Social Media Monitoring on Twitter

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If you’ve ever worked with a social media channel, you know what it takes to participate in the multitude of conversations that happen on a daily basis, on top of all the notifications and brand mentions that you have to respond to. Not to mention creating new, useful content for your audience. It’s a lot of work for anyone. So how do you go about this job in the most effective way? We asked Justyna Dzikowska, the head of marketing at Brand24. Here’s a summary of our chat.

Guest: Justyna Dzikowska
Topic: Social media monitoring on Twitter
Format: Eight questions directed at the guest. Everyone’s welcome to share.

Q1: What is social media monitoring?

Social media monitoring is about keeping up with what people are saying about your brand, product or service, industry, and competition across different social media channels. It’s also about listening to and acknowledging any other insights your community might be sharing with each other.

Q2: What’s the difference between social listening and social media monitoring?

Many of us use these two phrases interchangeably. However, there is a technical difference. Listening is about being attentive and keeping your eyes (and ears) on what people are saying about you. To do this, you don’t necessarily need a specialized tool. On the other hand, social media monitoring refers to using a social media tool that automatically tracks conversations and mentions you want to keep up with, helping you prioritize your interactions and build relationships.

Our friends from Social Media Pulse explained it well, too. When you’re listening on social, you’re likely looking for specific keywords and phrases, such as your brand’s name, industry, the product or service you offer, and the problems your product/service ads resolve. When you’re monitoring, you’ll be looking at the broader conversation and emotions around those specific topics.

Q3: Why is Twitter an ideal platform for social media monitoring?

Twitter is good for monitoring because it has fewer privacy complications compared to its counterparts. For example, there’s less sensitive information stored and shared on Twitter than on Facebook or Instagram.

Twitter also has some great in-built features that can help with your social media monitoring, as Madalyn pointed out. Advanced Search is an underrated tool that you can use to search for any tweet ever posted, based on date, hashtags, words, user account, and so much more. Similarly, Twitter Lists is also a handy feature that can help categorize accounts you want to keep an eye on. Both of these features can work in tandem with any social media monitoring tool you choose to use.

Q4: How can social media monitoring help you improve your Twitter presence?

Monitoring can help you find the right conversations to engage in at the right time. This is even more crucial if you cater to a global audience.

Among other things, a social media monitoring tool can help you find the most influential people and give you insights about who you can engage with. It can also offer valuable information about topics you should cover, best times to post, creating content that gets the most reach, and ideal hashtags for your brand—all of which will help you engage with your audience more and react to mentions quickly.

Q5: Why should you invest in social media monitoring tools?

As your business grows and you start to reach a wider audience, consider investing in a social media monitoring tool. It’ll automate most of your social tracking activities, making it easy to run a global brand. It’ll also give you more data and extensive analyses of your account’s performance than if you were to listen on social manually.

Justyna also told us about Brand24, the company she works with. It’s a social media monitoring tool that gives you automated reports and updates.

Christine pointed out the efficiency of using an automated monitoring tool. Especially in an era where algorithms dominate most social media activity, it would be far more worthwhile to have automated motoring than manual.

Q6: Share some best practices for monitoring hashtags on Twitter.

Our guest shared a blog post that outlines how you can keep up with and find great hashtags on Twitter. Check it out here.

A good way to keep up with hashtags is to set alerts for hashtags you’re keen on, as Nancy suggested.

As Madalyn and Mark said, you can also use TweetDeck to create columns for every hashtag you want to watch.

Q7: What are some do’s and don’ts when monitoring competition?

Don’t just stop monitoring your competition. Actively look at ways you can use your observations to improve your own offering.

Social media monitoring is not just for marketers. Share your competition insights with your sales, support, and product development representatives. This will help them build and deliver a great product that customers will love.

When you’re watching your competition for an extended period of time, it can be tempting to do whatever they’re up to. However, it’s a big no-no. Instead, be creative and try new campaigns.

Q8: Name your favorite social media monitoring tools.

Our guest, of course, vouched for Brand24. She also shared a blog that illustrates 11 of the best social media monitoring tools. Check it out.

Jim‘s favorites are TweetDeck, Agorapulse, and Metricool.

Other great tools our community recommended include, Buffer, Hootsuite, Sprout Social, Meltwater, and Brandwatch, among others.

Well folks, that’s all from me this week. Thanks for reading through and for more great insights from our chat with Justyna have a look at this Twitter Moment that Joana put together for us. If you like this summary, you’ll love the real-time chat. Join us next Thursday at 1 pm ET for #TwitterSmarter. We also have an after-chat on Twitter Spaces at 5 pm ET. See you there!


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About me, Narmadhaa:

I write all the things—marketing stuff to pay the bills; haiku and short stories so I feel wholesome. A social media enthusiast, I hang out with the #TwitterSmarter chat crew, and am always happy to take on writing gigs.

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