How to Monitor Mentions of Your Brand on Social Media

Every second of every minute of every hour of every day on Earth, someone somewhere is mentioning a brand in a social media post. The comment could be good ("OMG you've try to #BrandX"), it could be bad ("OMG whatever you do stay away from #BrandX"), or it could be spammy ("Ready to make millions from bitcoin? #Brandx #TryNow #StayAway"). But if you're not monitoring for these types of mentions, you'll never know.

Maybe you're intrigued now and would like to know more about how you can uncover all of these conversations. You're in luck, because "how to monitor mentions" is the exact topic of this blog post.

 Hashtag and Brand Name Searches

The easiest way to turn up mentions of your brand is just to search for them!  Step one: Pull out your smartphone. Step two: Move your fingers to the Twitter app (or another social media platform). Step three: Search for your brand name or a hashtag related to your #BrandName. Step four: Review the results.

While this is an excellent way to get started, you’re only ever likely to scratch the surface with this tip. Why? Because a lot of relevant mentions of your brand may not use a specific hashtag or even your exact brand name. You probably need to be searching for specific keywords as well, especially ones related to your product or service. You want to ensure that you're not missing anything important and that posts you are surfacing are an accurate reflection of the broader market. For that reason, many larger brands and operations often turn to social media monitoring tools. 

Social Mention Tool

With all of this in mind, the more effective method is to integrate a social mention tool into your marketing strategy. By doing this, you track all mentions on popular social media platforms without having to do everything manually.

While some businesses choose specific social mention tools, others look for this feature as part of a marketing cloud, social media monitoring tool, or even a social listening tool. Either way, the best bet is to choose a tool that offers advanced features for monitoring mentions on social media.

For example, the very best platforms will set up social listening streams across the platforms of your choice. Whenever somebody mentions the brand on social media, you see it in the dashboard and can even reply in real-time. What’s more, you can engage with the mention without leaving the monitoring app—say goodbye to having several tabs open just to track social media mentions.

Ultimately, the features you enjoy depend on the tool you choose. For example, some allow you to filter search results by sentiment, location, or demographic. You might find that most people who engage with your brand on social media are outside of your expected target market.

Digital Marketing Agency

If all this seems like too much hard work, the final route is to outsource the task to a communications or digital marketing agency. Ask them to monitor social mentions and then report back—they could even implement your chosen strategy and attempt to transform some of these mentions to customers (or repeat customers).

Agencies will often use a combination of a tool and dedicated strategists. And while agencies are often more expensive than a tool, they are often worth it. Tools, while thorough, create a lot of noise for someone on your team to sift through. It often becomes such a never-ending task that it simply doesn't get done (or at least not done well). That means you’re not only wasting money on the tool but you’ll also miss it the day an actual critical mention sneaks in.

With an agency, their monitoring strategists will synthesize the tool's findings, look into platforms tools can’t monitor reliably (like Glassdoor or LinkedIn), and collate it into customized alerts and reports. This ensures your team is only spending time looking at the most crucial mentions paired with expert analysis on what they mean and what to do about them.

Summary

Whichever route you choose, social media monitoring mentions is only the first step. Remember, the best way to push your business forward is to put these mentions to good use. Can you learn something about your audience, employees, products, or brand? Do customers love a particular part of your product but dislike another? If so, you can fix this with a product update. Do prospective leads have many of the same questions? If so, you can fix this with a FAQs page or article.

As well as learning, you should also respond to comments (positive and negative). Respond to positive feedback to thank them for their kindness while responding to negative feedback to resolve their problem (and take the feedback seriously). Never get defensive and stay true to the voice and personality of the brand!

Curious what we’d recommend focusing on for your brand? Reach out to shout@luminodigital.com for a free consultation!