Monitoring social media marketing is an important issue that should be considered wisely when choosing to work with different companies online. Monitoring is very important in the life cycle of any product. It helps companies improve the outcome of their marketing campaign while maintaining their current position. When it comes to social media there are many tools that are involved in the process of monitoring that can help an organization compete within their industry. The process of monitoring gives you an advantage because it allows you to look into your target audience, their interests and what they are searching for online. You can also look into competing companies, who is in the lead, who are they targeting with their marketing campaign, why does their campaign work? When you are armed with this knowledge, you can take steps toward improving your marketing campaign, as well as the quality of your branding, your products and your services.

There are many techniques for monitoring social media marketing campaigns. Larger companies have the ability to invest much more in monitoring than small companies do. A company that spent most of its budget on the actual marketing, might want to look for a free monitoring service when they are first starting out. Some monitoring tools that are provided online are listed below with a brief description.

Feed monitoring

Tools that are used in tracking websites are sometimes difficult for companies to handle. Feed monitoring provides you with the ability to monitor according to your industry or competitors with RSS readers. This keeps you up to date on the information regarding your business.

News buzz

This is another way of keeping you in touch with your industry. News buzz can help you find out more about the industry news that is circulating online. Now you can keep an eye on news stories and blogs that mention your company or competitors. Sites like Digg specialize in this.

Comments

Blog comments are one of the tools that help you monitor the actions related to your brand, your products and the services your company offers. Through these comments you can monitor the positive and negative things that are being said about your business or brand.

Trend tracking

You can keep an eye on the trends that are shaping your industry through social media. These trends will inform you of new products that are being launched and other important things. This will give you an edge in your market.

Feed Subscriptions

RSS feeds can help you keep track of your brand and your competitors’ brands. If someone is spreading positive or negative information about your company, you will find out about it quickly. If someone leaks the release of a product, you will probably hear about it through the RSS feeds. Keep your name and your employees’ names plugged into the feed subscriptions.

Conference Calls Feeds

Sometimes in public companies, vital information can be attained by listening to conference calls. This process is very time consuming, so save your time and energy by subscribing to RSS feeds of the conference call transcripts and you can still get the same precise and useful information.

The process of monitoring holds great importance when it comes to the stability of any company in the market. Monitoring helps companies find out what needs to go into the brand, what their competitors are thinking and how are they marketing themselves against your brand.

These monitoring methods, along with many others, can work effectively and efficiently by giving you plenty of information about your company and your brand as well as your competitors’. When you are staying current on the industry news, it gives you a leg up on the competition.

Andy Beal. (2007).Online media monitoring: 26 Free Social Media Tracking Tools. Retrieved Oct 15^th, 2008, from http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2007/08/26-free-tools-for-buzz-monitoring.html

Max Starkov, Jason Price. (2008). Best Practices for Monitoring Social Media Sites. Retrieved Oct 15^th, 2008, from http://www.hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/best_practices_for_monitoring_social_media_sites/

Bookmark It

Related posts:

1. An Idiot’s Guide to Social Media Marketing
2. SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING VS SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING
3. Ten Social Media Marketing Deadly Sins
4. 5 Pillars of Social Media Marketing
5. Developing an Effective Social Media Measurement