You care about your brand image every day, don’t you? You go to great lengths to ensure that the products you offer meet expectations and the services you provide are delivered in the right way. You regularly post on your social media channels to show what kind of brand you are and why you will best meet the needs of each individual customer. You know that customer service is crucial, so you constantly improve its quality.
But your image is not only the actions taken directly by you or your employees (e.g., in employee advocacy), but also what audiences and other stakeholders are saying about you on forums, blogs, opinion portals, social media and many other sources. The information appearing about your brand online can be both positive and negative – and it spreads at lightning speed, because online never sleeps. In the case of the first type, this is a good phenomenon; in the case of the second, it is definitely not. That’s why you need to keep them under control, which regular monitoring of the Internet and social media will help with.
Below, we explain exactly what this process entails and the key benefits it will bring you. Convince yourself that this is what your brand needs in 2024!
What is Internet and social media monitoring?
A review of your product or service on a blog? Discussion about your brand on an online forum? Tagging of your company appearing on selected social media? If you’re checking on a regular basis what information related to your brand is being shared in various online sources, you’re monitoring the Internet. After all, the purpose of monitoring is to get a complete picture of what is being said about your company in the media, which is possible through three key activities:
- Tracking mentions (and responding quickly when necessary),
- Sentiment analysis (determining whether the content is positive, negative or neutral),
- drawing conclusions from the received data (for changes in business strategy, marketing activities, etc.).
What can be monitored? The answer is… Virtually everything. You can check your brand and the products you offer (specific names), your competitors or the name of people associated with your brand (if, for example, you are building a personal brand), but also your industry (as part of checking trends) or social, political, cultural phenomena, etc. Thus, you get information that you can use, not only about your business, but also about your audience and their needs (what they are interested in, what are their buying intentions, what are the market trends, etc.).
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Social media and Internet monitoring – benefits for business
What will it translate into if you keep track of what is being said about your brand online? The areas that benefit from media monitoring can be listed endlessly (we write about them in great detail in our ebook “10 ways to online listening”), but we are able to detail the most important ones. We outline these key areas below.
Prevent a crisis… before it erupts
Do you remember the situation a few years ago, when the Dove brand posted a GIF lasting 3 seconds on its US Facebook account, in which a woman with black skin color pulled off her T-shirt, then turned into a white woman? Such a creation very quickly came under fire for negative comments from Internet users, who considered it racist, suggesting that black skin is “dirty” and that it would become “clean” after using products from Dove.
The GIF published by Dove was part of a longer commercial prepared as part of the promotion of a new shower gel, in which the brand wanted to show that the product it created is suitable for any woman, regardless of skin color. Indeed, in the next scene of the footage, a white woman transforms into an Asian woman, and the characters discuss the differences between them.
The excerpt from the ad, however, significantly distorted its perception and formed the basis for calls for a boycott of the brand by Internet users. Dove quickly responded to the situation by removing the GIF from its profile and posting an official apology on Twitter:
Source: Twitter
This is just one example of the many image crises that have ever erupted on social media due to “racism.” But crises can erupt for other reasons as well. A disgruntled employee can do black PR to a company online, the words of a company representative can be misconstrued (not intended), and a customer can write a very bad review of our product or service. In just a few seconds, such information can reach a wide audience and escalate.
Such situations cannot always be prevented, but they can definitely be reacted to before they gain a scope that will entail negative consequences. Quick reaction is the best way to minimize the damage to your brand image. This is exactly what social media monitoring carried out with the use of an appropriate tool – such as SentiOne – helps with.
Among other things, as part of SentiOne’s crisis prevention, you can set up crisis alerts for selected buzzwords (e.g., bullying, phishing, etc.) and set up notifications to be sent when the number of mentions of your brand suddenly increases dramatically.
See the results of your actions
Are you launching a new product? Introducing a new service to your offerings? Getting closer to the launch of a marketing campaign (image, awareness, etc.) that your team has been working on for a long time? With a real-time Internet monitoring tool, you will find out what the first reactions of your audience are and be able to determine what tone – positive or negative – prevails in the comments. This will allow you not only to react quickly to possible problems or image crises, as we mentioned above, but also to use positive feedback to promote your brand (as part of your reach for user-generated content, one of the marketing trends for 2024).
What’s more, the number of mentions, likes, shares or comments will bring you a range of data that will allow you to assess the effectiveness of the implemented activities (e.g. reach). On this basis, you will draw conclusions that will be useful for your next campaigns. Who would have thought that media monitoring could also be useful in such an area, right?
SentiOne doesn’t limit you in the number of keywords you can search for in your monitoring, providing instant access to mentions from 5+ million sources (from social media to news sites to review sites)
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Find inspiration for action
Monitoring the Internet and social media can also bring you inspiration for your marketing and communication activities. If you’re running out of content ideas, don’t know which influencer is worth partnering with, what social media trends currently reign supreme and which ones have the most potential, take a peek at such a tool. Tracking content published online can give you valuable ideas for new promotional strategies, social media content, creative approaches to communicating with customers or even product or service improvements based on customer feedback posted online.
Through effective monitoring of social media and the Internet, we can see first of all what our customers’ main needs and expectations or problems and concerns are. Based on this information, we can in turn create content and campaigns that address them – all in an effort to build a positive brand image.
SentiOne’s features help you relieve the burden on the marketing department by providing data for analysis and ideas for marketing and communication activities yourself
Check what is being said about your competition
You can check your competitors’ social media on a daily basis, search for information about them on the Internet, follow the press releases they release… But you can also use an Internet monitoring tool that will do this for you, saving your employees’ time. This way you will discover, among other things, what the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors are, which you will be able to use to improve your own strategy. You will also find out what market trends your competitors are responding to, or what customers’ opinions are about their products/services (and thus – what can convince them to “move to you”).
Particularly important is what content published by competitors generates the most engagement. By getting such data, you will find out what your customers’ preferences and expectations are, which you can use to improve your own communication strategies. This way you will always be one step ahead of your competitors.
SentiOne comes with a number of widgets that will allow you to see where you stand in the market relative to your designated rivals. You can see in which areas you are performing better and in which you are performing worse, which can inspire you to take action to improve your competitiveness
Discover where your audience is
An Internet monitoring tool not only gives you information about what is being said about your brand, but also where it is being said. Why is this important? Because it’s obvious that we should be active in those social media and on those sites as our audience. By knowing the places where a brand or industry is most often discussed, a company can reach its target audience more effectively. By adjusting our activity on the platforms in question, we will lead to more interactions and better brand visibility.
Thanks to SentiOne you will get to know your audience better – you will find out, among other things, what gender they are or where they are most often located
Internet and social media monitoring – bet on it in 2024
No matter how big your company is, what industry it operates in or what products/services it offers, its online reputation simply matters. Not only does it have an impact on maintaining the loyalty of current customers and attracting new ones, but it is also scrutinized by potential business partners or even employees. So you shouldn’t ignore the need to monitor the Internet and social media in 2024. After all, you will reap numerous benefits by doing so – starting with a quick and effective response in a crisis situation, and ending with a better understanding of your audience. Will you give it a try?
