February 17, 2015 Sofie De Beule
Social media can easily distract you from the things that matter. Due to the large volume of incoming messages, brands fail to take the right actions when it comes to handling online complaints. Beyond tracking information about brands, how can they make sure they’re really tracking the right data?
With social media messages lining up every minute, maybe even every second during peak hours, it’s extremely important to capture the relevant messages and filter through the noise. Moreover, with such a tremendous scope of brands names and variations to them (imagine your brand name is similar to the iconic Apple brand name), social media can become a daunting landscape making it easy to lose track of your own brand or the conversations that matter to you.
What are my customers struggling with and talking about online? Who is complaining about what? When are people talking about me? A large amount of companies simply don’t know the answer to these questions. Why? Although they have access to that pool of information about their customers, it’s difficult to structure it, let alone interpret this mass of data correctly.
Most important roadblocks for brands when it comes to tracking the right data:
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Failing to take the right actions due to the large volume of incoming social media mentions.
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Not pulling the right data and getting distracted by the incoming social media ‘noise’.
Making sure you monitor the right data about your brand starts with setting up a keyword search. What if your brand is also a very popular sports person? Perhaps your brand is a surname or a generic word?
Here are 3 key steps to go through to make sure your brand is tracking the right data:
1. Overcome Topic Complexity
Each keyword you want to monitor on has a complexity score. If your keyword query is too complex, you will have to reduce the amount of keywords. Overcoming topic complexity isn’t an exact science. However, there are a few recommendations to tackle this issue, like learning how to implement these steps. Remember this: your brand has no ambitions to become the NSA, so you don’t need to monitor everything. Get organized, and start tracking more concrete keywords.
2. Eliminate Spam & Volume Overload
Once you’ve set up a keyword search, you can start looking at the mentions you’re pulling. Dive into the complexity of your mentions and understand how people talk about your brand. If you want to get a better grip on how people write a multitude of brand names, just google it! Start eliminating spam right from the start and take a look at the volume you’re pulling to either make the keyword search wider or narrow it down.
3. Spot Underused Keywords/Clear Out Data
Spotting underused keywords is a continuous learning process that requires non-stop improvements. It’s all about testing, specifying, filtering, and getting rid of keywords. For example, once campaigns are over, it’s important to get rid of keywords (e.g. specific hashtags) in your keyword search which will require you to do some manual labor.
In general it’s important to look at a keyword search like this:
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Keep an eye on the results you’re tracking
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Determine whether these are the right results
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Assess if you need any further improvements or fine-tuning
Want to learn more on how your brand can track the right data in order to take proper actions on social media and become a leader in real-time engagement? Read all about it here.