Monitoring Social Media Discussions
There are many social media tools available for monitoring discussions that are relevant to your business and your brand. Many of these tools have built-in engagement features that allow you to focus on the discussions that are the most relevant.
The tools are very easy to use and they allow you to monitor and measure discussions that you are a part of very simply. Monitoring tools certainly make your engagement online very easy to manage. Additionally, you have capabilities through the tools to measure the results of your efforts, which is essential to the success of your business. When you are considering your social media measurement strategy, you should include the following metrics:
- Audience engagement: This is a measurement of how much your audience is actually engaging (or speaking) about your brand or your business. Some of the components that factor into the calculation are:
- Twitter @ tweets and retweets
- Blog comments
- YouTube interactions
- Social media brand mentions
- Facebook interactions
- Gross views: This is the total amount of views among all of youronline communities. The gross views are the number of times that your online connections were exposed to your brand or your business through the various online networks. The calculation will vary depending on which channels your are involved with. Some of the components that go into measuring gross views are:
- Blog page views
- Facebook page views
- YouTube video views
- YouTube channel views
- Flickr photo views
- Online connections: Online connections are the number of people who have expressed an interest in your business or your brand. By showing an interest, the viewer has moved beyond the first step of merely being exposed to your brand or business to actually engaging in conversation. Some of the components are:
- LinkedIn group members
- YouTube connections
- Facebook fans/likes
- Blog subscribers
- Twitter followers
- Social media discussions: Once you have started to have discussions with your online connections, you will need to show how those discussions are turning into conversions to actual clients. You should make sure that your Web analytics tool is measuring social media referrals as well as defining your website goals. At this point, you will be ready to gather the data on how many discussions that turned into conversions can be credited to social media.
- Social media referrals: One of your top objectives in business is to get people to refer other people to you. You will need to measure those referrals to your website. This is an important part of your metrics. You can set this up with your analytics tool, which will enable you to make a direct connection with those referrals that are a direct result of social media.
- Your online engagements: Your online engagements are a measure of your activity. Some of the components that are included in the calculation are:
- YouTube video posts
- Internal blog posts
- External blog and forum comments
- Twitter retweets, general tweets and @ tweets
Conclusion
The metrics that have been discussed here are effective and very important when it comes to monitoring your discussions that are connected to your efforts. Of course, they are not all of the possible metrics available. There are many more tools that will give you social media metrics, such as measuring comments, fans, followers, key page activity, messaging, etc. All of these tools will allow you to measure the results of your social media efforts accurately and you will learn whether your efforts are paying off.
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Your blog will be a great go-to resource. In the social media arena I often wonder "How do I, when do I, why do I," and it looks like a lot of my questions are answered in your Popular Posts section. I'll definitely check them out. Susan
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: Digital Marketing
Discussion: Monitoring Social Media Discussions
Thank you for posting. Do you have any preferences for real-time monitoring tools? I use Google alerts and Monitter for Twitter. I'd be interested in reading people's opinions of monitoring services like Radian6, etc.
Posted by Matthew Cooney
With the advent of social media being such a powerful resource for businesses it is imperative to have a strategy with communication and engaging in social networks. Resources that can handle communications across multiple social media platforms like Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, Ping.FM…etc are essential and Hootsuite gives you the ability to allow a team of people monitor and run from the same Twitter account which is ideal for large corporations who have a team of social media staff.
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: Professional Bloggers
Discussion: Monitoring Social Media Discussions
Great article, social media discussions are important for business. I use Hootsuite and Tweetdeck as my primary tools for communicating across social media networks, but for reading I still have to go to Facebook directly.
Posted by Justin Germino
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: Business Writers of America
Discussion: Monitoring Social Media Discussions
Nice job. It's important for all of us to know how to measure results to share with those who are still skeptical about Social Media. I retweeted your post, and shared it on FB and LI.
Posted by Judith Lee