As a Head of Marketing for a retail company, you know the importance of staying up to date with the conversations and trends your customers are engaging in on social media. But with the industry ever-evolving and the tools available continually advancing, how can you keep abreast of the ever-growing options? Here you will find a comprehensive comparison guide to aid you in making the most informed decision about a social media brand monitoring tool that fits both your company’s needs and budget.
Social media platforms are becoming increasingly popular and influential, and therefore are a great tool for marketing and brand recognition purposes. Companies need to ensure that they are staying on top of trends, tracking conversations, and listening to customer needs, opinions, and concerns. With so many social media monitoring tools available to choose from, it can be difficult to understand and evaluate each one to find the one that is best suited to you and your company’s needs.
The right tool will allow your company to adequately measure and track sentiment surrounding your brand and industry, spot trends and conversations, track performance, generate reports, and determine what is working or not. In order to do this, however, you need to pick the right platform for your company.
The first feature you should look for when researching the various monitoring tools available is the ability to quickly narrow down the hundreds, if not thousands, of conversations on various social media platforms. You need to be able to quickly understand what is being shared and discussed, and gain insight into these conversations. Most of the tools allow you to search for your brand on each social media platform, as well as searches within specific topics. You will then need to evaluate the interface for usability and the insights that are provided.
The second key aspect of the comparison is the ability to deliver accurate and timely information. The tool should have the ability to search through billions of conversations and insights within seconds, and make sure that each and every one of them is high quality. It should also be able to track conversations over time, so that you can gain a comprehensive understanding of how the sentiment towards a topic changes over time.
The last aspect of the comparison should be the level of analysis the tool is able to provide. Not only does the tool need to provide an in-depth overview of the conversations, it should also be able to give you meaningful insights about the context behind those conversations. This type of analysis can help you better understand the motivations and needs behind the conversations, and enable you to make more informed decisions and take more targeted actions.
The only real-time media monitoring platform that predicts the stories and topics that will matter in the hours ahead, giving communications professionals the clarity they need for quick and confident decisions, is the future of your social media brand monitoring. Keep this guide in mind as you research and compare the tools that are available, to make sure that you are picking the one that best fits your needs and goals.
