5 Reasons Why It Is Better To Monitor Your Brand Reputation On Social Media
When it comes to monitoring your brand reputation on social media you have two choices:
- You can choose to set up monitoring or
- You can choose not to.
In this post I am going to give you five reasons why it is in your best interest to monitor your brand reputation on social media.
I am the mom to three preschoolers that require constant monitoring. I am always watching and listening to what they are doing so I can immediately encourage positive and desired behaviors and correct negative or undesired behaviors.
One day when I wasn’t being so diligent in monitoring them, my precocious three year old son got a hold of a bottle of molasses, a thick, dark, sticky, syrupy liquid, and began to play with it. In just a few short minutes molasses had been spread all over the kitchen and dining room of our house.
It didn’t take long for his five year old brother and 8 month old sister go get involved. Soon they too were covered in molasses and helping to spread the mess.
When I finally wised up to what my three angels were doing, I was horrified by the mess and wondered how I was ever going to clean it up. I was kicking myself, because if I had only caught them before the mess had been spread so widely it would have been so much easier to clean up.
I pulled out a bucket, some cleaner, and a bunch of rags and went to work scrubbing up the mess, and while the mess was pretty well cleaned up, the effects are long lasting. There are still faint molasses stains in the carpet and occasionally I will come across something that still has some sticky molasses residue on it.
So, in case you missed them, here are the five reasons why you should monitor your brand reputation on social media:
- Messes can spread quickly.
- Others can easily get involved and help to spread the mess.
- It is easier to clean up a mess if you catch it early.
- The effects of messes are long lasting.
- By monitoring your brand reputation on social media, you can immediately respond to situations that need your attention.
Now that I have shown you why monitoring your brand reputation on social media is so important, let me give you some resources to help you monitor your brand reputation.
There are a variety of tools, both free and paid, available to help you monitor your brand reputation.
Here is the link to a post from MarketingProfs entitled 13 Essential Social-Media ‘Listening Tools’ which links to several free and paid monitoring tools.
If you want to set up your own comprehensive monitoring dashboard using a variety of free tools, you have two ways you can do that.
- You can either set up monitoring by using RSS feeds and a feed reader like Google Reader.
Here is the link to a post from Social Media Examiner entitled How to Build a Free Social Media Monitoring Dashboard which will show you how to set up a dashboard using RSS Feeds in Google Reader.
- You can set up your monitoring dashboard using the bookmarks feature of your internet browser.
Here is the link to a post from The Next Web entitled How to Monitor Social Media Mentions in Five Minutes a Day which will show you how to set up a dashboard using the bookmark function within your internet browser.
I know I have given you a lot of information in this post. So, here is your action plan for today:
- Choose one tool that you are going to use to help you start monitoring social media conversations.
- Set it up either as an RSS feed or a browser bookmark so you can check on regularly.
- Leave me a comment letting me know which tool you chose to use and how you set it up.
I look forward to hearing from you. Happy monitoring!
What a great post Kimberlee and I have had messes just like that (mom of 4). Great illustration as to what might happen. I will check out some of the tools you mentioned. Thanks!
Hey Dorien!
Glad you enjoyed the post and found some useful information in it. I don’t talk about my kids very often, but I thought this story would be great to hang some principles about social media monitoring on (I actually wrote most of the post in my head as I was scrubbing molasses out of the carpet). I can imagine you have some great stories of your own as the busy mom of four.
Kimberlee
Great post Kimberlee!
I really liked you unique perspective on how it is so crucial to Listening in Social Media, it was very cool how you incorporated the story of your kids
Also great links! My favorite is the Social Media Examiner article =)
Hey Chris!
Thank you. I love reading Social Media Examiner. They always have excellent how to articles and great current social Media information. Their blog is a defined must subscribe for business owners wanting to stay on top of what I’d going on in social media.
Kimberlee
Great article, I was actually asked about RSS feeds today. You’ve provided some great tools and links. Thanks! Beautiful picture of your kids. I feel being a mom is the greatest and most important job in the world. I also have another website you might be interested in. http://www.intentionalconsciousparenting.com
Hey Carol!
Thank you! I don’t k know what I would do without RSS feeds and Google Reader. I can quickly read through hundreds of blog posts quickly and all in one spot.
I wil definitely check out your website!
Kimberlee
I’ve been using google alerts, but this article makes me think of other options I hadn’t considered- Thanks!
Hey Robin!
There are so many monitoring tools available. Using multiple tools is great so you don’t miss anything. And if you set up a dashboard as mentioned in one of the linked to posts, you can put monitoring on autopilot and it takes very little time to check in everyday to see what is going on.
Kimberlee
What a great analogy Kimberlee!
Cute kiddos…
My kids are my dogs, but I can relate to the ‘neglecting to monitor’ them example. OY!
Will be back for more….great read! (FB-Wordpress)
Hey Michele!
Thank you! People are constantly asking us if we have pets. Right now the kids keep us on our toes. Maybe one day we wil throw pets into our mix.
Kimberlee
Hello Dear,
Nice Post, I read your Post, Its really interesting and very Knowledgeable. You describe it in a very simple manner. I totally agree with you that there are a variety of tools, both free and paid, available to help you monitor your brand reputation. Using multiple tools is great so you don’t miss anything. And if you set up a dashboard as mentioned in one of the linked to posts, you can put monitoring on autopilot and it takes very little time to check in everyday to see what is going on. Thanks for sharing this with us…..
Keep it up dear……….
social media monitoring tools…
I use facebook all the time, but now I can take this little hobby one step further…Thank you!…
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