The First Steps for Social Media Monitoring · 2018. 9. 6. · Dior trend analysis shows major spike There can be many reasons for an outlier over a long-term trend. A successful

The First Steps for Social Media

Monitoring

A Beginner’s Guide

CONTENT

03The need for knowledge analysis and proof of success

05 The 5 steps for successful social media monitoring

07 Step 1 - Find what you are looking for

10Step 2 - Monitor first results to see the big picture

12 Step 3 - Filter to find relevant results

28Step 4 - Uncover actionable insights with effective analysis

22 Step 5 - Spread knowledge with good reporting

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The need for knowledge, analysis and proof of successAnyone who is active on the social web needs - generally speaking - three things:

1. Knowledge: About the topics which are relevant to your target group(s) and where the discussions are taking place.

2. Analysis: Raw data is of little use. You have to ask the right questions in order to get meaningful answers.

3. Proof of success: Social media communication is not an end in itself. You have to prove the value of your work and show that you achieved predefined goals.

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Social media monitoring and analysis tools can help you with all of the above. But to achieve your goals there is a far greater need than simple observation of the online mentions of a company name or brand. You need a reliable system for your social media monitoring, which will use the full potential of your tool and display the gained knowledge, analysis, results, and finally accurate proof of success in a consistent way.

Let’s start where every communications project should - the systematic planning of your project.

In the following pages we will guide you step-by-step through the design process of a social media monitoring project.

THE NEED FOR KNOWLEDGE, ANALYSIS AND PROOF OF SUCCESS

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The 5 stepsfor successful social media monitoring

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THE 5 STEPS FOR SUCCESSFUL SOCIAL MEDIA MONITORING

The process of a setting up a social media monitoring project can be divided into five key steps. Great care should be taken in planning each.

Step 1: SearchThe starting point of any social media monitoring project is defining the keywords and particular social feeds you want to monitor. A wide range of search operators can be added to your search queries to ensure that you only get relevant results.

Step 2: Monitor With your search queries set, simple monitoring can begin which will show you the volume of mentions and how this has fluctuated over time.

Step 3: FilterOnce your results are coming in, it’s time to filter to find relevant insights. Results can be filtered by country, language, sentiment, Twitter follower numbers and much, much more. Customizable filters are also available

Step 4: AnalyzeWith results filtered to include only the most relevant, analysis can begin. Look at demographic insights, compare results by media type, understand increases in mentions and see how certain posts went viral.

Step 5: ReportWith your analyses completed and key insights identified reports should now be sent to management, internal teams, clients and other stakeholders as proof of the results achieved.

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Find what you are looking for

Step 1

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Many users of social media monitoring tools start by typing the name of a company or a product in a search profile and leave it at that. By doing this, they are essentially wasting almost all of the tool’s potential. For that kind of simple name search, a search engine would usually be sufficient

Here are some of the key topics to search for as a first step:

example of search query for Air France

Company Name – make sure to search for all variations, common spelling errors and social media handles.

Key People – keep track of online mentions of your CEO, board members and other senior management as well as their social media accounts if applicable.

Competition – keep an eye on your competitors to benchmark your performance and see what’s working and what isn’t for companies in a similar industry.

Industry Keywords – monitor the social and online discussion around keywords linked to your business to understand the key issues the industry is facing and get ideas for market positioning.

STEP 1: FIND WHAT YOU’RE LOOKING FOR

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With the help of social media monitoring, you will be able to find the places on the web where these topics are being discussed and after more detailed evaluation, also the relevant influencers.

Take the time to write down your search terms and to fully test the accompanying search input with your social media monitoring tool. Using simple search operators (called Boolean Operators) like AND, OR and NEAR/X, searches can be refined quickly and easily. For more on search queries and Boolean operators take a look at our blog.

STEP 1: FIND WHAT YOU’RE LOOKING FOR

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Monitor first results to see the big picture

Step 2

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This first level of monitoring is very simple and is essentially just a way to quickly get a first overall picture and an idea of how the search queries created in step 1 are working.

Monitoring goes beyond a “snapshot” of a specific moment in time. The most common charts used by all professional social media monitoring tools are trend charts which show the frequency of social media mentions.

With them, you can identify and document trends over a certain period of time. Outliers, in an otherwise consistent flow, are indicators of special events.

Dior trend analysis shows major spike

There can be many reasons for an outlier over a long-term trend. A successful social marketing campaign, a major press conference, a new TV spot or on the negative side, accusations levelled at the company or an employee. Social media monitoring tools can quickly show you when a major event has occurred.

In each case it is worth taking a closer look at individual results while observing mention trends.

The key thing to remember at this stage is that this is purely a first look to get an idea of how your topics and keywords are performing. To get accurate results we need to move on to the next step.

STEP 2 - MONITOR FIRST RESULTS TO SEE THE BIG PICTURE

Step 3

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Filter to find relevant results

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Filter to find relevant results

Even the most accurate search with tested keywords and multiple exclusions will generate irrelevant results. But only a clean stock of search results can make further analysis useful and successful.

In order to ensure quick and consistent qualification of results, it is important to determine the evaluation criteria beforehand. This is a particularly important step of the process and Talkwalker’s wide variety of filtering options allow for flexibility and extensive customizing options.

3.1. Language & Country/RegionIt is rarely necessary to search the whole social web. You should therefore only select the language(s), countries and regions that are relevant to your project.

Examples of filters for results

STEP 3 - FILTER TO FIND RELEVANT RESULTS

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3.2. Media Types & Source PanelsNot every website, source or media type will be relevant. For example if you’re only interested in monitoring the effects of a Twitter campaign, there may be no need to monitor YouTube channels. It is therefore advisable to exclude sources that are not relevant or of poor quality.

Conversely, certain sources will be more important than others. These can be included in a pre-defined source panel, which can be very useful for setting goals for specific campaigns.

For example from a PR perspective one goal could be: “In time period X the client’s product shall be discussed by 80% of the blogs that their target group has defined as the Top 30 relevant blogs”. The Top 30 blogs can then classified in a separate source panel, allowing the user to quickly check results within this specific subset.

STEP 3 - FILTER TO FIND RELEVANT RESULTS

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STEP 3 - FILTER TO FIND RELEVANT RESULTS

3.3. Influence & RelevanceWith the number of global social media users increasing all the time, the impact of influencers is getting ever more important. The ways of determining influencer impact vary according to the platform being measured.

For example, while a Twitter user’s influence may be determined by a combination of their followership and their levels of engagement, for an online news site or blog page, views may be a better measure of impact.

Together with other factors, such as the frequency of interaction with the content of a source, relevancy can be customized to meet particular needs.

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STEP 3 - FILTER TO FIND RELEVANT RESULTS

3.5. SentimentSocial media monitoring is at its best when it takes into account both quantitative and qualitative factors. The most commonly used qualitative factor, which is also integrated as a feature in most social media monitoring tools, is the sentiment or “mood” of an article.

Use sentiment to track brand reputation

The sentiment is derived by analyzing the tone and attitude contained within the text of an article or mention. A classification of positive/neutral/negative is generally used.

When using sentiment filters to monitor a crisis for example, results should be checked carefully to make sure they have been assigned correctly. A strong social media monitoring tool should provide tools to help with this process.

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STEP 3 - FILTER TO FIND RELEVANT RESULTS

3.6. The RestSocial media monitoring tools offer many others ways to divide and filter results from including only results fom people with a certain number of Twitter followers and videos with over a certain number of views, to proximity filters that allow you to look for only results where, for example, your brand is mentioned in close proximity to a specific keyword like “best” or “scandal”.

Time should be taken to filter and clean results to ensure effective monitoring. For more information on all the different ways this can be done, take a look at the Talkwalker User Manual.

Step 4

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Uncover Actionable Insights with Effective Analysis

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STEP 4 - UNCOVER ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS WITH EFFECTIVE ANALYSIS

With your keywords identified, basic monitoring underway and filters implemented, it’s time to find insights. That’s where analytics comes into play.

What you need will vary significantly depending on your use case, but here are a couple of examples.

Theme clouds show topics linked to your brand

Theme clouds are ideal for understanding the general topics and themes linked to a brand, topic, keyword or hashtag.

Talkwalker’s unique Smart Themes feature also allows you to only see, for example, public figures or brands in the cloud. Customized theme clouds can help you to see how often keywords pivotal to your brand are being mentioned alongside your social and online presence.

Influencer TablesInfluencer tables help you to understand which websites, blogs, Twitter accounts, Facebook pages and more are the most influential commentators about a brand, product or industry.

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STEP 4 - UNCOVER ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS WITH EFFECTIVE ANALYSIS

DemographicsDemographic data such as the languages, countries and even gender breakdown of social discussion helps to get a clearer idea of where social discussion is taking place. Such insights can help companies target campaigns and communications more effectively and understand where they have the most influence.

Sentiment BreakdownSentiment breakdowns are ideal for getting a quick idea of the potential scale of a crisis and can also be useful for measuring public reaction to a new campaign.

DashboardsThe primary function of dashboards is to allow you to see the analytics that matter for you in a layout that makes sense. Having clear, intuitive data visualizations is a key element of good analysis. Both pre-set dashboards - like Talkwalker IQ Apps - and customizable dashboards help you to see all the metrics and analytics you need in one place.

Virality MapsVirality maps help you understand why and how a particular post, tweet or article spread across social media and online. The map shows where and when messages spread and which sources were most important in helping them spread.

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STEP 4 - UNCOVER ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS WITH EFFECTIVE ANALYSIS

Spike AnalysisSpike Analysis involves focusing on particular spikes in mentions and then drilling down into the data to understand why such an event occurred.

This type of analysis is particularly useful to understand the causes of a crisis, why certain campaigns were successful and to better understand the types of posts, stories and campaigns that capture the social public’s attention.

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Spread Knowledge with Good Reporting

Step 5

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STEP 5 - SPREAD KNOWLEDGE WITH GOOD REPORTING

Once insights have been uncovered the final step is reporting. Having good reporting functions is critical as they not only allow you to distribute insights to all relevant stakeholders, being able to create reports quickly helps to save around 40% of the time needed for analysis and reporting according to client tests.

In Talkwalker, all relevant charts/graphs can be selected for inclusion in a report and then scheduled on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. Creating alerts based on irregular activity also helps to warn you of an impending crisis or an unexpected positive event.

Good reporting helps to prove the success of campaigns to management whilst also ensuring that multiple teams can stay aligned and up-to-date using the same data.

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STEP 5 - SPREAD KNOWLEDGE WITH GOOD REPORTING

Social media monitoring can help brands, companies and organizations of all sizes and in all sectors, but to do it right, some basic steps should be followed.

The 5 steps we’ve outlined will help ensure that your social media monitoring projects start off on the right foot.

1. Search: Work out what you’re looking for

2. Monitor: Take a first look at the results

3. Filter: Refine those results to find the most relevant for your needs

4. Analyze: Use a variety of analytics functions to find the insights you need

5. Report: Spread knowledge to all key stakeholders through good reporting

Once you have the basic steps covered, the possibilities are limitless - from working out the ROI of your influencer marketing to finding key insights for product development.

To read more about what you can do, take a look at our Academy.

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