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How to Monitor Social Media in 10 Minutes a Day

Social media provides an excellent opportunity for you to reach out to potential customers, but should you be expected to monitor around the clock?

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.

Sales

According to research from Social Centered Selling and A Sales Guy, 72.6% of salespeople who incorporated social media into their process outperformed their colleagues. In addition, socially savvy reps beat their quotas 23% more often. We call this social selling.

Social selling is the process of researching, connecting, and interacting with prospects and customers on social media networks -- notably Twitter and LinkedIn, but others certainly fit the bill. Through commenting on, liking, and sharing prospects’ and customers’ posts, salespeople create relationships with buyers and boost their credibility by taking an interest in what they’re interested in.

Instead of a hard closing tactic, social selling more closely resembles lead nurturing. Therefore, social selling isn’t for reps seeking quick wins or a silver bullet. Salespeople have to be willing to put in the time and effort to engage with their target buyers on an ongoing basis, and even then, there’s no guarantee that their efforts will pay off.

Your salespeople should create streams that specifically monitor:

  • Their open leads’ conversations, using the integration with contact lists.
  • Their “closed lost” leads’ mentions of certain terms, using the integration with contact lists.
  • Their “closed won” leads to check in with them after the sale, using the integration with contact lists.

Support

As mentioned in the previous chapter, 72% of people who complain on Twitter expect a response within one hour. In the same study, 60% of respondents cited negative consequences to the brand if they didn’t receive timely Twitter responses. Twitter is the new phone for customer support, and these stats prove the importance of a quick response when someone has an issue with your brand. Having a brand’s customer support team on the thread is sure to help settle a tricky complaint -- after all, these folks are professionals in crisis management.

Oftentimes a brand will have designated social media accounts for technical support- related issues or questions. For example, HubSpot’s Twitter account @HubSpot is owned by Marketing, whereas the Twitter account @HubSpotSupport is owned by our support team. Having two separate accounts owned by two separate teams helps to provide customers with the immediate help and attention they deserve. So Support can focus on product-related topics from customers, while Marketing can monitor for interactions from newcomers, leads, and inquiries from customers that are non-support related.

Your support team should create streams that specifically monitor:

  • Questions or concerns people have about your products or services.
  • Conversations your customers and leads are having about your products or services.
  • Positive and negative feedback for your products or services.

Executives

The days where chief executives can hide behind the boardroom doors are gone. There is a growing expectation from consumers and employees alike that the leaders of companies, large and small, should embody the brands they represent -- and demonstrate that commitment by being visible and accessible on social media.

In fact, a new study released by BRANDfog suggests that social CEOs are better leaders who can strengthen brands, build trust in products and services, demonstrate brand values, and communicate accountability -- all by simply being on a social network.

Top social CEOs not only use social media as yet another platform for communication, but also leverage social networks like Twitter as an unfiltered news source. Being able to see and hear the conversation happening in real time is invaluable. Additionally, even though social media may still feel optional for CEOs today, it won’t be optional in a few years. As more millennials enter the workforce and consumer market, the expectation of transparency will only go up -- leaving CEOs to play significant catch-up.

Executives should create streams that specifically monitor:

  • Conversations people are having about you and your executive team.
  • Conversations your customers and leads are having about your products or services vs. competitors’ products or services.
  • The activity of other executives in your industry when they mention certain terms on Twitter.

Listening and responding

When reaching out and responding, you may find the number of mentions overwhelming. You’ve allotted ten minutes a day, which means you can’t respond to everyone, so who do you choose? The trick is to find the influencers -- folks who have the greatest potential reach and audience -- because their engagement is going to make the greatest ripples. You can determine who is an influencer by looking at the number of followers they have, the amount that they tweet, their Klout score (which rates them based on a number of social factors), and whether they’re a lead, customer, or opportunity. You can find this lead and customer information using HubSpot’s Social Inbox.

Sometimes you won’t be able to determine if a person’s an influencer or not, and that’s okay. As you go through and monitor conversations on social media, you’ll notice that some messages require that you simply listen and reflect, while other times you’ll need to respond ... and fast! Responding (or not) to these varied scenarios will depend on who the person is, what they said, and what time they said it. The rule here tends to be simply “use good judgment,” but this rule is not always self explanatory or might require a gut-check from someone else on your team.

When responding, make sure you:

  • Respond promptly and accurately.
  • Show gratitude and respect. Never respond in an offensive or defensive way.
  • Include facts instead of opinions and link to factual reference materials to support
  • your case.
  • Respond in a tone/voice that reflects the company’s culture and values.
  • Let the person know how you’re connected to the company.

Then, to help you decide immediately whether you should listen or respond, use these formulas:

Positive + False = Respond

Positive + True = Listen or Respond

Negative + Troll = Listen

Negative + Not a Troll + Rant/Joke = Listen

Negative + Not a Troll + Not a Rant/Joke + Erroneous Information = Respond

Negative + Not a Troll + Not a Rant/Joke + Not Erroneous Information + Unhappy = Respond

Negative + Not a Troll + Not a Rant/Joke + Not Erroneous Information + Not Unhappy = Listen

Setting your goals

Make sure your goals are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic & Time-bound (SMART).

Now that we’ve gone through why you should monitor, who should do the monitoring, and some basics for listening and responding, it’s time to determine next steps for your efforts. In anything you do, it’s important to set a goal for yourself, and monitoring social media should be no different.

Goals are great -- they help us prove how effective we are, keep us focused, and push us to be better. The thing is, though, goals are totally useless if they’re not grounded in reality. That’s why it’s critical to set SMART goals. (You’ve just learned that SMART is an acronym, but your goals should still, indeed, be “smart.”)

Here’s what we mean by setting a SMART goal:
Specific -- Do set real numbers with real deadlines. Don’t say, “I want more visitors.”

Measurable -- Do make sure that you can track your goal. Don’t hide behind buzzwords like “brand engagement” or “social influence.”

Attainable -- Do work toward a goal that is challenging but possible. Don’t try to take over the world in one night.

Realistic -- Do be honest with yourself, because you know what you and your team are capable of. Don’t forget any hurdles you may have to overcome.

Time-bound -- Do give yourself a deadline. Don’t keep pushing towards a goal you might hit “some day.”

 Now, depending on which department owns your accounts, here are a few goals and metrics you can achieve through monitoring social media:

  • Leads generated
  • Industry trend tracking
  • Thought leadership
  • Interactions from
  • influencers
  • Interactions from detractors
  • Competitive intelligence
  • Revenue
  • Qualified opportunities
  • Opportunities won
  • Daily or weekly touchpoints
  • Brand mentions
  • Sentiment
  • Crisis management
  • Conversations
  • Response rate
  • Resolved issues
  • Customer happiness and delight
  • Product feedback

If you’ve never set a goal for social media monitoring before, start by aligning your monitoring goals with your department’s goals. For example, if you’re monitoring from the Sales department, maybe you should set a goal for yourself to interact with 10 prospects per week on social media. Once you’ve achieved this goal and feel like you can go deeper, attach your goal to a revenue number or see how many deals you can close with social selling per month or per quarter. 

Interested in discussing how to bring all your social platform content planning, scheduling and reporting into one central space? Book a call with a CRM specialist today!

Sophie Frater

Sophie Frater

Sophie is a Senior Business Development Consultant at HubGem. She has experience within the education industry and handling international recruitment within a UK independent school.

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