Three strategies to make your brand monitoring more effective
Tip: Get proactive in asking for online reviews and share them in your email marketing!
If your business has never gone through a PR or social media crisis, you may not be familiar with brand monitoring and its many benefits. But the truth is more significant consumer insights can assist any company, regardless of size.
At its simplest definition, “brand monitoring is the process of tracking different channels to identify where your brand is mentioned.” (source: Sproutsocial.com) When used strategically, brand monitoring can help you refine your audience, make product or service improvements, and retain customers longer.
So how can you monitor your online brand and make sure your online reputation represents your company?
Monitor Social Media Accounts Closely
One of the most public displays of conversation about your business is through what people share on social media via comments and reviews. Closely monitoring your social media accounts for feedback and comments will help you react in real-time to what people are saying about your company, both positive and negative. Try to respond to all feedback and keep an objective mind when responding to anything critical, always offering to use the feedback to improve your products, services, or customer interactions.
If you are not comfortable discussing an issue with a specific customer directly in the public view, simply add a statement like “Thank you for the feedback. Please give (specific name) a call at (your phone number) so that we can help you resolve this situation fairly.”
Setting up a clear strategy is essential for productivity if you have more than one member on your team. Determine how you'll handle each sort of mention and who will be in charge of it. Responses should be very timely, and all team members with social media access should assume that comments and direct messages will become public. It’s best to err on the side of being overly formal and avoid any slang, disrespectful responses, or arguments.
Use a brand tracking tool
Monitoring your brand on social media can help you get an idea of what your reputation is now. Still, there are several other online sources likely to generate brand mentions, as well. For example, review sites like Yelp, Amazon, Trip Advisor, business blogs, and industry forums are all places where people will likely talk about your brand.
Consider using a brand tracking tool to help you identify your brand’s mentions, reducing the time spent on monitoring. Identifying negative comments or posts about your brand quickly and responding professionally will help alleviate any negative fallout of the mention.
Identifying negative comments or posts about your brand could mean you need to address this internally and work towards boosting your online reputation. There are also firms like Reputation Defender who can advise you on the best way to repair online damage, if necessary.
Be proactive in asking for positive reviews
When was the last time you left someone a glowing review because you were so satisfied with their product or service? Unfortunately, most reviews tend to come from those displeased with an experience which means your target audience never hears from many happy customers.
Be proactive in asking your customers or clients for a positive review and make it easy for them to give feedback by providing a direct link to your Facebook review page, your Google review section, or your website’s comment section.
If you regularly use email marketing, you can include a request for feedback in every two or three messages and feature some great ones! When you counteract the negative review by asking for feedback instantly and finding out how well you performed from genuine customers at the time of sale or service, your positive online brand mentions will far outweigh the negative ones.
Brand monitoring can be a time-intensive task, so be sure to set goals before starting the monitoring process. For example, do you want to improve customer support? Benchmark against competitors? Find new leads? Your goals will determine how you seek out the data, and having measurable results every quarter will help you determine your return on investment.
Do you regularly engage in brand monitoring? What tools or strategies work for you? I’d love to hear your ideas in the comments.
Until next time,
Andrea