The DefiniTive GuiDe To Social MarkeTinG - Marketo

pArt Five: tools For
sociAl MArketing success
Social MeDia
MoniTorinG SofTware
Here are a few of the most popular
methods for listening to your customers:
• Twitter Search: search for your brand or
other important key words or hashtags
to see who has been talking about you.
• Facebook Search: search all public
content including everything posted
in public fan pages, groups and events.
Privacy settings on personal pages
may restrict what you can see.
• LinkedIn Search: the “Answers” section
is the best place to start. See if people
have asked questions about your
company, competitors and industry,
and see how people responded.
Search for the top Linkedin Groups
that are relevant to your business and
industry. Once you do this you have the
option to subscribe to a daily or weekly
digest of the conversations that are
taking place. You can then respond
and participate directly from your inbox.
Be sure to encourage employees to
also monitor this area of LinkedIn and
to routinely respond to questions.
• Google+ Search: Search your product
or keywords inside of Google+ to
monitor activity around your brand and
industry. A +1 or a thank you on other
user’s mentions and comments can
go a long way by letting the community
know your business is active and paying
attention.
• Google Alerts: view search engine
results more efficiently by setting up
alerts around keywords. For example,
establish a Google Alert for your
company name and other relevant
keywords. You may get some irrelevant
results but it’s an easy and effective way
to keep up to date with what people are
saying about you at no cost. You can
also find out relevant information about
your competitors and industry news.
Sites like HyperAlerts (http://www.
hyperalerts.no) can send you alerts
when your (or your competitor)
Facebook pages or Twitter accounts
have activity.
A more sophisticated approach includes
utilizing a social media monitoring
application that enables you to:
• Automate searches
• Monitor high volume keyword mentions
across many social marketing channels
• Run reports on the mentions of your
brand, competitors and top keywords
Social media monitoring will help you
decide where to get started when
beginning your social marketing efforts.
Start engaging on sites where your
company is mentioned most, or where you
can find the largest number of customers.
Free or budget-friendly solutions
If you are a smaller company or are just
getting started, you may want to begin
with some inexpensive or free monitoring
tools. This way you can start to track
what people are saying about you
without spending money on an
enterprise solution. Tools like Social
Mention, PostRank, and Brand Monitor
give you a resource to start diving into
and tracking social conversations.
Enterprise level tools
Social media monitoring tools, such as
Viral Heat or Radian6, are available as a
software-as-a-service model at a monthly
or annual fee.
Using these tools you can build reports
and measure share of voice, share of
conversation, and conduct in depth
analysis of trends and keyword mentions
around your brand and industry. These
enterprise tools are very powerful and can
really help you get a full picture of what is
being said about your brand.
You can translate what you hear into
action. If you capture social marketing
conversations in your marketing
automation or CRM system, you can
respond to them or pass them to sales.
Remember, social marketing provides
a great way to engage with your customers
and create relationships – so listening
is only the first part. Make sure you are
participating in conversations, which will
elevate your brand in the eyes of your
target audience.
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