Warren Knight — March 23, 2018 — March 23, 2018
Did you know that 88% of the online population will take time out of their day to read reviews about a business online?
As a business owner, it is so important that you are monitoring your online reputation, and understanding what is being said about your business both in a positive, and negative light.
Have you heard of the phrase “social listening”? This is all about monitoring all social channels for mentions about a specific phrase, business, or product.
Listening to everything being said about your brand online may seem overwhelming. I am going to share with you “why” this is so important, tools that you can use, and top tips on “how” to achieve the best results.
Why You Should Monitor Your Online Reputation
Did you know that more than 86% of the review-readers online will actually make a purchasing decision based on online reviews?
What is being said about your business online will contribute to what a potential customer may read. 88% of people do take online reviews seriously and believe them to be as powerful as a personal recommendation.
Without social listening, you will be creating an online marketing strategy without understanding what you audience are saying, and what problems your potential customers are facing when buying from a competitor of yours.
Here are three amazing tools that can help you monitor your business online.
#1: Hootsuite
Hootsuite has been my favourite Social Media scheduling tool for a number of years, but they also have a great social listening platform.
Being able to not only schedule content to help me save time, but also monitor what is being said online, is so powerful.
As you can see above, I use Hootsuite to monitor my name, mentions, likes and my tweets. I also have various other streams set up around keywords for my business.
#2: BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is a UK-based tool that analyses what content performs best for any specific topic, or key competitor. You can use this tool to find the content that has been shared the most as well as what is currently trending in real-time, learn who the top influencers are for that subject, and monitor engagement inside Social Media.
BuzzSumo is being used by the likes of IBM, Expedia, BuzzFeed, Vimeo and TED, to name a few.
BuzzSumo will show you how each piece of content performed based on your requirements. I wanted to see what received the most LinkedIn shares over the last six months. This now helps me understand what my LinkedIn audience want to see from me to get the most engagement.
#3: Google Alerts
The third tool I want to talk about is Google Alerts.
There are some tools (like BuzzSumo and Hootsuite) that I have to check daily, and monitor on a regular basis which does take time. With Google Alerts, I just set up keywords that I want to monitor, and alerts for them get emailed to me.
Whilst it does take time for the emails to come through, this is one of the easiest monitoring tools to use, and one which I suggest everyone spend five minutes setting up.
Top Tips For Social Listening
#1: Monitor More Than One Phrase
Think about all of the different things you need to monitor. Consider monitoring your name, brand name, product names, competitors brand name, industry keywords, hashtags you use and hashtags that are popular in your industry.
#2: Engage With People Talking About Your Business
The people that are talking about your business may become customers of yours, if you engage with them, and nurture them. Reach out to them on the social network they are talking about your business on and have a two-way conversation.
#3: Create Great Content
With the data you analyse, you will be able to see what your audience wants from you, what is trending and the pain points your target audience are looking for a solution for. Use this to create great content that connects with your target audience.
Are you monitoring what people are saying about your business?
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