Monitoring and Listening to Social Media

Research into social media has become a major tool in marketing and advertising to be able to identify audiences. There are two main ways to do this. Monitoring and listening. Each have their own benefits and each are a bit different.

When monitoring analytics become a key factor in the research. Tools have been created to make a systematic and sustainable program to range your success. Listening is finding feedback from the audiences. Comments, questions, concerns all tie into listening to an audience.

Here are the top five benefits to monitoring and listening to your audience:
-Finding what key words, hashtags, phrases, accounts, and user help to reach and impact the audience.
-Identifying which accounts, websites, blogs, and other external links strengthen word-of-mouth traffic.
-Following trends.
-Identifying the growth of your brand through various platforms and outreach.
-Finding overall following data when audiences are active when they respond and when they want to be contacted.

Being able to read an audience and use it to your advantage in the business world of marketing and advertising has become a key to success. Using these benefits of monitoring gives businesses a needed edge in finding the right ways to reach their audiences.

Social Media to Comment or Not to Comment

There is always an audience when anything posts to social media. The audience will always have an opinion. Whether or not they share the opinion is the main question. Any professional has to balance the need to respond to a comment while also weighing the thoughts of the entire audience. 

Inevitably we have all seen comment sections where things don't go as planned. The comments go on a bit too long and it turns into more of an argument or an opinionated conversation and not something constructive. Guy Kawasaki discusses a few keys to comments. 

The first he talks about is "go three rounds". The member of the audience comments, you respond, and then allow for one more response before asking them to reach out in a less open environment. Sometimes the best interactions on social media platforms are in the comments as it creates a feeling of connection with the audience of the post but allowing that conversation to go on too long can take a turn for the worse. 

Next it's okay to disagree. There will never be a time when everyone has the same opinion and that is okay. There are points in life and on social media where that must be accepted. Agreeing to disagree shows that you are open to compromising and can perturb some of the toughest commenters. There may not be a correct or incorrect answer. Allowing for an open-ended comment section works to add dialogue and show the openness of you or your organization. 

Lastly stay positive as the curator of the post with your followers watching always work to stay positive in any comment conversation. Portraying yourself as level headed wins more credibility and following than winning one dispute with a commenter.  

Comments allow for great communication when used correctly. Always take the high road especially on media as once it is posted it is there forever.