How to Monitor Social Media in 10 Minutes a Day

Use your time more wisely! Start smart social monitoring immediately.

Approximately 46% of online users count on social media when making a purchase decision (Source: Nielsen), and 72% of people who complain on Twitter expect a response within an hour (Source: HubSpot). 

Social media provides an excellent opportunity for you to reach out to potential customers, but should you be expected to monitor around the clock? Which networks should you pay attention to? Where do you even start?

In this blog, How to Monitor Social Media in 10 Minutes a Day, we'll answer these questions and teach you how to streamline your social media monitoring process. Work smarter, not harder, and save more time. It's so easy to start. You could begin today! 

You'll learn: 

• What you should be monitoring on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ & Quora 
• What tools will help you consolidate your social media information 

• How other marketers are spending time on social media 
• Why monitoring matters 
  

Why social monitoring matters

 Sometimes we forget that all those little profile avatars whizzing through our social media news feeds are actually humans. We forget that social media is meant to be
just that -- social. The reason why monitoring is so important is because it puts the social back in social media. Brands and individuals who publish without listening are just screaming through a megaphone with no consideration for others. You have to be sensitive to what people actually want from you or your brand, or else you might head in a direction your target audience actually doesn’t enjoy or can’t relate to.

For example, monitoring is a great outlet for crowdsourcing questions. When you listen into your prospects’ or customers’ thoughts, you’ll be able to craft better marketing campaigns, close more deals, improve your products or services, and foster happier customers. Monitoring is also a great way to avoid disaster. If a local, national, or worldwide tragedy occurs, you’ll want to be the first to know so you can pause all marketing messages and offer up actual human emotions. Your fan base will usually point something out before you even have time to realise it, and your level of empathy and response time will either confirm or renounce a person’s feelings about your brand.

As it turns out, people also have some pretty high standards when it comes to response time. Especially when they’ve got a bone to pick with your brand. According to charts published on Search Engine Watch, 70% of surveyed Twitter users expect a response from brands they reach out to on Twitter, and of those users, 53% want that response in under an hour. In fact, the percentage of people who expect a response within the hour increases to 72% when they’re issuing a complaint.

Social media can’t be ignored. People are talking about your brand, your products or services, your competitors, your industry, and your employees -- whether you like it
or not. These conversations happen candidly in real life, which turns into threads and discussion groups on social media. Instead of ignoring these conversations, wouldn’t you want to jump in and have a say in where that conversation goes? If someone complains about your brand, wouldn’t you want to know why so you can improve in
the future?

The bottom line is that monitoring matters, and it matters for more than
just social media managers. In the next section we’ll jump into who exactly should be monitoring social media within your company, what they should be monitoring, and why.

Who should monitor social channels?

Marketing

There’s a reason why marketing teams have historically owned a brand’s social media accounts. This team needs to think about a brand’s overall image. The brand’s tone, colours, fonts, and relationships might be pre-determined with the help of PR professionals, designers, and writers on your marketing team. Beyond brand image, Marketing needs to think about generating visits, leads, and customers on a daily basis. Growing the top of the funnel and bringing in a new audience on social media month over month helps to hit key numbers throughout the entire funnel.

However, social media doesn’t just belong to Marketing anymore. Actions that a social media manager take can seriously impact all other departments such as Sales and Support, and it’s something to keep in mind when monitoring. Marketers should collect information from social media to help create better marketing campaigns, enable sales in closing more deals, and delight customers. Social media managers on a marketing team should see themselves as the point-person for multiple departments’ different goals.

Your marketing team should create streams that specifically monitor:

• The activity of your different leads based on what product or service they are interested in.
• The activity of thought leaders in your industry when they mention certain terms on Twitter.
• The conversation around the words and phrases that are core to your brand.