Why this matters

For years, Keyhole has been the go-to resource for brands needing real-time social listening and analytics, keeping you in tune with what people are saying about your brand. Now, by joining Muck Rack, we’re taking that mission to the next level. Muck Rack isn’t just another name—they’ve been doing this since 2009, just like us. They’ve built a reputation helping organizations build trust, tell their stories and demonstrate the unique value of earned media.

By teaming up with them, we’re bringing the best of both worlds to offer you even more tools to level up your communication strategies and turn those insights into actions. Get ready to zoom in on the conversations that matter, spot a crisis, inform earned media strategies, and prove, without a doubt, that your communications strategies are working.

“We couldn’t think of a better partner than Muck Rack to scale our technology and get it into the hands of the PR community,” added Saif Ajani, cofounder of Keyhole.

“Our social listening and monitoring tools integrated with Muck Rack’s earned media reporting will help communicators understand which conversations are impacting their reputation, enabling them to take timely and informed actions.”

What this means for you

For now, Keyhole will continue to operate independently, ensuring you get the same great experience you’ve always had. We’re closely collaborating with the Muck Rack team to ensure this transition is as smooth as possible, so you can look forward to even greater value in the months ahead.

Together, Muck Rack and Keyhole will be working on integrating Keyhole’s social listening capabilities within the Muck Rack platform, alongside their media monitoring tools. This means you’ll be able to see the full picture of how your brand is perceived across online, television, radio, newsletters, print, and now social media. Not a Muck Rack customer? Request a demo.

Thank you for being part of the Keyhole journey. We can’t wait to show you what’s next!

Want to learn more? Hear from Muck Rack’s CEO.

The post Big News: Keyhole is Now Part of Muck Rack! appeared first on Keyhole.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that online reviews now have a huge sway over consumer behavior and business reputation. With more people than ever relying on reviews to make purchasing decisions, understanding how to make online reviews work in your favor is essential.

This blog post covers everything you need to know about online reviews: from building trust with your audience to managing reviews effectively and even looking ahead at what the future holds, you’ll get a comprehensive view of how reviews can impact your business.

The role of online reviews in building trust

Online reviews are crucial for building trust because they offer real, unfiltered feedback from customers, which helps other potential buyers feel more confident in their purchasing decisions. In short, they serve as a bridge between businesses and consumers and help foster credibility.

Why trust matters in eCommerce

Trust is the foundation of any successful business relationship, but when it comes to e-commerce, it’s even more critical. Unlike a physical store where customers can touch and see the products, online shopping requires a leap of faith. This is where online reviews come in—they act as social proof, showing potential customers that others have had a positive experience with your product or service.

The importance of branding cannot be overstated here – the more positive reviews your brand has, the more recognizable it becomes, and the higher the trust of consumers in your products tends to be.

How reviews impact consumer decisions

Consumers tend to trust reviews from real people more than marketing messages from brands. There’s a psychological element at play here: when people see that others like them have had a good experience with a product they’re interested in, they’re more likely to trust the product themselves. This is why reviews are often more persuasive than even the most well-crafted advertising campaign.

Take Amazon, for example. Its review system is one of the reasons it dominates the online retail space. Another example is TripAdvisor, which has built its entire platform around user-generated reviews, helping travelers make informed decisions and elevating businesses that consistently deliver great experiences.

Read More: 5 Influencer Marketing Strategies To Grow Your eCommerce Business

Top platforms for online reviews

When it comes to collecting and managing online reviews, not all platforms are created equal. Some have broad reach, while others cater to specific niches.

1. Major review platforms

(Yelp reviews)

Google Reviews is one of the most widely used platforms. Integrated with Google Search and Google Maps, it’s often the first thing potential customers see when they search for your business. By choosing to add Google reviews to website, you can significantly boost your visibility and credibility, making it easier for potential customers to trust your brand.

Yelp is another major player, particularly for local businesses like restaurants, salons, and services. Reviews posted here can make or break a business, especially in the food and beverage industry. The platform’s focus on local search results and its large user base make it essential for businesses that rely on local customers.

Trustpilot, on the other hand, is a go-to platform for e-commerce businesses. It’s especially popular in Europe and is used by companies to build trust with international audiences. Its transparency and robust review management tools make it a favorite for businesses looking to highlight customer satisfaction.

2. Niche review sites

(Capterra review)

Niche review platforms also hold significant value, particularly in specialized industries. For instance, Zocdoc is invaluable for healthcare providers, allowing patients to review doctors and medical practices. Capterra serves the software industry, helping businesses find the right tools based on user reviews.

Best practices for managing online reviews

Getting reviews is just one part of the equation—how you manage them can be even more important.

Encouraging customer reviews

Encouraging customers to leave reviews is often a challenge, but it’s essential. One effective strategy is to ask for reviews at the right moment— for example, after a successful transaction or a positive interaction. You could also offer small incentives, like discounts on future purchases, to encourage more feedback. But be careful: incentives should never feel like a bribe. Keep it ethical.

It’s also important to stay on top of emerging conversations surrounding your brand so you can ask for feedback at the right time. Keyhole can help here. Since it allows you to monitor hashtags, branded keywords, accounts, and URLs across various social media channels, it helps you keep an eye on what people are saying about your brand in real-time, ensuring that you stay on top of any relevant conversations related to your products or services.

Responding to both positive and negative reviews

When customers do leave reviews, responding to them—whether they’re glowing or critical—should be a priority. Now, responding to positive reviews is easy — a simple thank you shows appreciation and reinforces the good vibes. Handling negative reviews requires more tact, as it’s essential to address the issue head-on without getting defensive.

How do you do this? Acknowledge the customer’s experience, apologize if necessary, and offer a solution. This does two things for your business: it resolves the immediate issue and shows potential customers that you’re committed to making things right. Keyhole can help with this, too, thanks to its sentiment analysis feature.

You can use it to analyze how customers feel about a specific topic or campaign to gain deeper insights into public perception, which you can then use to effectively respond to feedback. This not only helps in promptly addressing any negative feedback you might receive but also allows you to capitalize on positive sentiments to reinforce your brand image.

Likewise, timeliness is key. A prompt response can prevent a small issue from escalating into a bigger one. And don’t underestimate the power of professionalism: even in the face of harsh criticism, maintaining a calm, respectful tone will serve you well.

The good news is, handling negative reviews strategically can even turn them into a positive. By showing a willingness to listen and improve, you can convert dissatisfied customers into loyal advocates. Plus, addressing a negative review publicly demonstrates to others that you’re serious about customer satisfaction.

The influence of video reviews

While text reviews have long been the standard, video reviews are gaining traction, and fast.

The rise of video reviews

(Youtube review)

There’s something about seeing a person’s face and hearing their voice that makes their opinion feel more real to many people. Also, video reviews can show the product in action, provide more nuanced feedback, and convey emotion in a way that text simply can’t.

As video content continues to dominate online platforms, businesses that incorporate video reviews into their strategy are likely to stand out. Platforms like YouTube and TikTok have become hotspots for video reviews, with influencers and everyday users alike sharing their experiences. If it makes sense for your brand and product, definitely take advantage of video reviews.

How to use personalized and AI-generated videos for reviews

Personalized video reviews are another exciting development. A review in the form of a personalized video message is not only engaging but also adds a human touch that’s often missing in online interactions.

With the right tools, businesses can create a guide to personalized video reviews that make it easier for customers to share their stories. These guides can walk customers through the process of recording and sharing their reviews, ensuring the videos are both high-quality and on-brand.

Some businesses are even using AI to create personalized review videos more quickly and efficiently. By learning how to create AI-generated videos, businesses can streamline the production process, making it both more efficient and cost-effective.

AI-generated content can be great for your business as it allows for quick and consistent creation of review videos that can be tailored to different customer segments. It’s ideal for reaching a wider audience with minimal effort.

Read More: 5 Ways To Respond To Negative Online Reviews On Social Media 

The future of online reviews

There’s no doubt that online reviews are going to become even more important in the future. But as technology evolves, so will the ways in which we gather, analyze, and leverage reviews.

Trends shaping the future of reviews

One big trend is the rise of review aggregators and meta-reviews—sites or tools that compile reviews from various platforms to provide a more comprehensive view. These allow consumers to see a fuller picture of a product or service’s reputation, rather than relying on a single source.

The way reviews are presented is also changing. Interactive reviews, where customers can ask questions and engage with reviewers directly, are becoming more common. This adds a new layer of transparency and trust, as potential buyers can get answers to specific questions from people who’ve already purchased the product.

But it’s not just about new technologies. The very nature of reviews might shift towards more dynamic content, where reviews can evolve over time. For example, a customer might update their review after using a product for several months, giving a more long-term perspective. This could be particularly valuable for products that have a lifespan or require ongoing use, such as software subscriptions or household appliances.

The impact of fake reviews

While these innovations are exciting, they also bring challenges. As reviews become more influential, businesses and platforms will need to stay vigilant against manipulation and ensure that the review process remains fair and transparent. Which brings us to using AI and machine learning for managing reviews.

These technologies are becoming increasingly sophisticated at detecting and removing fake reviews, which are becoming a growing concern in the online marketplace. Fake reviews not only deceive consumers but also undermine trust in the review system as a whole. By using AI to weed out fraudulent content, platforms can maintain the integrity of their reviews and ensure that customers are getting accurate, trustworthy information.

Conclusion

Online reviews have become an integral part of the consumer decision-making process and a powerful tool for businesses to build trust and credibility. As we’ve explored in this article, the role of reviews goes far beyond just stars and comments—they’re a key factor in shaping a brand’s reputation and driving sales.

To make the most of online reviews, it’s important to understand how to manage them effectively. Encouraging genuine feedback, responding professionally, and using video reviews when possible can all contribute to a stronger, more trustworthy brand image. And as technology continues to develop and change, staying ahead of trends like AI-driven review management and interactive reviews will be key to maintaining a competitive edge.

Truly, the ongoing importance of online reviews in the digital marketplace can’t be overstated. By adopting best practices and staying adaptable, you can turn reviews into one of your most valuable business assets. 

Ready to enhance your review management strategy and gain insights into market trends? Book a demo and take the first step toward mastering your brand’s online presence!

The post Everything You Should Know About Online Reviews appeared first on Keyhole.

Every review, tweet, or comment on social media about your business is a chance to show your commitment to customer satisfaction and your willingness to improve. Responding to negative reviews, in particular, is a critical part of this process.

Responding strategically to negative reviews on social media would turn the PR crisis into an opportunity for growth. Research shows that 97% of consumers read responses to reviews, and businesses that respond to negative reviews can see a 16% increase in customer advocacy.

From acknowledging the issue to offering solutions and following up, each step contributes to maintaining and enhancing your business’s online reputation. So, whether you’re a seasoned social media pro or just starting, it’s time to get a knack for responding to negative online reviews on social platforms.

In this piece, we’ll explore a few proven ways to tackle negative online reviews on social media.

1. Show empathy by understanding customers’ concerns

A negative review may instinctively switch on your defensive side. But don’t let that emotion take over. Instead, craft a compassionate response by putting yourself in the customer’s shoes and acknowledging their concerns. 

Imagine a frustrated customer venting about difficulties navigating your B2B SaaS product. Maybe they’ve not gone through the documentation for self-help, or perhaps they must have been overwhelmed by the technical documents. So, instead of pointing to the self-help directly or attempting any dismissive response, simply apologize at first.

To show genuine concern, you can respond, “We apologize for the difficulties you’re experiencing with our SaaS product. We understand your frustration. Our team is working to provide a quick solution.” 

Take the example of Skyscanner, who had issues with changing flights. A swift response in the form of an apology and a link to a workaround can help tackle the issue while ensuring others that their queries will be resolved. 

Source

Hence, acknowledge the customer’s experience and express that you understand their concern. 

Here are some key factors to consider when weaving in empathy for social media responses:

• Avoid blaming: Don’t point fingers or make excuses. Focus on the customer’s experience.
• Offer a sincere apology: A genuine apology goes a long way in diffusing anger and frustration.
• Validate their feelings: Use phrases like “I understand your frustration” or “I’m sorry to hear you’re having trouble.”
• Reassure them: Let them know you’re committed to resolving the issue and making things right.

Ultimately, use the platform to create a positive foundation for resolving the issue and rebuilding trust.

Read More: How To Leverage Social Listening For Crisis Management

2. Respond quicker

When faced with a negative review online on social media, take your time to formulate a plan of action. But don’t get into action too late. A swift response shows that you’re attentive and value customer feedback. 

However, take a moment to gather the facts, understand the issue, and craft a thoughtful response. Aim to respond within 24 hours as a standard, even if it’s just to acknowledge the review and inform the customer that you are looking into the issue. A timely response can prevent escalating situations and demonstrates your commitment to excellent customer service.

Imagine a customer posts a frustrated tweet about a delayed delivery time of your eCommerce product. Responding within minutes with a generic “We apologize for the inconvenience” might seem dismissive. Instead, take a few extra minutes to investigate the situation and check your inventory to see if the product is dispatched. If the delivery time is unusually long due to unforeseen circumstances, explain the situation and sincerely apologize. Offer a discount on their next order as a goodwill gesture.

For instance, in the example below, it just took a couple of minutes for Amazon to respond and inform the customer of the next steps.

Responding quickly to a negative review on social platforms prevents it from rotting and potentially escalating into a larger issue. Social media agencies specialize in reputation management and are crucial for maintaining and enhancing your brand identity. They ensure timely and appropriate responses to negative feedback, helping to preserve the trust and loyalty of your customer base.

They ensure timely and appropriate responses to negative feedback, helping to preserve the trust and loyalty of your customer base.

It also includes these agencies helping you tap into useful agency reviews that offer valuable feedback (providing deep learning, growth, and connection opportunities) and a chance to address concerns publicly. This showcases your commitment to customer service, enhancing your agency’s credibility, which may even turn potential negative reviews into powerful positives. In all, you’ll be strengthening your brand in the eyes of both current and prospective clients.

Ensuring quick responses requires making the following adjustments:

• Monitor Regularly: Set up alerts or use tools for social media monitoring that promptly notify you of new reviews or mentions.
• Prepare Templates: Use pre-written responses for common complaints to save time while allowing for personalization.
• Use Automation (Cautiously): Chatbots or other AI tools for social media can help generate automated responses. These can quickly acknowledge reviews but use them sparingly to offer a way to escalate to a human representative if needed.

This approach helps to maintain a positive online reputation and reassures other customers that you value their time and prioritize their concerns genuinely.

3. Take conversation offline

Publicly acknowledging the issue is important, but social media isn’t always the best place to discuss it. Instead, take the conversation offline to a more private channel. This gives you space to dig deeper into the customer’s concerns without airing grievances for everyone to see. It’s like inviting them backstage for a one-on-one chat—much more conducive to understanding and resolving the issue.

This approach shows your willingness to fix the problem, helps protect the customer’s privacy, and avoids a prolonged public dispute. A direct line of communication can make the customer feel valued and heard, leading to a more satisfactory resolution.

For instance, an eCommerce skincare brand, Kravebeauty, asked a customer to email them the information, suggesting that they take the conversation off social media.

Source

Otherwise, you can also respond with a comment like, “We appreciate your feedback and would love to learn more about your experience. Please DM us your contact information so we can reach out.” This shows that you’re taking their concerns seriously and want to resolve the issue.

Here’s how effectively offline conversations work:

• Providing a safe space: Customers may feel more comfortable sharing details and feedback privately.
• Highlights commitment: The initiative to move the conversation offline shows your dedication to resolving the issue.
• Protect privacy: Ensuring that customers’ concerns might be sensitive and better addressed privately.
• Prevent escalation: Public-level back-and-forth can sometimes escalate tensions. A private conversation allows for a calmer, more productive discussion.
• Enable personalized solutions: Understanding the customer’s specific needs is easier one-on-one, leading to more tailored solutions.

This approach demonstrates your willingness to go the extra mile, which can go a long way in rebuilding trust and salvaging the relationship.

4. Offer a solution

Sure, you made a few apologies, took the matter offline, and everything, but there’s also another way to handle negative social media reviews. And that is to offer a solution. Begin by acknowledging the issue, thanking them for bringing it to your attention, and assuring them that your team is already working on a fix. If possible, offer a workaround or a temporary solution while the problem is resolved.

Moreover, you may not have an immediate solution in some cases, but you can offer a plan. For instance, you could say, “We’re looking into this issue and will update you within [timeframe]. Please send us a direct message so we can keep you informed.” This is one way to show that you are taking the complaint seriously and are committed to finding a resolution. 

Nike, in the below example, showed exactly this. A quick solution was provided, and the customer was informed via the same tweet. Here’s how Nike handled it.

Source

Here’s how you can effectively provide solutions to social media complaints:

• Offer a workaround or alternative: If a direct solution isn’t available, suggest alternative options to help the customer.
• Outline a plan of action: If the issue requires more time, explain the steps you’re taking to resolve it and provide a realistic timeline.
• Keep the customer informed: Provide updates on the solution’s progress and let them know when they can expect a resolution.

Adopting this solution-driven approach helps maintain a positive online reputation and turn dissatisfied customers into loyal advocates.

Read More: 7 Steps For Effective PR Crisis Management In 2024

5. Follow up after providing solution

Don’t just address or resolve customers’ issues. Take one more step to follow up on the query, which showcases a genuine commitment to their satisfaction. Also, it can turn a negative experience into a positive one, positively affecting prospects or aspiring customers who follow your social media accounts. 

After you have taken the conversation offline and resolved the issue, send a follow-up message or comment like, “Hi [Customer’s Name], we hope the resolution we provided has met your expectations. Please let us know if there is anything else we can assist you with. Thank you for making things right. 

You can also turn around the negative experience by incentivizing the solution, such as providing a discount on their next purchase, free gift coupons, free delivery, etc. Such tokens of appreciation show customers that you value them and that top-notch customer service is a normal part of your business.

In the example below, McDonald’s India follows up with the customer who raised concerns regarding food ingredients. Even after offering a resolution, they followed up and asked the customer to nudge back.

Source

Consider adopting the following best practices for following up on provided solutions:

• Reiterate the solution: Briefly summarize the steps to resolve the issue and any additional information or resources provided.
• Check for satisfaction: Ask the customer if they’re happy with the resolution and if there’s anything else you can do to assist them.
• Offer additional support: Provide contact information for further assistance if needed.

This extra step shows the customer that you value their business and are committed to providing excellent service. A satisfied customer will likely update their review to reflect their improved experience, benefiting your business’s online reputation.

Bonus: Track your negative reviews with Keyhole

It’s almost impossible to keep a tab on every corner of the internet where your brand is mentioned. But this shouldn’t be as exhausting as it sounds if you use Keyhole. With Keyhole’s advanced trackers, you can spot those pesky negative reviews before they spiral out of control. 

Consider it your 24/7 surveillance team dedicated to protecting your brand’s online reputation. 

To start with it, consider taking the following steps in your Keyhole tool for enhanced reputation management.

1. Log into your Keyhole account. Select the “Listening and Campaigns” tab. 

2. Click on the orange “Add New Tracker” button. From the dropdown menu, select the “Add Advanced Tracker” option. 

3. It will take you to a new page (shown in the above screenshot). Now simply add keywords or brand names you want to track, select the platform to monitor, and add criteria and subtrackers as required.

4. Set the tracker name and make a custom URL. 

5. The system will notify you every time there’s a mention of your added brand names. 

With this set, you can —

• Spot trouble early: Set up alerts and get notified when someone mentions your brand so that you can address any negativity before it spreads.
• Gauge the sentiment: No more manual sifting through endless comments, as Keyhole offers sentiment analysis to categorize mentions as positive, negative, or neutral automatically. This gives you a real-time snapshot of how people feel about your brand.
• Benchmark against competitors: Compare your brand’s online reputation to the competition and identify areas for improvement.

Bottomline

Negative online reviews on social media accounts are a challenge that every business faces, no matter how hard they try. Rather than defending your brand or accusing customers of anything, take these reviews as opportunities to learn, grow, and connect with your customers on a deeper level.

Don’t just acknowledge their concerns. Instead, take prompt actions, provide solutions, and communicate with a purpose to address their challenge. Take conversations offline if you think solutions need proper space for communication, and if there’s a quick fix, provide the same over the social platform.

Ultimately, your responses and solutions are not just for the dissatisfied customer but also for the wider audience who’ll read these interactions. A well-handled negative review can highlight your commitment to customer satisfaction, demonstrate your problem-solving skills, and even turn critics into loyal advocates.

Transform from a reactive firefighter to a proactive reputation manager with Keyhole’s negative review tracking capabilities.

Author Bio

Taher Batterywala is an SEO and Growth Content Marketer. With over 7+ years of B2B marketing experience and a diversified skill set, he helps craft winning strategies and execute end-to-end campaigns for B2B and SaaS companies to achieve scalable organic growth. Outside of work, he enjoys watching movies, photography, and dabbling in design. You can find him on LinkedIn and X.

The post 5 Ways To Respond To Negative Online Reviews On Social Media appeared first on Keyhole.

If you’re looking for a social media listening tool in particular—one that can track what people are saying about your brand—then you’ve come to the right place.

To make your search for the right social listening tool easier, we’ve compiled a huge list of the best tools in the industry, including research on the pros and cons of each tool.

Here’s a full roundup of the top social listening tools for marketers and agencies:

1. Keyhole

Keyhole helps marketers measure the impacts of their marketing campaigns. Keyhole offers campaign monitoring, influencer tracking, brand mention monitoring, and powerful competitor research tools that make it easy to benchmark your campaigns against your competitors’.

Keyhole offers social media listening and analytics for Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and other online media sources all in one easy to use dashboard.

Take it from Neil Patel: “This tool [Keyhole] does a lot of things others can’t. And as a bonus, it’s extremely user-friendly.”

You can also use Keyhole to conduct social listening and identify which online accounts or influencers are talking about you or your brand.

Using social listening, you can conduct in-depth sentiment analysis and understand how your audience feels about your brand, certain features, or if there’s anything noteworthy.

Pro: Keyhole has an attractive, real-time analytics and mentions dashboard that can easily be exported to client-ready PDFs.

Pricing: Custom

2. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is one of the longest-standing and most popular social media management platforms. While it’s best-known for its social media publishing features, it does possess a suite of social listening features, branded as Hootsuite Insights Powered by Brandwatch.

Hootsuite has useful features to help you track brand mentions, identify thought leaders and influencers, and track brand sentiment.

Pro: Hootsuite has a robust set of end-to-end features for pretty much anything you would ever want to do on social media, from publishing, to advertising, to tracking.

Con: Hootsuite’s big feature set comes with a big price tag, and the social listening features are only available for their Business and Enterprise-level plans.

Pricing: Hootsuite’s social listening features are a paid add-on to their Business and Enterprise plans, starting at $739.

3. HubSpot

HubSpot is an all-in-one stack of marketing, sales, and service tools. HubSpot offers everything from a CRM, to a CMS, to a customer service platform.

As part of their marketing stack, HubSpot offers social media monitoring to create custom keyword monitoring streams, email alerts to track mentions, analytics tools to compare performance across social channels, and HubSpot integrations with phone systems, email marketing platforms or bulk email services, content management systems, and other apps & tools.

Pro: If you prefer all of your tools in one place, HubSpot has nearly every marketing tool you could ever need.

Con: Because HubSpot does so many things, their social listening features aren’t as deep as some of the other tools on our list, and the 

Pricing: HubSpot’s social listening features are included in their Professional and Enterprise plans, starting at $800 per month.

4. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is a popular content discovery tool, allowing marketers to track content that’s trending for certain topics or keywords.

Although not exactly a social listening tool in the sense of some of the other tools on our list, with BuzzSumo, you can track competitors, brand mentions, and industry updates.

Pro: BuzzSumo is extremely useful for tracking trending content and influencers.

Con: BuzzSumo doesn’t offer as much when it comes to tracking your social media accounts.

Pricing: BuzzSumo starts at $119 per month.

5. Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a full social media management platform, allowing you to track engagement, manage your publishing schedule, measure analytics, and perform social listening.

Sprout Social has tons of useful social listening features like audience demographic analysis, customer sentiment tracking, influencer identification, campaign analysis, and competitor comparisons.

Pro: Sprout Social offers an all-in-one social inbox to track Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn in one place.

Con: The Standard pricing tier has limited social listening features.

Pricing: Sprout Social pricing starts at $249 per user per month.

6. Mention

As the name suggests, Mention lets you track all of your brand mentions online. Mention offers a variety of social listening and publishing tools to monitor online media, analyze your competition, and manage your brand.

Mention offers real-time mention tracking and detailed analytics on your industry competitors.

Pro: Mention provides daily recap emails with key info as well as alert emails when your mentions suddenly spike.

Con: Their pricing model limits the number of mentions you can track per month.

Pricing: Mention’s paid plans start at $29 per month.

7. Brand24

Brand24 offers brand mention tracking across social platforms, news sites and blogs, video sites, review platforms, and more.

Brand24 features include a mentions feed, a discussion volume chart, marketing analytics, influence score, sentiment analysis, alerts, and reporting features.

Pro: Brand24 has some extra bonuses like a Slack integration and a mobile app.

Con: Online reviews mention a sometimes-challenging user interface and a thinner feature set than similarly priced tools.

Pricing: Brand24 pricing starts at $79 per month.

8. YouScan

YouScan is another social media listening tool that offers monitoring of social media, blogs, forums, reviews, and other online media.

YouScan offers some unique AI-powered listening features like logo recognition and object and scene detection to help brands track pictures as well as brand mentions.

Pro: YouScan’s Visual Insights feature is a game-changer for brands that want to track when their products appear in a post.

Con: YouScan has a huge price tag, so it’s cost-prohibitive unless you’re a major global brand.

Pricing: YouScan pricing starts at $12,000 per year.

9. Agorapulse

Agorapulse is another full social media management platform, comparable to Hootsuite, Sprout Social, or Buffer.

On top of publishing and analytics tools, Agorapulse offers basic social media listening features like brand mention monitoring on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.

Pro: Agorapulse offers some unique collaboration features like the ability to label important posts or assign a post to a teammate.

Con: Because Agorapulse is a full social media management tool, its social media listening tracking features aren’t as robust as some of the dedicated tools.

Pricing: Agorapulse pricing starts at $69 per month.

10. SocialBee

With its robust social inbox feature, SocialBee empowers users to proactively engage and nurture their online community. By monitoring social mentions, comments, and messages, users can stay in touch with their audience, respond to inquiries, and foster meaningful connections.

But SocialBee’s value doesn’t stop at social inbox management. The platform provides a wealth of insights through its comprehensive analytics capabilities. Users gain access to analytics for multiple social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest, and Google Business Profile.

Pro: SocialBee’s capabilities extend beyond social listening and include powerful content creation and scheduling features.

Con: SocialBee may not offer an extensive range of social listening features compared to specialized social listening tools.

Pricing: SocialBee plans start at $29 per month with a 14-day free trial.

11. BrandMentions

BrandMentions is another social media monitoring tool that offers standard features like brand monitoring, competitor tracking, sentiment analysis, and reputation management.

Pro: BrandMention also allows you to integrate website traffic monitoring into your analytics reports.

Con: In online reviews, some users report difficulty filtering down a large number of social media mentions.

Pricing: BrandMentions starts at $99 per month.

12. Meltwater

Meltwater is a full marketing and social media suite offering social media monitoring, online media monitoring, social engagement reports, influencer management, newswire distribution, media relations tools, and more.

They allow social media monitoring for 15 different social networks, and offer tracking through a mobile app.

Pro: Meltwater is a powerful PR tool and offers a robust media database.

Con: Meltwater constantly adds new features, but they often require add-on pricing and can be overwhelming for users, according to online reviews.

Pricing: Meltwater doesn’t post pricing publicly, but according to Prowly, pricing starts at $8,000 per year.

13. Sprinklr

Sprinklr is a customer experience management (CXM) platform. Sprinklr is quite different than many of the other tools on our list, as its bread and butter is allowing you to engage with customers and monitor their experience with your product or service.

That said, as part of its offering, Sprinklr allows you to perform audience profiling, identify influencers, benchmark against competitors, and measure custom metrics.

Pro: Sprinklr allows you to unify your customer experience management with your marketing activities.

Con: Sprinklr is an enterprise platform that isn’t suitable for small and medium businesses.

Pricing: Sprinklr does not make its pricing available online, but its pricing is reportedly modular based on which features you add.

14. TalkWalker

TalkWalker is primarily a social media listening tool, with standard features like mention tracking, report creation, and automated alerts.

TalkWalker also has more advanced features like brand image detection, a Virality Map, and other AI-powered features.

Pro: On top of standard social media and online mention tracking, Talkwalker also allows you to monitor TV and radio content.

Con: TalkWalker’s pricing is catered only to larger businesses.

Pricing: TalkWalker pricing starts at $9,600 per year.

15. Mentionlytics

Mentionlytics is a fairly standard social media monitoring tool for business of all sizes. They also offer social intelligence and publishing tools.

Mentionlytics allows you to track mentions on social media, online news, and other online platforms. It also allows you to reply to tweets or posts in real-time. You can also monitor keywords and competitors to identify sales opportunities.

Pro: Mentionlytics has AI-powered features to help you identify fans, ambassadors, and even trolls.

Con: Users have reported an outdated UI design.

Pricing: Mentionlytics pricing starts at $49 per month.

16. Digimind

Digimind is a social intelligence tool offering solutions for brand reputation, competitive intelligence, consumer insights, influencer identification, trend tracking, and marketing campaign analysis.

Digimind’s social listening tools include geolocalization, automatic sentiment and translation, topic clustering, and “marked as read” capabilities.

Pro: Digimind’s Top Reputation module allow you to track what people are searching for when they research your brand.

Con: According to online reviews, the tool can be quite cumbersome for beginners.

Pricing: Digimind does not make its pricing publicly available. Contact to discuss.

17. Zoho

Zoho is a cloud software suite with many SaaS applications for businesses. On top of social tools, they offer a CRM, email and document platforms, and financial tools.

Zoho’s social tools include publishing, monitoring, and reporting. Their listening tools allow you to monitor brand mentions in real time.

Pro: Zoho allows you to create your own monitoring dashboard.

Con: As Zoho isn’t a social platform at its core, the tool is fairly limited in features outside of mention tracking.

Pricing: Zoho’s pricing starts at $45 per month.

18. Iconosquare

Iconosquare is an Instagram analytics, management, and scheduling platform for brands and agencies.

Iconosquare is one of the most powerful Instagram analytics tools, offering competitor analytics, hashtag analytics, promoted posts analytics, industry benchmarking, conversation tracking, scheduling, Excel and PDF reports, custom dashboard, and more.

Pro: Iconosquare offers some unique Instagram features, like tracking of individual comments, photo tags, and mentions and tracking of content types like photos, videos, and carousel images.

Con: Iconosquare only allows tracking for Instagram and Facebook, unlike most of the other tools on this list.

Pricing: Iconosquare starts at $49 per month.

19. Awario

Awario is another popular brand monitoring tool. Awario tracks brand mentions and keywords in real time and offers additional features like sentiment analysis, influencer tracking, boolean search, white label reporting, and email alerts.

Pro: Awario has a social selling feature that tracks competitor complaints or recommendations for your product category, allowing you to identify leads on the fly.

Con: The abundance of information in Awario gives it a steep learning curve compared to its competitors.

Pricing: Awario starts at $39 per month.

Read More: 9 Essential Social Media Metrics To Track In 2024 [+ 6 Best Tools]

20. Sendible

Sendible is a social media management and tracking tool that includes features for planning, collaboration, engagement, and analytics.

Sendible’s listening capabilities include mention alerts and hashtag and keyword monitoring. 

Pro: Sendible monitors Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn.

Con: Sendible has a wide feature set, but its listening capabilities are fairly shallow.

Pricing: Sendible starts at $29 per month. 

21. Reputation.com

As its name suggests, Reputation.com is a complete reputation management tool. Its capabilities include online review monitoring, business listing management, directory management, surveys, and social tools.

Their social listening tool includes mention tracking and sentiment analysis.

Pro: Reputation.com has a huge suite of reputation management tools.

Con: Reputation.com is less useful for those looking for social media insights.

Pricing: Reputation.com does not publish its pricing online.

22. Oktopost

Oktopost brands itself as the social media management platform for B2B enterprise. It features tools for social media management, social employee advocacy, and social media promotions.

Oktopost’s social media listening tools include keyword, mention, and competitor tracking, primarily aimed at customer support.

Pro: Oktopost offers the unique ability to amplify your social posts through your employees’ social accounts.

Con: Oktopost is more focused on B2B promotion than social listening.

Pricing: Oktopost does not publish its pricing online.

23. Statusbrew

Statusbrew is a tool for social media management, marketing, monitoring, and customer care.

Statusbrew provides live mention and conversation tracking, advanced keyword queries, sentiment analysis, lead profile building.

Pro: Statusbrew integrates with Google Drive, Slack, HubSpot, Salesforce, Zendesk, Dynamics 365, and other popular tools.

Con: Statusbrew is comparably more expensive than some of the similar listening tools on our list.

Pricing: Statusbrew starts at $89 per month when billed annually.

24. Sentione

Sentione is an AI-based social listening and conversational bot tool. Sentione provides tools for online data analytics, chatbots, voicebots, and other automation-powered customer service tools.

Sentione’s social listening capabilities include audience insights, comparative research, automated alerts, and AI-based anomaly detection.

Pro: Sentione’s social listening tool allows for unlimited keyword tracking.

Con: Sentione is quite a bit pricier than other listening tools.

Pricing: Sentione’s basic social listening plan starts at $300 per month.

Read More: 20+ Best Social Media Sentiment Analysis Tools For 2024

25. Determ

Determ is our final brand monitoring tool. Mediatoolkit provides website and social media monitoring on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, forums, blogs, and review platforms like TripAdvisor.

Determ offers deep search capabilities, including location and language filters. They also offer sentiment analysis, influencer tracking, and custom PDF reports.

Pro: Determ offers mobile and Slack notifications.

Con: For a tool that only provides social tracking, its pricing is quite high.

Pricing: Determ starts at 49€ per month.

Start your social listening analytics journey

If you’ve made it this far, you’re either the world’s biggest fan of social listening tool, or like to weigh all your options before selecting a social listening tool. We would recommend you Keyhole because let’s be honest. Social listening is just a tiny part of your marketing arsenal.

You need many more tools. But with Keyhole, you can track any trend, schedule to multiple poss, do competitive analysis along with social listening features.

The post 25 Best Social Listening Tools In 2024 (For Brand Monitoring) appeared first on Keyhole.

Imagine gaining deep insights into your audience’s desires, tracking sentiments towards your brand, and outshining your competitors in the aesthetic world of Instagram. 

Your favorite brands like FitBit, Nike, GoPro, and many more leverage social listening on Instagram to track audience sentiments, monitor brand mentions, and identify trends. By analyzing conversations, comments, and hashtags, brands gain valuable insights into customer preferences, feedback, and the competitive landscape. 

This insight helps in shaping their GTM strategies, content creation, and product development. From understanding audience sentiment towards specific campaigns to identifying potential influencers and engaging with their community, social listening on Instagram empowers brands to stay relevant, responsive, and connected in the dynamic world of social media.

Well, now you can do this too. Get ready to uncover the secrets of Instagram social listening as we tread deeper into various tried and tested strategies. 

We’ll show you how to gather your audience details and delve into their likes, needs, preferences, and brand expectations. 

Let’s get started. 

Why do you need an Instagram social listening guide?

Here are some benefits of creating an Instagram social listening guide:

1. Trendspotting made easy

Instagram is a trendsetter platform, and social listening allows you to stay updated on the latest trends, hashtags, and conversations within your industry. By detecting and leveraging trends, you can create timely and engaging content, increasing your brand’s visibility and engagement.

For example, the Barbie trend blew up the internet and following the footprints, Zara also took part in the trend and launched their Barbie Capsule collection on Instagram. 

2. Discover loyal brand advocates

Instagram is a hub for influencers, and social listening enables you to discover relevant influencers in your industry. By identifying influencers who align with your brand values and resonate with your target audience, you can establish authentic partnerships and amplify your reach.

So next time you struggle with your influencer shortlisting, social listening can help. You can opt for influencers that already make use of your brand and speak well about it. This will not only make their onboarding easy but chances to accomplish your campaign goals will get higher.

Here’s how Toni Bravo is seen giving a review about a lip balm from Topicals. This was posted on Topical’s Instagram page, which is sure to attract some serious high-intent views from Bravo’s 70K followers.  

3. Brand reputation on check

A comprehensive Instagram social listening guide helps you monitor and manage your brand’s reputation. By tracking mentions, sentiment, and feedback, you can address customer concerns, resolve issues promptly, and maintain a positive brand image.

Everlane shares their good reviews as posted on Instagram. This shows how the brand truly provides evidence of what it promises. Their customers love them and they leave no stone unturned in flaunting them, which works out well for their reputation. 

4. Competitive advantages in fingertips

With Instagram social listening, you can track and monitor your competitors’ activities, campaigns, and audience sentiment. This allows you to stay one step ahead, identify gaps in the market, and differentiate your brand from the competition.

You might chuckle at this one. If you look closely, this ad posted by a third party shows how Pepsi used Coke bottles for its Taste OK campaign. Needless to say, the clever mockery got them much attention.

Read More: How To Use The Instagram Link In Bio The Right Way 

Instagram social listening guide

Crafting a platform-specific listening guide is the need of the hour rather than following a random and general approach across all your channels. In this segment, we’ll help you create an Instagram-centric social listening blueprint. 

Here are some simple steps to get you started:

1. Set objectives

Start by defining your goals and objectives for social listening on Instagram. Whether you are looking to understand your audience better, track brand sentiment, identify influencers, monitor industry trends, or optimize your Instagram marketing strategies, establish your goals before diving into social listening.

You get started with a couple of major goals and get realistic with your target numbers by auditing your current performance and that of your competitors. 

2. Monitor conversations and keywords

Employ a social media analytics tool like Keyhole and customize searches to track relevant conversations, keywords, hashtags, and accounts on Instagram. Audit your industry at large. See what hashtags and keywords are most used by your target audience. 

For example, if you’re a yoga brand, you may want to monitor keywords such as #yoga, #yogalife, #meditation, or relevant yoga influencers and accounts. You can do this easily by adding multiple trackers on Keyhole. 

3. Get your hands on data

Use Keyhole’s analytics to gain insights on audience sentiment, engagement, reach, and sentiment analysis. Analyze the data to identify patterns and gain insights into your audience’s preferences, needs, and expectations. You can do so by following 3 easy steps:

• Login to your Keyhole account and head to Listening & Campaigns. 

• Click on the +Add New Tracker button and choose from Add Tracker to add a hashtag or Add Advanced Tracker to add a keyword. In this case, we are creating an advanced tracker. 

• Fill in the asked details in the respective fields. Such detailed information will help Keyhole to cut through the noise and collect data only from what’s relevant and important to you. Click on preview. 

And that’s all. Keyhole will quickly scan Instagram for conversations relevant to your chosen keywords and present you with a dashboard with detailed metrics, top posts, and sentiment related to your tracker. If satisfied, go ahead and save the tracker. 

You can keep coming back to the tracker list and check for more updates. See if your sentiments stay positive or if some PR actions need to be taken. Similarly, a glance at top posts will open avenues for more engagement. 

4. Watch out for  competitors

Just like you added trackers that are relevant to your brand, consider adding some from your competitors too. Check out their latest campaign and see how their followers are reacting. 

You can QuickTrends feature here and set two similar keywords/hashtags/brands here. We have taken Coke and Pepsi. You can set the date range and voila! You’ll get the number of posts with maximum impression and sentiment. 

Plus, you’ll be able to see trending topics and influential users. This has some seriously underrated untapped potential. Without putting your brand reputation at stake, you can gain much more insights and learn from your competitors’ wins and mistakes.  

5. Look for advanced insights 

Keyhole creates a graphical representation of the keyword’s engagement metrics and uncovers top posts and the most influential profiles around those conversations. Just add your Instagram profile and you’ll get more advanced insights related to your profiles. 

You get comprehensive visuals on metrics like sentiments, most frequent and engaging post types, optimal post length, and hashtag types. Based on the insights and data gathered from Keyhole, refine your Instagram marketing strategy. 

Use the recommendations provided by Keyhole to make informed decisions, and optimize your content, engagement tactics, and overall brand strategy.

6. Respond to brand mentions

To make the most out of your Instagram social listening, it’s crucial to prioritize quick responses to brand mentions. Engaging with positive mentions by expressing gratitude and responding with on-brand replies can create a favorable impression. 

Don’t overlook negative feedback – acknowledge any mistakes, offer support channels, and avoid defensiveness. Additionally, actively participate in relevant conversations even if your brand isn’t directly mentioned. By sharing valuable insights and demonstrating your expertise, you can raise brand awareness. 

Setting up mention trackers ensures you’re alerted to brand mentions, allowing you to respond promptly. By actively listening and engaging with your audience, you can build a positive brand reputation and foster strong customer relationships.

Read More: How To Schedule Instagram Posts: An In-depth Guide For 2024 

How to act on Instagram social listening data

Acting on Instagram social listening data is crucial to enhancing your brand reputation and increasing engagement with your audience. Here’s how you can utilize the insights you gain from social listening:

1. Provide support

Proactively monitor and address negative feedback in a timely and constructive manner. By promptly responding and offering assistance, you show your dedication to resolving any issues customers may have with your brand. 

Use Instagram social listening to identify concerns, show empathy, and provide alternative channels for support. This approach actively manages your brand’s reputation and nurtures customer loyalty.

2. Share insights

Actively participate in relevant conversations within your industry alongside monitoring brand mentions. Engage with users discussing topics related to your business, even if they haven’t mentioned your brand directly. 

This positions you as a knowledgeable authority in your field. By sharing valuable insights, tips, and expertise, you raise brand awareness and attract potential customers seeking reliable sources. Be authentic, helpful, and build trust through meaningful contributions to these conversations.

3. Measure results

Track key metrics like engagement rates, sentiment analysis, and audience demographics. This valuable data helps you assess the effectiveness of your social listening strategy and identify areas for improvement. 

Adapt your approach based on these insights to enhance your brand reputation, customer satisfaction, and overall business growth.

By applying these detailed steps with a positive mindset, you can effectively harness Instagram social listening data to inform your strategies, engage with your audience, address customer concerns, and continuously elevate your brand’s presence on the platform.

What’s next?

Congratulations! You’ve gained a comprehensive understanding of how Instagram social listening can elevate your brand’s reputation and engagement on the platform. To stay ahead in the race, it’s essential to conduct regular and diligent listening audits.

But don’t worry, the process doesn’t have to be overwhelming. With Keyhole in your fingertips, you can track the tiniest of details. From real-time updates on audience sentiments to automated scheduling, Keyhole is your safe place with all your social media marketing needs.

So, why wait? Book a demo of Keyhole today and harness the power of Instagram social listening to drive success for your brand. 

The post Understanding The Basics Of Instagram Social Listening appeared first on Keyhole.

But, as with any marketing channel, showing up without a strategy can be fruitless. 

With competitive and beloved brands dominating the space, it’s essential to lean on valuable insights to understand what resonates best with your target audience. 

That’s what this guide is here for.

Mastering social listening metrics and KPIs is about interpreting data and applying the lessons you’ve learned from it to continuously refine your social media marketing approach. 

If you’re ready to see your social media efforts pay off, keep reading. 

In this article, we share six helpful steps to help you master social listening metrics and KPIs.

Step 1: Define your goals 

What are you looking to achieve with social listening?

With this in mind, do you need to measure brand sentiment, track industry trends, or keep up with competitors? Clarify your objectives to guide your metrics selection.

For example, if you’re the CEO of a new startup company, you might be looking to generate leads to market free trials. 

In this case, you might consider tracking engagement metrics, brand sentiment, and conversions. 

You might also be interested in comparing your brand mentions against competitors and discovering relevant influencers to help you get the word out.

(We’ll expand on social listening metrics in the next section.)

Next, consider your business goals and overall social media goals. What does social media success mean to you for each of the channels you’re targeting?

For instance: 

“Our current business objective is to build out our email list with 30% more pre-qualified leads, obtain 25% more free trial users, and generate 15% more subscribers.”

“Our social media goals include:

• LinkedIn: Encourage virality with informative carousels and generate leads with webinar invitations. This will help us build our email list.
• Twitter: Build trust with thought leadership content and offer gated guides for more in-depth reading. This will help us build our email list.
• YouTube: Create product demos and self-service tutorial videos. Add free trial calls to action (CTAs) throughout the videos and in the video descriptions. This will help us obtain more free trial users.”

“To generate more free trials and subscribers, we’ll use lead-nurturing emails and retargeting campaigns.” 

Read More: 16 Social Listening Strategies To Incorporate Into Business Strategy(+ Recommended Tool)

Step 2: Finalize your metrics 

Depending on your goals, choose your final social media metrics that align with your objectives. 

Some popular social listening metrics to consider include:

Engagement rates

This social media KPI measures the level of interaction and participation with your social media content. It includes likes, comments, shares, and other forms of engagement. 

Use to: See how much your audience resonates with your social media content. 

Reach

This metric reveals how many unique users have seen your content or interacted with your social media profiles. 

Use to: Discover your audience size and brand visibility.

Sentiment analysis

This metric helps you analyze the sentiment or emotional tone behind brand mentions and conversations on social media. It categorizes them as positive, negative, or neutral.

Use to: Learn insights about public brand perception and customer sentiment.

Share of Voice (SoV)

SoV represents the proportion or percentage of online conversations and mentions your brand receives compared to your competitors — or the overall industry. 

Use to: Measure your brand’s visibility and influence in a specific market.

Customer satisfaction

This KPI helps you understand how happy or satisfied your customers are. Think ratings, reviews, or feedback.

Use to: Gauge the overall customer experience and identify areas for improvement.

Conversation share

This metric measures how much your brand contributes to online conversations and discussions within a particular topic or industry. 

Use to: See how much your brand participates and engages in social media conversations. 

Number of leads

This KPI helps you track how many potential customers your brand generates through social media activities. 

Use to: Measure your social media lead generation efforts.

Brand mentions (negative vs. positive)

This metric counts how many times people mention your brand on social media between negative and positive mentions. 

Use to: Discover insights into brand perception and reputation.

Conversion Rates (CR)

Conversion rate evaluates the percentage of social media users who take a desired action. This may include buying something, signing up for a newsletter, or filling out a form.

Use to: See how effective your social media campaigns are at driving conversions. 

Click-Through Rates (CTR)

CTR measures the percentage of users who click on a specific link or CTA on your social media posts.

Use to: Assess user engagement and interest in your content.

Step 3: Set benchmarks 

Establish benchmarks to measure your social media goals’ progress over time. 

Compare your metrics against previous campaigns or periods. 

This helps you set realistic benchmarks based on your own historical data — as well as track improvements or setbacks.

You should also compare your results against social media case studies or industry reports to see what’s achievable in your specific market. 

You can also track key industry influencers or thought leaders in your niche. Use their metrics as a point of comparison to assess your brand’s conversation share.

Keep an eye on your competitors’ social media analytics and activities, too. Use these insights to understand how your brand performs relative to others in your industry.

Finally, make sure your benchmarks are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound). 

For instance, if your current engagement rate is 2%, you might set a benchmark to increase it to 4% within the next three months.

Step 4: Choose the right social listening tool

Invest in a social media listening tool that provides accurate data in real-time, like Keyhole.  You’ll use this tool to track metrics, monitor conversations, and generate reports.

Loved by over 100,000  agencies, global brands, and nonprofits, Keyhole has all of the features you need to:

• Benchmark your social media performance against competitors
• Uncover the sentiment behind every brand mention
• See what people are saying about your brand
• Analyze campaign performance in real-time
• Discover top social media influencers
• Track profile growth and engagement
• Conduct market research
• Analyze influencer ROI 
• Follow the latest trends

Step 5: Analyze and interpret data 

Regularly review your social listening metrics to uncover trends, patterns, and customer insights. 

Look for connections between your social media efforts and business outcomes.

For instance, you might notice that informative carousels with webinar CTAs on LinkedIn have been helping you generate more qualified leads than other forms of content. 

On Instagram, you might notice that short, educational videos with free demo CTAs help you generate the most leads. 

Read More: 5 Ways To Use Social Listening For Competitive Analysis

Step 6: Optimize your strategy

Leverage the insights you’ve gained from your social listening metrics to refine your social media strategy. 

Identify areas for improvement, adjust your content, and engage with your audience based on the data.

For instance, if you learned that you get more positive brand mentions when you lock arms with popular influencers, consider increasing your influencer budget and campaigns. 

If you generate way more conversions on Twitter than on other social media platforms, consider increasing your efforts there.

If thought leadership content boosts your engagement rates and CTR way more than other content types, consider focusing more time on that style of content.

Wrap up

Social listening is an ongoing process. 

As you track your metrics and measure goal progress, be sure to implement everything you learn. Continuously evaluate and refine your strategy to stay ahead of the game.

And remember, if you need a tool to cut the manual labor for you, you’ll love Keyhole.  

Here’s to your success!

Author Bio

Ioana specializes in Business, Digital Marketing, and SaaS content for B2B brands. Born in Transylvania and raised in Texas, Ioana has been living the digital nomad life since 2016. From Barcelona to Puerto Vallarta to her new abode in windy Oklahoma City, you’ll never know where Ioana will head off next.

The post Mastering Social Listening Metrics & KPIs: A Comprehensive Guide For Digital Success appeared first on Keyhole.

You have a thrilling product, a rabid fanbase, and a growing arsenal of social media platforms to connect the two.

Sure, you can post content all day long, but how do you evaluate the success of one sports media campaign versus another?

How do you prove your sports marketing agency is better-equipped to land that contract? How do you justify your marketing strategy to your superiors? And how do you prove that what you’re doing aligns with your business goals?

In other words, how do you measure the ROI and success of your sports marketing campaigns?

In this post, we’ll explain why you should be measuring the ROI on your sports marketing campaigns, what metrics to track, and case studies on metric tracking in sports media.

• Why you should be measuring the ROI of your sports marketing campaigns
• The most important metrics to track
• Example use cases of these key metrics
• Case studies of effective metric tracking in sports media
• Tools to help you track these metrics

Let’s go!

Why should you measure the ROI of your sports marketing campaigns?

Even if you have a product that sells itself—like a successful sports team—blindly posting content for the sake of posting content is only going to get you so far.

By setting specific, measurable goals before embarking on any sports media campaign, you’ll be able to identify what went well, what went wrong, and what you can improve for next time.

Start with the question:

“What am I trying to accomplish?”

Is it growing your team’s social following? Is it attracting new sponsors or investors? Making existing sponsors satisfied with their investment? Creating new partnerships? Recruiting or tracking influencers? Raising awareness for a cause?

By identifying your goals in advance, you’ll know what data is needed to prove your campaign’s value to any relevant stakeholders, whether that’s your boss, a sponsor, or your own sense of accomplishment. Moreover, if you’re also using SMS marketing campaigns, email newsletters, and banner ads, this step will help determine how effective your social strategy was among others.

Once you’ve picked a goal, decide what metrics you’ll use to measure success and pick specific targets.

For example, if your goal is increasing followers, by what percentage, and over what time period? If your goal is impressing a sponsor, you may want to set targets for total reach and fan sentiment.

Not sure which metrics you should be tracking? Don’t worry, because we’re covering that next.

Which sports marketing metrics should you track?

Let’s jump into which social media metrics you should be tracking to understand your ROI, whether you’re measuring posts, particular accounts, hashtags, or your audience.

1. Visibility metrics

No matter what your goals are, it’s likely you’ll be invested in the overall visibility of your campaign.

• Reach

Reach is the number of unique users that have seen a particular post, keyword, or hashtag.

For example, if one account with 10,000 followers posts your hashtag, that hashtag has a potential reach of up to 10,000 unique users. The same account posting again on that hashtag would not increase the potential reach.

If your content has broad reach, that means it’s making its way to a large volume of users. It’s a sign that your content is being broadly shared by influential accounts.

• Impressions

Impressions is the total number of times the piece of content has been viewed (similar to page views on your website).

In contrast to reach, the same user seeing the same piece of content twice would count as two impressions.

High impressions are either a result of high reach or high repeat engagement from a core follower base.

• Follower Count

Of course, you’ll also be invested in the number of followers to your sports social media accounts, whether it’s on a single platform or across platforms.

By growing your own follower base, you can directly impact the potential reach of your own posts, relying less on influencers and shares to have your message heard.

You may also need to track the follower counts of your sponsors or your team’s athletes.

You can also track your follower growth rate, calculated as follows:

Example use case: Sponsored hashtag monitoring

Measuring hashtag analytics will be extremely important to you if your goal is to track the success of a sponsored hashtag.

Take #SuitingUpTogether for example: a Toyota-sponsored hashtag used by the LA Lakers on Twitter, Instagram, and various other platforms.

To prove the success of the sponsorship to Toyota, the Lakers could share metrics like reach, impressions, and increases in @ToyotaSoCal’s follower count over time. 

2. Engagement metrics

Beyond pure visibility, you should also track how engaged your audience is with your posts.

• Average engagement

Average engagement measures the average number of likes, comments, and shares each of your posts gets. 

Average Engagement Calculation: (likes + comments + shares) / (# posts)

This is an indicator of the volume of interactions your posts get.

• Average engagement rate

Average engagement rate is your average engagement per follower.

Average Engagement Rate Calculation: (average likes per post + average comments per post + average shares by post) / (# followers)

This ratio is more telling of the quality of your content and/or how active your followers are. If you have a lot of followers, but low engagement, you may need to step up your content game!

• Optimal post time & post length

Once you have visibility and engagement metrics, social media monitoring tools can start to give you feedback on what type of posts are providing the most value.

A tool like Keyhole can give you data like the optimal time of day to post, what type of content formats are performing best, and the length of text that gets the most engagement. 

Example use case: Game hashtags

Game hashtags are known to have tons of engagement from fans.

Whether it’s a hashtag you created for a team, or you’re joining in on a grassroots hashtag created by fans, there are sure to be hundreds, thousands, or even millions of posts on that game’s hashtag.

But how do you post on that hashtag to gain the most engagement?

Here’s an example of a hashtag, #nbafinals2019, with a game specific clip.

By analyzing the average engagement rate of posts at different times, you can identify the perfect time to post during games. Is it at tip off? Half time? During the intermission? 20 minutes before the game? As the clock winds down?

Only by measuring these metrics will you know for sure.

3. Sentiment analysis

Quantity doesn’t always mean quality. Posts, teams, or athletes can go viral for the wrong reasons—so you have to look beyond reach and engagement.

Sentiment analysis allows you to track the number of positive vs. negative posts for a given hashtag or keyword.

By tracking sentiment analysis, you’ll be able to prevent and manage PR crises, better understand your audience, and keep a finger on the pulse of your audience’s mood.

Example use case: Player sentiment

Let’s say you have a video campaign planned where you’re featuring an athlete in your organization in each video.

If bad news breaks that day about that player, you don’t want to add fuel to the fire by sharing a mistimed feel-good post about that player—especially if that post is tied to one of your sponsors.

By using social listening and sentiment analysis tools, you can make sure you’re avoiding any intended consequences.

Here’s a hilarious piece of player-driven content from Liverpool FC. But they wouldn’t want to post it soon after one of the players in the video made a costly mistake for their team.

On the flip side, if a player is trending for positive reasons, it may be the perfect time to pull an older piece of content on that player out of the archives.

4. Audience analytics

Your sports social media campaigns will only be made stronger the more you learn about your audience.

By using the native analytics tools in the social media platforms you’re using for your campaign, you can track audience metrics like:

• Countries
• Language
• Gender
• Keywords
• Devices

Example use case: Multi-lingual campaigns

By using audience analytics, you may learn you have a growing demographic that you should tailor more of your content to.

Because they’re located in a southern US state with many Spanish speakers, the Arizona Coyotes launched Spanish versions of all of their social media accounts in 2019.

They would have been able to justify that decision in advance by using audience analytics on their English-only accounts.

5. Influencer analytics

Engaging with your team’s top fans is an amazing way to make fans for life.

By inviting influencers into your sports marketing strategy, you’ll give them a platform to share their authentic passion that’s sure to resonate with your wider audience.

Example use case: Targeting new demographics

By using Keyhole’s influencer tracking tools, you’ll be able to identify, compare, and measure potential and existing influencers with all the metrics we’ve already mentioned above.

For example, if you’re looking to reach a demographic that your audience analytics say you’re not currently reaching, you can seek out influencers whose content clearly resonates with that exact demographic.

Other business metrics

1. Actual ROI

Of course, the truest and simplest way to track your ROI is to track the financial cost of your strategy compared to the overall gain of your strategy.

But tracking your financial gains isn’t always easy.

If you know the financial value of a single follower, you could estimate revenue gained from gained followers.

Or if you can link landing or renewing a particular sponsorship to your marketing campaign, you can consider that your financial win.

2. Website analytics

You can also turn to your website analytics to prove the effectiveness of your campaign. Did your website traffic go up after your campaign started? Did it go down once it stopped? 

Linking your marketing campaigns to other metrics outside of social media shouldn’t be ignored!

Sports marketing ROI case studies

1. The Special Olympics

The Special Olympics are a huge sports endeavor—with nearly 5 million athletes with intellectual disabilities participating worldwide.

At that scale, tracking the ROI of their social media campaigns is a tall order.

Ryan Eades, Director of Digital and Social Engagement at the Special Olympics turned to Keyhole to track the ROI of their social media efforts.

They sorted their audience by follower count and engagement to identify their most influential ambassadors.

Once they linked up with model and actress Brooklyn Decker, they used Keyhole to track engagements and conversions linked directly to her posts.

2. SportQuake, the data-driven sports marketing agency

Sports marketing agencies have the most to gain from tracking ROI.

As they’re not in-house employees, they have to prove the potential and actual benefits of every campaign they run for any organization.

They need as much data as they can get.

SportQuake is one of those agencies. They are often in a position where they’re trying to recruit influencers to aid in marketing campaigns.

But they look beyond follower counts. They want to make sure the influencers they work with are actually likable.

That’s why SportQuake uses Keyhole’s sentiment analysis metrics to monitor the audience sentiment towards a particular influencer—allowing them to have a data-driven approach to choosing the right fit for their campaigns.

3. MELT Atlanta’s cool approach to analytics

MELT Atlanta is a sports marketing agency that connects major brands with top athletes and athletic events.

For example, their most recent project is a marketing campaign connecting Coca Cola with athletes in the 2020 PyeongChang Winter Olympics.

To MELT, tracking the success of their campaigns is crucial to proving ROI for their clients.

“Having a reliable number of impressions and reach for the hashtag that we are able to get within seconds of logging in has definitely solved our biggest pain point,” said Jenna Cook, their Digital & Social Media Manager.

With Keyhole, they track brand accounts, athlete accounts, hashtags, their most engaging posts, best posting times, follower insights, and more.

By having an easily accessible dashboard with their most crucial metrics, they can easily answer whether or not their clients are seeing ROI on their campaigns within seconds.

How to use Keyhole to track your sports marketing ROI

No matter what your goals are for your marketing campaign, you’re going to need to prove your campaign’s effectiveness with hard data.

By using Keyhole’s advanced social listening tools like hashtag analytics, influencer monitoring, keyword tracking, sentiment analysis, and more, you’ll have a wide range of metrics to prove the success of your marketing campaigns.

Related Articles:

Influencer Marketing ROI: Calculate ROI and Maximize Your Social Impact

Media Monitoring 101: What It Is And How It Works[Tools Included]

The post Sports Marketing: Tracking Social Media ROI, Influencers, And Engagement appeared first on Keyhole.

Most importantly, it helps brands truly understand and connect with their audiences and customers. We’d go as far as saying that a good social listening practice is the key ingredient in having happy customers and an engaged audience.

Ever wonder how you develop a winning product or service? By giving your customers what they want or need, of course. 

And how can you find out what your audience wants and needs? Two words: Social Listening.

What is Social Listening?

Social listening is the process of monitoring online conversations and turning them into powerful insights that drive your business strategy. The key word here is “insights”, which are attained from online conversations. Social media listening consists in identifying and analyzing social media activity around the topic of interest.

For instance, every modern business, regardless of its size, needs to know what existing and ideal customers say about: 

• their brand
• their product or service
• their campaigns
• specific keywords and topics
• their competition

What’s the difference between Social Listening vs. Social Monitoring?

The main difference between social listening & social media monitoring is that Social Listening focuses on those conversations outside of your control (user-generated, competitors’, industry leaders and product-related content). On the other hand, Social Media Monitoring focuses on tracking and analyzing how audiences respond to your content.

Unlike social media monitoring, social listening helps brands understand not only what your audience talks about online, but also the “why” behind all those conversations. 

Here are some differences between the two:

• Social media monitoring is a daily activity that focuses on individual social media mentions, while social listening is a strategic process that focuses on identifying patterns and trends.
• Social media monitoring is the process of tracking and collecting the data – and social listening is the process of analyzing the data and extracting the meaning from it.
• Social media monitoring is reactive – it’s about monitoring conversations and reacting to comments, complaints, or praise in a timely manner. Social listening on the other hand is proactive. Its end goal is to provide businesses with audience insights that can help companies develop a more informed strategy. 

In other words, social media monitoring is the first step in the social listening process. The figures and statistics gathered through monitoring of online channels help in noticing patterns and identifying gaps in your content.

However, social listening as an inhibitive part of digital adoption and goes a step further and turns the raw data into insights that you can use to spot opportunities to develop and grow your business. It can help consolidate your position in existing markets, expand into new verticals, or improve customer care and grow your brand loyalty.

Importance of Social Listening

To succeed in the modern business landscape, companies have to adopt a customer-centric strategy. Being customer-centric (or customer-driven) simply means getting closer to your customer in order to understand what they need and expect from your brand.

Knowing and delivering exactly what your customer wants is the best possible user experience.

Social listening helps you understand what gets your customers out of bed in the morning and what keeps them up at night. 

It gives you insight into their expectations, the challenges they face every day, and their biggest pain points. It shows you what you do right, as well as if there are some areas where you could improve. 

It also gives you a clear understanding of your competitors: why customers buy from them, what they don’t do so well, and what gaps you can exploit.

Next, we’ll go through some of the benefits of an effective social listening strategy. This will give you a better understanding of how you can operationalize social listening within your organization.

Benefit 1: Use Social listening to develop an informed roadmap

Great products solve real customer problems. You can couple data received from social listening with AI insights to get what those problems are.

Start by asking yourself: What do your customers expect and need from your product or service? What are some features that could make their experience better?

For example, if you notice customers praising your customer support and care online – you can use industry-leading support as one of the differentiators that separate you from your competitors.

However, you might also notice that people mention that there is a high learning curve and they need additional support during setup. 

You can use this information to organize additional group training sessions around specific features or workflows. In the long term, you can create a more intuitive experience with onboarding checklist within your product with in-app guidance, an online help center, and so on.

Then, you might use this feedback and introduce new integrations or add features that are currently missing.

Benefit 2: Use Social Listening to gather competitor intel

Great brands keep tabs on their competitors.

The more you know about your competitors’ positioning, reputation, upcoming launches, and so on, the easier it will be to differentiate your brand, exploit gaps and adopt best practices.

Social listening helps you keep tabs on your competitors and stay in the know about the features they’re developing, their brand sentiment, online reputation, things that are working well for your audience, as well as new channels and formats they’re exploring.

Benefit 3: Social listening to understand your consumer better

Your ideal customers share their challenges, ask for advice, and help each other online. Monitor online conversations to learn what are the pain points of your audience.

Then use this knowledge to develop solutions to these problems, or craft marketing messaging that resonates and inspires action.

Benefit 4: Social listening to find inspiration for new content

We already mentioned you can use your ideal customers’ own words to describe their needs and your solution.

Social listening also helps you track trending topics and conversations that can serve as inspiration for your next evergreen and topical content pieces.

Benefit 5: Social listening to manage crisis and maintain your reputation

Being online and being seen comes with many risks – including bad reviews, unsatisfied clients, or even unfair competition against your business.

Social listening helps you identify potential crisis events and handle them before they escalate and hurt your business.

Benefit 6: Social listening to find influencers and brand ambassadors

Social listening can help you surface influential individuals among people engaging in conversations around topics and keywords related to your niche. In fact, these influencers may already use your product, or they could be opinion leaders who are well-known and respected in your industry.

Also, social listening can surface when influencers or celebrities are mentioning your product or following your accounts. Even if there isn’t a potential partnership in sight, you can still benefit from this unintentional endorsement.

Either way, social listening makes it easy to find the right-fit influencers for different campaigns or successfully launch a brand ambassador program.

Benefit 7: Social listening for lead generation

Did you know that there is someone at this moment who is already looking for a product like yours?

Social listening will help you find customers at the consideration and purchase stages. 

Many are already on social media asking their peers for recommendations and using social listening can help you sell or engage in an informed manner.

Benefit 8: Social listening to improve SEO

We already mentioned how social listening can help you determine exactly which keywords your audience is using to find your products, which should inform your content strategy. Using your audience’s own language and terms can have a huge impact on your SEO.

Also, social listening can help you find link-less mentions as well mention opportunities to build links to your website, which will impact your SEO.

Keeping an eye on the most influential voices in your industry or niche can also surface opportunities for guest-posting, and co-marketing opportunities which will increase your website traffic.

5 Steps to create a social listening strategy

By now, it’s clear that the question isn’t whether you should use social listening to power up your business, but how you can create a social listening strategy that delivers value across all departments in your organization. 

Here are 5 steps to kick off a successful social listening strategy and prove value fast:

Step 1 – Decide who owns social listening and what goals it will support

The first step is deciding who will be in charge of building and scaling your social listening strategy. 

Making sure there’s someone that owns this as a project is crucial, as it will ensure you dedicate time and resources to social listening within your organization. Moreover, you can use enterprise project management software to further streamline the process and collaborate effectively.

Once you allocate the responsibilities and know who will own your social listening strategy – you need to decide what goals you’d like social listening to support. 

As we already mentioned, a robust social media listening strategy can help you achieve multiple benefits. Depending on who owns the project, you may decide to support different departments and goals. Some of these can include:

• Product development
• Product marketing and sales
• Demand generation
• Customer success or customer service
• HR 
• PR

If you’re just getting started with social listening, it would be wise to pick only one or two main goals and stakeholders across the organization. Once you’ve proven value and learned what works for your teams, you can scale your social listening strategy.

Step 2: Set up your social listening tool

To create a social listening strategy that’s scalable and proves value fast, you need to pick a social listening tool.  Manual topic monitoring and analysis is nearly impossible due to the high amount of conversations that happen online every day. Unless you operate in a very small niche, tracking all conversations across social media platforms, indexing, and analyzing them would be incredibly difficult. Here are some things to consider when selecting a social listening tool:

• Social platforms you want to track
• Social listening goals and metrics to track them
• Automated solutions: tracking, reporting, alerts, etc.
• ROI

There are plenty of tools to choose from – we’ve listed a few in the next section.

Step 3: Pick your topics and top-priority platforms

Next, you need to pick the right keywords, as well as the social media platforms you’ll monitor. To do this you need to know your audience and the platforms they use. Be as specific as possible when picking your topic to get highly relevant insights. 

It’s worth noting that you probably won’t pick the best topics right off the bat. Just like with any other new initiative, you need to get started, gather some initial data, review performance, and refine your topics as the data comes in.

And even the topics you initially pick give you great results, make sure you keep refining your strategy and testing different keywords and topics to find the most relevant conversations for your brand.

Step 4: Establish your analytics process

At this point, you’ve laid the groundwork: you know what tool you’ll use, what topics you’ll track, what goals you’ll support, and you’ve established ownership.

Next, you need to establish your analytics and social reporting process.

Decide what you’ll report, how frequently and who needs to be kept in the loop. This will depend on the goals you’ve decided to support with social listening.

Then, make a decision about what will be the primary means of communication: you may decide to send weekly reports to key stakeholders, set up monthly meetings for review of insights, or include social listening insights in departmental meetings. 

Step 5: Get started

If you followed the first four steps, you’ll have a fully working social listening function that’s linked to specific goals and stakeholders. 

As mentioned, your initial framework won’t be your final framework. 

Over time, you’ll notice areas of inefficiency and will improve your strategy. You’ll get additional people involved, expand the topics you monitor, and create an efficient process to derive insights and plan the next steps. 

But to be able to improve, first, you need to get started.

Top Social Listening Tools

1. Keyhole

Keyhole is a social listening and social media analytics platform trusted by brands like H&M, Mashable, Google, and Alibaba to name a few. It tracks conversations on social channels like Twitter and Instagram, as well as blogs, forums, and news sites. 

With Keyhole, you’re able to track relevant topics and conversations online using keywords and hashtags with a boolean search. You can also, monitor accounts from competitors, influencers, and industry leaders. 

On top of that, with Keyhole’s unlimited publishing and scheduling features, you can manage your activities across different channels from a single platform.

Apart from looking at your performance in isolation, Keyhole also allows you to keep tabs on your competitors. It’s easy to compare your social media performance with that of competitors with group tracking for real-time benchmarking.

Finally, Keyhole allows you to look at your own historical data.

Price: Custom

Read More: Mastering Social Listening Metrics & KPIs: A Comprehensive Guide For Digital Success

2. Google Alerts

If you’re just starting out and want to dip your toes into social listening before you make an investment, you can try Google Alerts.

As its name suggests, Google Alerts allows you to set up alerts for specific keywords and get notified when the keyword you’ve chosen gets mentioned online. Google Alerts supports different languages. 

It’s important to note that Google Alerts doesn’t offer advanced features and insights, and it’s more of a social media monitoring than a social listening tool. However, it’s completely free and easy to use, so it is definitely worth trying.

Having some monitoring tool in place is better than not knowing anything about important online conversations after all!

Price: Free 

3. Hootsuite

Social media management software Hootsuite also offers social listening capabilities.

You can use Hootsuite to track mentions and listen to relevant conversations – as well as segment conversations related to paid and owned media.

Also, Hootsuite measures and compares your social media performance against that of competitors.

A big drawback is the price, as the social listening features are included in higher-tiered packages only.

Price: Business plans start at $599 per month

4. Awario

Awario is a web monitoring tool that crawls 13 billion pages every day to get important data about your audience. These insights include a number of mentions, sentiment analysis, top influencers across different channels, and status/progress analytics.

It also offers a social media customer service that lets you be there right when your customers need your help.

Providing you with an intelligent alert system, the tool lets you know as soon as an important conversation starts gaining traction.

This helps you prioritize customer support initiatives based on the impact they can have on your business.

Awario is great for monitoring brand mentions and keeping track of online conversations. And it makes it possible to track unlinked brand mentions all over the web.

However, users report a steep learning curve. Also, the price can escalate quickly.

Price: Not provided.

Read More: 8 Social Listening Examples: How Brands Are Thriving Digital Landscape

People talking about you, are you listening?

Your audience is talking all the time. They’re having conversations about things they need, challenges they’re facing day-to-day, as well their opinions on particular topics. They give each other advice and review your product, as well as your competitors’ products. 

By tuning in to these conversations, you’ll be able to get invaluable insight into customer sentiment and issues they need to solve.

You’ll also be able to spot opportunities as they arise and generate ideas about content, product development and improvement, customer support initiatives, and so on. 

Social listening tools like Keyhole help you streamline social media management and derive insights from data quickly. Keyhole includes campaign tracking, influencer marketing, social listening as well as social scheduling capabilities – all in a single platform.

Our customers report that Keyhole saves them 5 hours a week on gathering and reporting data, which translates into over $7,000 saved every year. 

The post What Is Social Listening & Why You Need It In 2024 appeared first on Keyhole.

The very thought makes you sweat, isn’t it? You can escape this hell of a situation with media monitoring. 

There are so many buzzwords around this topic, but they are ultimately the pieces of the same puzzle. The term “media monitoring” specifically is when you collect online tidbits that have mentioned a concerned topic. 

Basically, the process is all about keeping track of what people are saying about a company, brand, or product in the media. This encompasses social media, news articles, blogs, and other online sources.

If you’re a big fan of Louis Vuitton and want to know what people say about their latest collection. By capitalizing on media monitoring tools, you can track brand mentions on social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram and news articles and blog posts that mention the brand. 

This can help you get a better sense of how people are reacting to the brand’s latest collection and what they like or don’t like about it. 

Sounds way too simple? Well, the most novice mistake you can make is to track random keywords, thus getting inaccurate results. 

So let’s see how you can nail that. But before that, let’s shed some light on why this process is so crucial in the first place.

Why should you actively pursue media monitoring?

Media monitoring is beneficial for individuals and big brands alike because it allows them to track and analyze mentions of their brand, competitors, and industry keywords across various media channels, including social media, news outlets, blogs, and forums. 

1.  Reputation management

Brand monitoring on media looks after your online reputation, so you respond to negative feedback or complaints in a breeze. For example, run a small online business selling handmade jewelry. You can use media monitoring to track social mentions of your brand and respond to customer feedback or complaints.

2.  Crisis management

Media monitoring detects any potential crises before they escalate. Even influencers can track negative comments or rumors about their personal branding online and respond to them before they damage their reputation.

3.  Competitor analysis

Media monitoring spies on competitors’ online activity so you stay ahead of the curve. If you are into the gifting business, you can see what offers your competitors are running and come up with a lucrative campaign yourself.

4.  Influencer outreach

Want to know which influencers can help you promote your brand or product? Media monitoring will do that. Say you own a line of beauty products; you can use media monitoring tools to find other beauty bloggers with a similar audience and reach out to them for influencer marketing campaigns.

5.  Market research

Media monitoring is a great source for insights into target audiences and industry trends. You get to know what’s in the hype and current trend. This way, you can run highly engaging campaigns and lure in more leads.

Tip: Before you start monitoring, define your goals and objectives. What are you hoping to achieve with media monitoring? It will help you focus your efforts and measure your success.

What should you monitor exactly?

Knowing what and how to monitor can make you the pioneer of your industry. The projectile of your brand popularity can be measured by tracking the right keywords at the right time. 

You must know these basic keyword categorizations to separate the wheat from the chaff. 

1. Brand-relevant keywords

No matter how well you are doing at your business, you must monitor your brand first. The word “first” means you must know where you stand before checking out your competitors.

Also, it will help you know more about the people talking about your brand. This way, you can optimize your brand profile and content better. You would stumble across your biggest supporters and detractors too.

Here’s what all you can track:

• Your brand name
• Product names
• Variations and misspellings of your brand name
• Key products
• Industry terms
• Branded hashtags and mentions 

Tip: Don’t limit yourself to just one channel. Monitor social media, news outlets, blogs, forums, and other channels to get a complete picture of your brand’s online presence.

2. Competitors’ related keywords

Next is to check out your competitors; no matter whether you have just entered the field or you are the pioneer already, you have to know your competitors.

From the big fish to newcomers, keep an eye on everyone, and you must know what they are exactly up to and whether they can be the biggest threat to your business.

Here’s what you can monitor:

• Industry terms 
• Popular product names
• Brand names in the same space as yours
• Campaign hashtags and mentions 

3. Trendy keywords

Always keep yourself up to date with the new trends. This way, you can compete better in the stifling brand race. 

Have important dates or occasions coming up; make it a point to monitor them too. People like to associate themselves with woke brands and show an active interest in things happening day in and day out. 

Tip: You can use the QuickTrends feature of Keyhole. From your share of voice in the market to monitoring a trend analysis over a custom time period, QuickTrends is simply astounding. 

Next up, let’s find out which metrics matter the most when it comes to media monitoring. 

Read More: 6 Must-Have Keyword Monitoring Tools For Every Marketing Strategy

What metrics should you look at? 

Thanks to the endless tools available, getting lost in the ocean of metrics is quite easy. Though additional insights are always welcome, here are the most fundamental metrics you need to capture when it comes to media monitoring: 

1.  Mentions

The number of times your brand is mentioned in the media determines your mentions. If your company is mentioned in a news article or a social media post, that’s a mention. You should keep track of the number of mentions you receive over time to see if there are any trends or changes.

2.  Sentiment

The tone or feeling expressed in the media mentions about your brand is what typically refers to sentiment analysis. For example, the sentiment is positive if someone writes a positive review about your product. If someone complains about your customer service, the sentiment is negative. Watch out for the sentiment of your media mentions to see how people are talking about your brand.

3.  Reach

Reach reveals the number of people who see your media mentions. If your brand is mentioned in a popular news article, the reach could be in the millions. Keep a tab on the reach of your media mentions to see how many people are being exposed to your brand.

4.  Engagement

Engagement is simply the number of people who interact with your media mentions. Prioritize  tracking of the engagement of your media mentions to see how people are interacting with your brand.

5.  Influencers

Influencers are popular for their large following and can influence the opinions of others. Know which influencers mention your brand or your competitors, as they can have a significant impact on your brand’s reputation and reach.

6.  Top keywords

These are words or phrases that are relevant to your brand or industry. You should monitor keywords related to your brand to see how often they’re mentioned in the media and to identify new opportunities for engagement.

7.  Locations

These are the list of locations where your media mentions are coming from. Note from where your brand is being mentioned to see where your audience is located and to tap into new markets.

8.  Type of media

This corresponds to the type of media where your brand is being mentioned, such as social media, news articles, or blogs. Watching these closely will disclose what type of media your brand is getting the most attention from.

Head over to the next segment as we assess the top 3 media monitoring tools.

3 Best media monitoring tools for all your tracking hassles

Tracking and analyzing media coverage every day is a pressing issue for PR professionals and smaller brands. It’s tough to decide which tool is worth your bucks.

To make the entire decision-making affair easier, have a look at the following list. 

1. Keyhole

Pricing: Custom

Keyhole is a media monitoring tool that has gained a reputation as one of the best tools available. One of its key strengths is its ability to track hashtags, keywords, and trends across multiple social media platforms in real-time. 

Just add your trackers under the social listening tab and sit back. Keyhole will gather all information and crucial metrics in a shareable dashboard. Some of the insights related to online presence, engagement, and sentiment analysis.

The user-friendly interface with easy customization deserves a big shoutout. You can filter data by date, location, language, and media type, making it easy for users to focus on the most relevant data for their needs.

Keyhole levels up its monitoring game by offering QuickTrends. Without running the risk of losing your tracking limits with high-volume keywords, you can run a quick test by first monitoring a keyword using QuickTrends. 

From charting trend analysis to comparing your brand with competitors, this is a quick way to know which keywords are worth tracking in the long run.

Why is Keyhole a must-have media monitoring tool?

1. Schedule unlimited posts on Keyhole and find your best time to post on social media.
2. You can track keywords from news, blogs, forums, and social media platforms in one place. 
3. You eliminate the risk of running out of monthly tracking limits with QuickTrends. 
4. You can analyze your social media profiles and even go for optimization. 
5. It analyzes sentiments of tracked keywords so you get the general performance overview. 
6. You can manage several social media campaigns at once. 
7. Generate custom reports on your overall social media presence. 

Tip: Use Boolean search operators to create complex search queries that filter out irrelevant mentions and focus on the ones that matter.

Luke W

Keyhole has a great user-friendly dashboard with thorough metrics and a great reporting layout that makes it useful for reporting up. I fully recommend it and we use it year round! 

Fatima M

The dashboard encapsulates a detailed overview of your entire campaign and mentions all details and KPIs that you need. The metrics given on keyhole are unmatched and help us in setting KPIs and measuring results accordingly. The layout is also very user friendly and everything is exportable so that’s wonderful. 

2. Brand24

Pricing: $79/mo – $399/mo

Brand24 is one of the many media monitoring tools that is highly effective. It offers a wide variety of features that helps you in making your everyday task at ease. 

This tool collects data mainly from social media platforms, podcasts, newsletters, blogs and forums, and news sites.It also offers a wide range of filters, including sentiment, influence, or interaction type. 

Pros

1. Brand24 lets you set up customizable alerts for specific keywords or mentions. 
2. You can also track influencers who mention your brand or industry keywords.

Lisa S

I love that I can find mentions of my brand or name on social media and on blogs and the web. It’s easy to set up and have the reports emailed daily or weekly. The mobile app is awesome too so you can respond to mentions even quicker. 

Cons

1. It only stores data for up to a year, which can make it difficult to analyze long-term trends.
2. Brand24’s sentiment analysis may not always accurately reflect the tone or feeling expressed in a social media mention. 
3. Limited capabilities in lower plans. 

Brea W

The UI is pretty rough – the site feels crowded and sometimes it’s difficult to navigate. It’s rather expensive for what’s being offered and you don’t get to create many projects for the lower price tiers. 

Tip: There are many media monitoring tools available, so choose the one that best suits your needs and budget. Look for features like sentiment analysis, real-time alerts, and customizable reports.

Read More: How To Create An Efficient Instagram Hashtag Strategy

3. Meltwater

Pricing: Custom

With over 20 years of experience, Meltwater is a powerful media intelligence tool. It streamlines tasks by monitoring social media, podcasts, newsletters, blogs, forums, and news sites. Featuring filters for sentiment, influence, and interaction types, it provides efficient data analysis and comprehensive coverage, keeping you ahead in the dynamic media landscape.

Pros

1. Meltwater covers a broad spectrum of media channels, providing an extensive overview of online discussions and trends.
2. The platform’s diverse filters for sentiment, influence, and interaction types enable users to tailor their data analysis for more meaningful insights.

Shantel C

My team benefits from saving time while searching for media coverage and Meltwater has great reporting analytics to show each client the amazing weekly progress.

Cons

1. Meltwater’s pricing may be on the higher side, posing a potential challenge for smaller businesses or individuals with limited budgets.
2. While user-friendly, Meltwater may have a learning curve for new users.

Lizette O

On the downside, while Meltwater offers a wealth of features, the richness of its offerings can be somewhat overwhelming for new users, and there is a learning curve involved in utilizing the platform to its full potential. Additionally, the cost may be a consideration for smaller organizations or departments with limited budgets, as the comprehensive services provided come at a premium price point. 

Final Words

In a world where online presence can make or break your brand, media monitoring is not a choice but a necessity. By tracking your brand, competitors, and industry keywords across various media channels, make informed decisions to improve your overall brand awareness strategy. 

If you’re looking for an easy-to-use tool that packs a punch, we highly recommend giving Keyhole a try. With features like real-time alerts, sentiment analysis, and customizable reports, Keyhole is the perfect solution for anyone looking to up their media monitoring game. 

Don’t miss out on this opportunity to take your online presence to the next level!

The post Media Monitoring 101: What It Is And How It Works[Tools Included] appeared first on Keyhole.