Social media is providing billions of people the platform to share their thoughts and feelings associated with a brand they have experienced. This is why ?Social Monitoring? has become extremely valuable to any brand as they listen to the customers? voicing out their opinions, making it an important means to understand and influence their brand reputation, visibility and loyalty. How a brand listens and responds to these social posts and discussions, what they make of it and to what effect they can utilize it to better their product / service and marketing strategy determines the brand?s success in today?s digital world. Social media monitoring helps gain insight into a company's customers, competitors as well as influencers.

Identifying trends and capturing leads- Social media monitoring or listening helps find potential customers by tracking discussions on related products and participating or providing solutions. Once identified, listening to their conversation can help transform your product to meet their expectations.

Analysing the competition- Awareness of what is going on in the industry, especially with the competitors is pivotal to positioning a company and its products. Tracking competitor 's social media pages and various metrics gives an insight to not only how the product is performing against the competition, but also helps garner target customers through dissatisfied customers. In addition, following the competitor will also keep the company informed about the marketing efforts in place or those to be taken.

Boosting brand loyalty- Social monitoring can identify feedback ? both positive and negative about a product. Potential negative conversation can be diluted by using this to take a stance and promote the product in positive light. Responding to dissatisfied customers, appreciation for positive comments and improving customer care relations boost reputation of the brand, thereby affecting the consumer 's decision.

Identifying influencers ? Customer 's decision process is definitely influenced by online reviews or brand presence. In addition, social media monitoring is becoming a viable source to identify influencers to promote the brand. Engaging influencers as a part of your marketing strategy will show better results on your social influence efforts.

Measuring campaigns- Measuring the performance of the marketing campaign helps identify both the trending topic as well as concern areas. In-depth analysis of the social media activities and monitoring the trends can prove beneficial to strategize future campaigns. Trend analysis give an insight into data over a periodic range, thereby helping companies to extrapolate the data to the future trend.

Dr. D

avid L. Perry, PhDW

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5 ways t o m ake use of social m onit or ing for your business