Social media monitoring might sound like a bit of a covert operation (and in some ways it is) but it's also essential for keeping note of the public perception of your brand.

There's also much more to social media monitoring than simply knowing what your brand is posting on each platform and reading the comments.

These days, so many conversations take place in public online channels.

By that, we mean they often happen in the comments of public social media accounts – sometimes managed by a brand, other times by an influencer or individual.

Having real-time access to these conversations means that interactions can be monitored by organizations as needed, and the results used to make better business decisions in the future.

So, what does good social media monitoring entail?

Most importantly, social media monitoring allows you to track and analyze online conversations and activities across various social media channels – even when a lot of conversations are taking place at once.

This means you can gauge public opinion on a specific topic, identify trends, and track the overall success of your social networking strategies.

It will also give you a good idea of your brand's online reputation, as you can use it to identify both positive and negative feedback from your audience.

Setting the groundwork for social media monitoring

Companies who invest in social media monitoring find that it's a great way to stay on top of their brand's digital presence and can uncover some secrets as to what the competition is doing – and how to stay ahead.

In short, social media monitoring can help your brand to stay relevant and visible in a crowded marketplace. If you analyze the results, it can also guide your decisions and strategy for the future.

In this guide, we'll look at some tools that will speed up the process and transform your approach to social media monitoring.

We'll also share some tips and pointers for getting the most out of those tools, and we'll discuss how you can analyze – and act upon – the useful data that will soon be in your hands.

In this article, we cover:

Understanding social media monitoring

Whether you're a newbie to the world of social media monitoring, or you simply need a refresher lesson to make sure you're not forgetting anything important, we've got you covered.

Let's dive into what the term social media monitoring means in practice, before looking at why it should be an important task on your to-do list.

Definition and scope

Social media monitoring, also known as social listening, is about tracking and analyzing conversations, brand mentions, and trends on various social media platforms.

Indulging in a spot of social media monitoring will allow you to stay informed about what people are saying about your brand, industry, and competitors.

While the term 'social media' is right there in the name, thorough brand monitoring should actually look at more than just social channels. Consider forums, review sites and any other online space where users interact and share information. Leave no stone unturned!

There's a well-known process to successful social media monitoring.

It starts with gathering data – at this stage you'll be actively tracking, listening, and collecting information from various social media channels (and some other sources).

Once the data is collected, you'll need to categorize, filter, and measure it for specific insights. We call this step analyzing.

Finally, you can take action – when patterns and trends emerge from your analysis, you should use that information to improve your brand's presence, reputation, and overall strategy.

Importance for businesses

Social media monitoring plays a pivotal role in businesses' online success for several reasons.

First up, it's a key part of reputation management.

If you know what customers are saying about your brand, you can swiftly address negative comments and shine a light on positive feedback to bolster your brand's image.

Secondly, it's really important for customer engagement. Keeping a close eye on social media activity will tee you up to engage directly with customers, addressing their concerns, and building relationships.

You can also use social media monitoring to keep an eye on competitors' social media activities. Study their strengths, weaknesses, and strategies, and you can use these insights to your advantage.

Social media monitoring can also transform product development – as you'll have access to customers' opinions and suggestions that could lead to improvements in your products or services.

Lastly, it's a great way to keep on top of industry trends, so you can adjust your tactics accordingly.

Tools and platforms

It's fair to say that social media monitoring can be quite a big job – especially if you're managing multiple clients at a social media agency or working for a leading brand.

Thankfully, there are some social media monitoring tools that can automate the process, doing the bulk of the work in the background while you tick off other tasks.

Let's take a closer look at some of the most popular social listening tools on offer, and how to choose the right one for your needs.

Comparing social media monitoring tools

As you weigh up social media monitoring tools, you should consider things like features, ease of use, and cost.

Some popular options include Brandwatch, Hootsuite, and Mention.

Let's compare these tools briefly:

Brandwatch offers advanced analytics and customizable dashboards, so it's a powerful option. Just remember that it offers lots of different features, so someone new to social media monitoring might take some time to get up to speed.

Hootsuite is another popular option. It integrates with many platforms, and it's affordable. But watch out for some limited advanced search capabilities.

Mention has extensive platform coverage and real-time monitoring. Both great features! However, it does come at a higher subscription cost.

You'll probably have some specific requirements, such as the level of detail needed in analytics.

Consider these – as well as your budget – before making a decision.

Integrating monitoring tools with management platforms

Some social media monitoring tools, like Brandwatch, are all-in-one solutions which offer social media management options as well as social listening.

If your social media monitoring tool is separate, you can make life a little easier by integrating it with your social media management platform.

This will not only streamline your workflow, but also allow you to make the most of the data provided by the monitoring tool.

Integration is great because it will provide you with access to a unified dashboard. Who doesn't love to see all their social media accounts and insights in once place?

Similarly, this makes for streamlined communications too, as customer inquiries and comments can be managed quickly and efficiently.

Integrating your social media monitoring tool with your social media management tool can also give you access to some advanced analytics, as you'll have additional insights to work with.

Setting up your monitoring

Once you've selected a social media monitoring tool that meets all of your needs, it's time to set it up to deliver on your social listening targets. We can help with that.

In this section, we'll take a look at the platforms you'll be monitoring, and the metrics you may want to track.

Identifying key social media platforms

It might sound obvious, but you want to make sure that your social monitoring tool is doing its crawl across the right sites.

For example, it's no use putting all of your social monitoring efforts into Facebook and X (formally Twitter), if most conversations about your brand are happening on Instagram.

While you will probably choose to track as many major social media platforms as possible, it might also be a good idea to conduct some social listening across new or emerging platforms if they are particularly relevant to your target audience.

Establishing key metrics and relevant keywords

There are two main goals of social monitoring.

The first is to track down social media conversations relevant to your brand.

The second is to gather data that reveals how your social media presence is performing.

To meet both of these goals, you'll want to track some key metrics and keywords as part of your social monitoring.

Those metrics might include things like reach, engagement, conversions, social mentions, and sentiment.

Once you have your metrics in place, it's time to identify relevant keywords related to your brand name, products, services, and competitors. This will enable you to easily track conversations and stay informed about industry trends.

To help streamline your social monitoring process, you'll probably need a tool like Brandwatch, Hootsuite, Sprout Social, or Mention. We compared three of these in the section above. They allow you to track your preferred metrics and keywords across various social media platforms.

Strategies for effective monitoring

You can maximize your social media monitoring efforts by tuning into your social media strategy and focusing on increasing engagement.

Here are two tried-and-tested ideas for getting the most out of those social media monitoring tools.

1. Creating a comprehensive social media strategy

In order to effectively monitor your brand and its performance on social media, you need to establish a comprehensive social media strategy.

This means setting clear goals and determining key performance indicators (KPIs) to see how you measure up.

Common KPIs include things like brand mentions, customer engagement, and sentiment analysis.

Once you have some goals and KPIs in mind, you can use social media tracking to analyze, respond to, and track these metrics regularly.

>> Download this guide to building a social media strategy today.

2. Using social media listening to boost engagement

Social media listening is the process of tracking mentions, conversations, and trends that are relevant to your brand on various social platforms.

This not only informs your content strategy, but also helps you identify opportunities for engaging with your audience.

Good social media listening begins with researching the keywords, phrases and hashtags that are relevant to your brand and industry. You need to track these to find relevant conversations.

Once you have a direct line to brand mentions, you can make sure that you respond to them quickly. This will foster a strong connection with your audience and demonstrate that you value their input.

>> Discover more with the Brandwatch Complete Social Media Listening Guide.

Analyzing social media data

So, you've set up your social media monitoring tool, and the data is rolling in – but you don't yet know what it all means.

Let's take a closer look at the kind of information that's delivered by social media listening tools, and how you can use it to make some clever business decisions in the future.

Sentiment analysis and customer sentiment

Unpicking social media data sometimes often means using powerful tools and techniques to make sense of vast amounts of information.

This is true when it comes to sentiment analysis.

Sentiment analysis examines the emotions, opinions, and attitudes expressed in social media content.

The purpose of sentiment analysis is to help you understand your audience's feelings about your brand, products, or services.

Digging into customer sentiment can tell you whether your customers' views are positive, negative, or neutral. Any social listening tool will help with this.

This information is really useful as it can help to shape business decisions, improve customer satisfaction, and increase brand loyalty.

You can use it to identify trends and patterns within customer feedback, or spot changes in sentiment over time.

Gathering actionable insights

Social media monitoring can also lead you to data that could transform your business strategy.

For example, there could be some hidden trends that you've yet to spot.

Consider visual insights, like identifying popular color schemes associated with your brand in your social media posts. Perhaps these could be used to optimize your marketing materials.

Look out for contextual insights, too. If you look closely at the context in which your brand is discussed, it might lead you to better understand the factors influencing customer sentiment.

For instance, are certain demographic groups more likely to mention your brand? Do specific events or promotions drive changes in customer sentiment?

Optimizing social media performance

Social media monitoring can also help with taking your social media campaigns (and your marketing campaigns) to the next level.

If you know the things people like to see from your brand, you can do more of it.

Not only that, but it can also be a game-changer when it comes to improving customer relationship management, too.

Without further ado, let's dive into these two important aspects of social media monitoring.

Tracking campaigns and analyzing impact

To take your social media performance to the next level, you should take a closer look at the posts relating specifically to your marketing campaigns.

Even built-in analytics tools can help with this – look no further than Facebook Insights, X Analytics, and Instagram Insights.

These tools help you track key performance indicators (KPIs) such as engagement, reach, and conversion rates.

Comparing these metrics according to each campaign will help you to identify your best-performing campaigns and take ideas from that to boost future campaigns.

Improving customer relationship management

Social media monitoring can also be a great way to boost customer relationship management (CRM).

Why? Because careful monitoring of the major social media channels will help your social media marketers respond to customers' comments and messages in a timely manner – and this is great for brand loyalty.

Our advice is to develop a social listening strategy that allows you to track brand mentions and catch any customer issues before they escalate.

For example, you could enable notifications for comments, mentions, and messages, so that they are always seen in real-time.

You could also tee-up swift replies by drafting response templates for common inquiries.

Trend watching and market analysis

One of the reasons we love social media monitoring platforms is that they often have a few bonus features.

For example, social media monitoring is a great way to track trends in your industry.

Below, we'll take a closer look at how you can get ahead when it comes to trend analysis.

With some monitoring tools, you can even track brand mentions across other online sources – like news sites or review sites.

While these tasks might not fall strictly under social media monitoring, they are nice little extras to have when you're also working towards other media monitoring goals.

Whatever your industry, you always want to stay ahead of the game by keeping an eye on emerging trends.

It's likely that your social media managers will be on the ball with this one – seeing new market trends and industry trends pop up across their feeds on a daily basis.

For a bit of extra insight, you could also subscribe to a few industry-specific newsletters or check out recent conversations in social media groups.

Watching competitors and their marketing strategies can uncover new trends, too.

Monitoring news sites and review platforms

If your social media monitoring tool allows, it's also worth keeping an eye on news sites and review platforms.

The results that pop up here could also provide valuable insights into public opinion, customer satisfaction, and emerging trends.

If you're tracking social media mentions already, simply check if your monitoring tool can track and analyze mentions of your brand, competitors, and keywords in other places – you might be surprised.

Leveraging user-generated content

User-generated content (UGC) is a bit of a buzzword, so let's break it down.

As the name suggests, this content comes from social media users outside of your brand. It's important as it can boost your brand visibility and increase engagement levels.

It's most effective when customers or audiences want to associate themselves with your brand. Jewelry brands, for example, thrive on UGC content because audiences aspire to wear luxury items.

As well as adding credibility to your brand, UGC can also be a great source of historical data.

And we love historical data because it can be used for making better, data-driven decisions.

Utilizing historical data for strategy adjustment

Put simply, historical data is information derived from social media posts that have already been published.

It's useful for a few purposes.

Analyzing trends

By looking at historical data from user-generated content, you can quickly spot patterns and trends in customer behavior, preferences, and opinions.

This allows you to make adjustments to your social media strategy accordingly, ensuring your brand stays relevant and engaging.

Gathering consumer insights

Historical data can also reveal valuable information about your consumers.

For example, you might use it to get a better idea about their opinions, product preferences, and sentiment towards your brand.

This information can be used to fine-tune your marketing and targeting efforts.

Some social media monitoring tools collect and analyzes user-generated content related to your brand. This makes the data collection process more streamlined and efficient.

Competitor analysis

Here's a top tip: don't solely focus on user-generated content about your own brand. Keep an eye on your competitors too.

Thinking about what's working for them, and how they leverage UGC can help shape your social media strategy to stay ahead of the competition. Learn more about competitor analysis here.

Evaluating social media ROI

A great social media management tool should also deliver some useful data that will help you track your return on investment (ROI) when it comes to things like brand partnerships and marketing campaigns.

Measuring sponsorship ROI and marketing impact

Your first step for measuring the ROI of a sponsorship deal is to focus on qualitative metrics.

These can help you understand how your campaigns impacted things like your brand reputation, customer relationships, and overall brand visibility.

Start by looking at engagement levels, which can include likes, comments, shares, and influencer interaction.

Next, you should focus on the quantitative metrics – in other words, the data that reveals which transactions or conversions happened directly as a result of your campaigns.

The first key quantitative indicator to monitor is click-through rate (CTR). This is the percentage of users who clicked on your sponsored content.

The second metric to consider here is conversion rate. This means the percentage of users who complete a desired action after clicking on your sponsored content.

Finally, use the data to calculate your cost per acquisition (CPA). This refers to how much it costs to acquire a new customer, including campaign expenses and the cost of the product or service provided.

By comparing these metrics with your initial marketing spend, you can calculate the ROI of your campaigns.

For instance, if you spent $10,000 on a campaign and generated $20,000 in revenue, your ROI would be 100%.

Adjusting marketing spend for optimal results

You can even use social media monitoring to help guide your marketing spend – especially if you've been calculating your social media ROI.

For example, if you know which campaigns are performing well, you can allocate more budget to the campaigns generating the best returns on investment.

Brands do this all the time, and it makes resource allocation decisions a lot easier.

It may, though, involve spending a bit more to target different demographics or expand the reach of successful content.

Another useful strategy here is to A/B test your content. This means experimenting with different versions of your ads, such as varying headlines, visuals, and CTAs.

If you measure the performance of each variation, you can identify the one(s) that resonate best with your target audience.

Finally, monitor and optimize to keep track of your campaigns' performance on a regular basis.

This could include adjusting ad placements or posting times to keep your spend in line with your budgets and objectives.

The last word on social media monitoring

As you can see, the benefits of social media monitoring can be far-reaching.

In fact, it can help with everything from uncovering previously undiscovered customer conversations, to guiding your spending on marketing campaigns.

Whether you choose to use a social media monitoring tool, or simply take advantage of built-in analytics offered by social media platforms, there are options to suit different budgets.

We hope this guide has helped you on your way, and you'll soon gather insights that will take your business to the next level.