The Importance of Social Media Monitoring: Social Media Management
As part of a new series of posts, we're going to discuss the importance of Social Media Monitoring for specific industries. First up: Social Media Management.
Social media management has been a thriving industry for many years now and by using social media management services, businesses can experience significant growth in brand recognition, lead generation and customer satisfaction. However, for many Social Media companies, the main performance metric is often follower growth. Due to the explosion in popularity of 'bots' on social networks, proving added value through follower growth is questionable - for example, we at TweetSpout are frequently offered 1k followers for just $10! Rapidly gaining an extra 50k followers might sound tempting, but will any of them convert into real customers? Nope. Does it look spammy? Definitely.
A more valuable and interesting statistic to measure social media management performance is the growth of discussion about your brand or products. For example, if after a month of using a social media manager you have seen strong growth in positive discussion of your brand, then it's a good indicator that they're doing a sound job. After all, if more people are talking about your product, then ultimately more people will be intrigued and join the discussion as well as having a positive mindset when they first interact with your brand or product.
TweetSpout allows you to monitor discussions about your brand or product through keyphrase filters, and provides graphical analytics that allow you to easily measure the level of activity regarding your brand on Twitter. This kind of Social Media Monitoring is essential for either companies who are using a Social Media Manager and want to check their progress, or for Social Media Managers who want to proactively prove their impact in a more tangible way to their customers.
By falling into the trap of "follower chasing", you will lose out on the true business benefit social media can produce. For true insights into your social media performance, look for more meaningful metrics such as the level of discussion around your brand, and the underlying sentiment of that discussion.
Our policy of fortnightly service updates is an important one to us; it keeps things fresh and let’s us provide unrivalled value to our customers. The latest feature we’re going to be introducing is Sentiment Analysis, and it’s something we’d like to get your opinion on!
We thought about building our own sentiment analysis API (not least of all because it would be pretty fun and interesting) but we took a look at the current players in the machine learning and text analysis market and they look like they know what they’re doing! We’ve shortlisted 3 companies, and it seems like a great idea to put the question out to our readers: out of MonkeyLearn, Indico Data and Metamind, do you have any experience using them, and what are your thoughts?
We thought it’d be useful to create a step by step guide on how to get started on TweetSpout - so here it is!
Step 1 - Signup
To get the ball rolling head over to the TweetSpout signup page and create an account - all you need is your first name, a password.
Step 2 - Subscribe
To start streaming, you first need to choose a subscription then click the Subscribe button and enter your card details.
You’ll get 7 days free to try us out and you are free to cancel whenever you want, no long term contracts!
Step 3 - Create a Twitter App
Go to Twitter Apps (login if required) and hit the ‘Create New App’ button.
Note: You must have linked a mobile phone with your Twitter Account in order to create a Twitter App. This can be done from the mobile page of your Twitter Account Settings.
Enter the details Twitter is asking for and hit the ‘Create your Twitter Application’ button
Step 4 - Enter Your Consumer/Access Token Keys and Secrets on the TweetSpout Account page
Now your app is created, you should be on the page for your Twitter app (or you can access it by going to https://apps.twitter.com and selecting the newly created app). Click on the Keys and Access Tokens tab.
Scroll to the bottom of this page and hit the ‘Create my access token’ button to generate an access token and token secret. Now all you have to do is copy the Consumer Key, Consumer Secret, Access Token and Access Token Secret over to the TweetSpout Account page and hit the ‘Save’ button.
If you’ve done everything right, you’ll see a green success message.
Step 5 - Setup Your Stream and Let the Tweets Roll In
Head over to the Stream page on TweetSpout and click on Setup or click here. Enter a few search terms which are relevant to your business (for best practice on choosing search terms, read this article), select any language or country filters and save them.
Now all you have to do is click on the word Stream at the top or visit here and wait for the Tweets to arrive.
Simple!
Remember, it can take up to 10 minutes for our system to configure your account. Don't be alarmed if you don't see any Tweets immediately - it's a real time stream so you'll have to wait till someone mentions one of your keywords. If you want to test, try doing a Tweet from your Twitter account with one of your keywords in it!
If you have any issues or problems, just reach out to us on Twitter (@tweet_spout) or email us at [email protected].
The Do’s and Don’ts of Social Media Automation - Part 1
Twitter has become plagued by automated bots reproducing the content of others and passing it off as their own, much to frustration of it’s users. Social media automation can have a very adverse effect on your company image if used incorrectly, however there are times when it can be valuable without alienating potential customers. Here are a few Do’s and Don’ts of social media automation.
Do: Build Lists of Potential Leads
Data regarding who is Tweeting about your product can be invaluable for lead generation and improving conversion rates.
Social monitoring tools provide invaluable data in many forms, but not all companies realise the full value that these tools offer. Identifying Tweets which are about your brand or product is good, but even better is getting to know the person behind the Tweet. Use features such as the custom webhooks offered by TweetSpout to mine Tweet data and build a list of potential customers that have expressed an interest in your product or service. Data regarding who is Tweeting about your product can be invaluable for lead generation and improving conversion rates.
Don’t: Automate Your Customer Service
Take a look at some of the Twitter accounts of the worlds biggest companies. Those that are truly interacting with their customers, and even having a little fun, are reaping the rewards.
Bots, however sophisticated, are not an effective substitute for real life customer interaction. Automating responses to complaints via social media is never a good idea. A common strategy these days is to provide a stock response asking the customer to email you with their complaint, but that doesn’t satisfy the customer, and the same response is out there over and over again for the world to see. A little human interaction, though more costly, will make a customer feel more valued and potentially re-engage them with your product.
Need proof? Simply take a look at some of the Twitter accounts of the worlds biggest companies. Those that are truly interacting with their customers, and even having a little fun, are reaping the rewards. For just having a sense of humour, the likes of Tesco, Virgin Trains, Domino’s and Oreo are making headlines in a positive way, and enjoying the increased following and exposure that goes with it.
Do: Make an Introduction to Customers
Your introductory message should promote conversation and open a new dialogue with the customer.
There are many tools which allow you to message new followers as soon as they start following you. Getting this message right can be difficult, as many Tweeters are becoming ‘numb’ to them. However, there can still be some value in acknowledging a new follower.
Your introductory message should promote conversation and open a new dialogue with the customer. Or at the very least engage the customer in such a way as to make them feel valued, such as giving them a special offer e.g. a 10% off discount code.
Don’t: Spam Followers with Generic Direct Messages
Automated tweets or direct messages should aim to build a rapport with readers, and subsequent communication should by a human!
Whilst the above “Do” advocates carefully crafted auto-messages to new followers, getting the content of this message right is an art. Does an automated direct message saying “Thanks for following, please check out our website..” add much value? In our experience, the answer is no because it doesn’t provide a strong enough incentive for your customer to really care about your message. Automated tweets or direct messages should aim to build a rapport with readers, and subsequent communication should by a human!
This is the first in part in a series of posts on best practices when using social media automation. Keep an eye out for our next article and let us know your thoughts!
5 Reasons Why Social Listening is Important for your Business
Social listening, or social media monitoring as it's also known, is becoming an increasingly important part of many company's social media strategies. In the time it's taken to read this article, dozens of potential customers or industry influencers will have Tweeted about something relevant to your business. Without tools to assist with social listening, it becomes very difficult to collate and act on this data in a meaningful way. The goal of this article is to give a few reasons why your business needs to make use of social media monitoring tools.
1. Lead Generation
By tracking a variety of search terms such as your product name or keyphrases relating to your company purpose, you can identify potential customers who require your product or service. Once you’ve identified them as a relevant lead, you can then reach out to them directly with offers to convert the opportunity.
2. Competitor Analysis
Keeping one eye on your market is essential, as is knowing your competitors. By monitoring the social activity of your competitors and industry, you can gain insights into the ways other industry players are achieving success and also to ensure that you keep pace with them. This sort of data can be invaluable to making certain your brand remains competitive.
3. Brand Awareness
If someone has a gripe with a company or a bad experience, they won’t always reach out on Twitter to the company directly, but they’re pretty likely to have a moan to their friends. The Tweets which are directed at your Twitter handle form only a portion of the total number of Tweets out there that will be about you. Twitter wouldn’t notify Coca Cola, for example, if someone Tweeted “love the tune on the new Coke Zero advert”. Social listening tools allow you to also capture any mentions of your brand, both positive and negative.
4. Marketing Analytics
If you’re running a marketing campaign, you can use social media monitoring to keep an eye out for an increased number of mentions of your brand, your product/service or even the marketing campaign itself. This can be a useful metric for understanding the impact your marketing campaign is having and if it is getting the right people talking about your brand in the right way.
5. Customer Interaction
Twitter veterans who’ve built up legitimate followings (and not just a bunch of Twitter bots) all say the same thing - interacting with people is essential for building a following. After all, it’s a social network. By using social media monitoring tools to get notified of discussions around your brand or your industry, you can generate new opportunities for fostering brand loyalty through customer interaction. People love to talk!
This is just a flavour of why social listening should form an important part of your social media strategy; there are a whole host of other ways in which it can help your business which I’ll discuss in future posts.
We here at TweetSpout want to make the service the best it can possibly be, and to do that we need your help.
Every 2 weeks we’ll be releasing a new feature onto the site; keeping things fresh is quite a good idea we think! In order to do this, we need to know what you want to see most and what sort of features will make TweetSpout the best possible value for money we can make it.
Analytics is right up there on our list so don’t worry about that, we’ve got it covered. We’ll be releasing it for Beta very soon!
If you have any suggestions, get in touch with us on Twitter @tweet_spout
7 Ways to Generate More Leads through Social Monitoring with TweetSpout
It's tempting to simply put in a couple of keywords relating to your product, especially when trying out TweetSpout for the first time, and you'll probably get a very high number of tweets appearing in your stream which might be useful. However, the percentage of these Tweets which are quality, actionable leads won't be as high unless you put yourself in the mind of your customer, and think about what they are thinking.
So with that in mind, here are some simple tips for making sure you nail it when it comes to picking your keywords:
Simple - always include a search term for your product brand name.
Avoid using generic keywords as search terms - use keyphrases instead. For example, if you sell Dyson hoovers, don't use "hoover", you'll get too many hits!
Don't be miserly when it comes to search terms. TweetSpout gives you a number of allowed search terms for a reason so make sure you use them all.
Think like your customer would when Tweeting. Twitter is a Social platform, and people don't tend to speak in fully punctuated and grammatically correct sentences, so make sure you include variations of your search terms which take into account slang and punctuation ommissions.
Focus on the problem you or your product solves. For example, if you sell Macbook chargers, include variations around the situations customers might need your product - "need a Mac charger", "broke my Macbook charger", "mac charger broken".
Empathize with customers and think of how your product helps them. For example, for a fitness supplements retailer, keyphrases like "want to get in shape" will provide you with high quality leads that also present an opportunity for an easy opening line to start the conversation
Improve conversion through personalisation. Automated replies are great in some situations, but your conversion rate will be much higher if you take the time to really interact with your customers. So for the potential customer looking to get in shape in tip 6, try offering them a personalised discount when you reach out to them.
These are just a few top tips for improving lead generation when using TweetSpout as your Social Monitoring tool.
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