategy.

For starters, social media monitoring can help you to:

• know what people are thinking or saying about you in near real-time
• get an overall sense of sentiment surrounding your brand or product
• identify influencers, advocates of your brand
• understand what goes viral, word of mouth
• keep an eye on your competitors
• discover new opportunities, leads
• generate ideas, product development insights
• measure the impact of both on and offline marketing initiatives
• gain insights to apply to your branding and messaging
• plan your online communications strategy
• avoid or mitigate crises
• protect your brand’s reputation
• be helpful

Knowing who’s talking about you and what they’re saying is only the first step. What do you do when negative comments are being made about your brand or your product? What do you do when someone says great things about you? What if people are saying positive/negative things about your competitors? What is the impact of just ignoring the whole thing? You have to know when to respond and when not to, who to respond to and who not to, and exactly how to respond.

One thing is for sure – you should be monitoring the conversation about your brand online, because it is happening, and to ignore it is a terrible waste of valuable insight.

Brickworks has experts and an established process in place for monitoring, analyzing and reporting our clients’ “buzz” online. We also provide expert advice as to how to respond, no matter what the scenario. Feel free to contact us for more information.

Are you doing any online monitoring? If so, how have your findings affected your business?