Information is power, and unless you’re constantly gathering data, you’ll be in the dark on key shifts that could help your business soar or, at the very least, prevent disaster. 

Thankfully, there’s a simple, free option you can use to keep one finger on your industry’s pulse at all times. 

Enter: Google Alerts. 

Google Alerts is a free service that you can use to monitor specific search terms. You receive results directly in your Gmail inbox at whatever frequency you decide. Not only is this service 100% free, but it’s entirely customizable to your preferences. 

But, like most data initiatives, you’ll get the most out of Google Alerts when you understand how to optimize the process. 

That’s what this ultimate guide is for. In today’s guide, we’ll teach you everything you need to know about Google Alerts, including what they are and how to set them up. We’ll also teach you how to manage and optimize your alerts for the greatest chance of success. 

What are Google Alerts?

Google Alerts is a free service created by Google that lets users monitor any keyword or phrase they want. When you set up Google Alerts, the system will send email reports to your Gmail account with links to where your alert terms have popped up. 

As far as frequency goes, Google gives you a few options, including: 

• As it happens
• At most, once a day
• At most, once a week

Speak with your marketing team, consider your goals, and analyze how quickly the information you track shifts when deciding on frequency. 

Of course, Google Alerts isn’t a be-all-end-all solution. It can’t as of now monitor social media mentions, which is a huge part of gauging public conversation around your industry or brand. That’s why certain Google Alerts alternative services like Keyhole exist to help you keep your finger on the pulse of social media conversations. 

Setting up Google Alerts

Now that you understand what Google Alerts are, let’s go over how to set up an alert. 

Step 1: Go to the Google Alerts page

Google Alerts has its own page in the Google family. Simply go to google.com/alerts, and you’ll see a very simplistic interface Google provides:

As you can tell, it’s just a simple search bar, like the kind you use on Google every day. 

Step 2: Enter your search terms

Now, enter the search term you want alerts for. Let’s assume you’re running a real estate firm for this example. 

Once you enter the term, you’ll get a sample alert preview before finalizing the alert, which we’ve highlighted in the image above. This will give you an idea of what information you’ll get when creating alerts for this specific term. 

Step 3: Click on “Show Options” to set your preferences

To set your alert preferences, click on the “Show Options” toggle menu toward the top of the page. This will open up another menu listing your options.

Here you’ll set preferences like: 

• The frequency of your alerts
• What sources you want to pull from
• The language you want your results in
• The region Google is pulling from
• How many results you want to see
• Whether you want your alerts delivered to an email address or an RSS feed

Step 4: Create your alert

Once you’ve set your terms and preferences, click “Create Alert,” and you’ll receive Google Alerts immediately. And that’s it! You’ve officially created your first Google Alert.

Managing Google Alerts for apt tracking

Once you’ve created Google Alerts, it’s important to manage them. Set up multiple Google alerts for maximum success. 

To edit them, head to the main page, where you’ll see the alerts you’ve made. Go to the alert you want to manage and click on the edit icon, which looks like a pencil:

This will open the same menu as when you initially set up the alert. You can refine and adjust your alerts by selecting the option you want to change and making a new selection. 

Your options include: 

• How Often
  • As it happens
  • At most once per day
  • At most once per week
• Sources
  • Automatic
  • News
  • Blogs
  • Web
  • Video
  • Books
  • Discussion
  • Finance
• Language
  • Select from many world languages
• Region
  • Any region
  • Select from specific regions all over the world 
• How many
  • Only the best results
  • All results
• Deliver to
  • Email address
  • RSS feed

Once you make a change, click “Update Alert,” as shown in the image above. There’s also a Settings cog symbol at the upper right:

Click on that to decide when your alerts will come in and whether you want them all in a single email. 

Optimizing Google Alerts for better results

To optimize your Google alerts for success, there are a few best practices you should implement. 

These include: 

1. Be specific with keywords

You don’t want to create a broad search term that will flood your inbox with useless information. That’s why it’s better to opt for “Real Estate Tulsa Oklahoma” and not just “Real Estate.” 

2. Don’t limit your alerts

Create many specific alerts to get a full picture of what’s happening in your industry. Try using different modifiers to augment your results. 

For example, try out something like “Tulsa OK Real Estate Trends,” “Tulsa OK Real Estate Dangers,” “Tulsa OK Real Estate Scam,” and so on. 

3. Use Google’s filters

The filters under the Options menu are there for a reason, so use them. Set the region to your service area. If you want to filter out low-quality results, set your alert to show “Only the best.” 

4. Use quotation marks to combine terms

When setting the search terms for your alerts, anything you place in quotes will generate an exact match. So typing: “Tulsa OK Real Estate Market” will get results for that exact term as written. 

But if you add words outside of the quotes, you can mix and match results. 

Try something like “Tulsa OK Real Estate Market” tips, “Tulsa OK Real Estate Market” prices, “Tulsa OK Real Estate Market,” strong, for example.

Advanced Google Alert techniques for beginners

With a little know-how, you can take your Google Alerts to the next level with some advanced techniques. 

You can harness the power of these alerts for continued success in several ways. 

These include: 

Monitoring brand mentions

Your brand reputation is vital to your continued success. By setting a Google Alert for your business’ name, you’ll be able to capture any mentions and determine the general tone of the conversation. 

If people are speaking poorly about your business, receiving an alert right away can help you devise an immediate plan to get out in front of it and curb any damage. 

To monitor your brand mentions, do a general search for your brand name and create modifier searches. 

For example, if you’re trying to gauge how people feel about your brand, try something like: 

• “Brand” best
• “Brand” great
• “Brand” good
• “Brand” bad
• “Brand” worst
• “Brand” awful

And so on.

Monitoring competitors

It’s also important to see what people say about your biggest competitors. 

For instance, if your competitors are getting a lot of praise, you need to know what they’re doing right. If they’re getting flack, you also need to understand why. Losing sight of your competitors could allow them to surprise — or worse — overtake you. 

When keeping an eye on competitors, simply replace your brand name with theirs and add the same modifiers we covered in the bulleted list above. This will help you measure what the public has to say about your brand against what they say about your chief rivals. 

Monitoring relevant topics

You can keep a close eye on your industry by tracking topics relevant to your business and customer pain points. By keeping this information top of mind, you can accurately forecast shifts in industry trends that’ll help you stay ahead of the curve. 

Here’s a great example of how you can use Google Alerts to monitor your industry. For this example, let’s stick with our real estate firm scenario.  

In addition to using IDX real estate software to display the most up-to-date property listing data, Google Alerts information can be invaluable in helping real estate firms optimize their websites and marketing efforts to serve clients better and stand out from the competition.

By setting up Google Alerts for specific keywords related to their market, such as “homes for sale in [city name]” or “real estate trends in [state name],” real estate firms can stay up-to-date on the latest news and developments in their area while closely monitoring demand, competition, and potential lead sources. 
Regardless of the industry you’re in, by coupling Google Alerts with relevant brand monitoring tools, you can do your best to stay ahead of the competition and understand what your target audience needs most.

Conclusion

Google Alerts can be a powerful way to keep track of your brand, competitors, and industry. Consider experimenting with different search combinations and modifiers, applying various filters when needed to see what gets you the best results. 

While Google Alerts is a valuable service, it’s not a perfect solution. Currently, Google Alerts can’t check social media conversations. That means you’re missing out on mentions within these major platforms.

Keyhole’s social listening tool can work seamlessly alongside Google Alerts to give you a more complete view of what the public says about your business throughout the World Wide Web. 

Author Bio

Ioana is a Business, Digital Marketing, and SaaS content writer 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 the windy city of Oklahoma, you’ll never know where Ioana will head off to next.

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The post How To Set Up And Optimize Google Alerts: The Ultimate Guide appeared first on Keyhole.

Did your competitor’s post go viral, but are you struggling with dwindling likes? Or are you absolutely clueless as to why competitors are outranking you? 

We get that frustration! Despite having a solid strategy in place, you will see a discrepancy in performance. 

As per recent surveys, 90% of the Fortune 500 companies use competitive intelligence to their advantage. At the same time, 56% of executives keep an eye on their potential competitors and make plans to conquer new markets in the following three years.

These power stats reveal how crucial competitor analysis is as a part of rudimentary marketing. But you can soar high with the right set of tools. 

There are tons of competitor analysis tools for accomplishing a specific goal. However, not knowing which tool to use for what purpose will land you in a fog.

Before we introduce you to our top recommendations, let’s first see how this vital course of action pays big time. 

Why do you need competitor analysis in the first place?

If you were going into battle, would you charge in blindly without knowing anything about your opponent? Of course not! 

You’d want to know their strengths, weaknesses, and strategies so you could come up with a plan to defeat them. The same goes for business – you need to know your competition inside and out if you want to come out on top.

Competitor analysis tools can help you do just that. These tools allow you to track your competitors’ marketing efforts, pricing strategies, and customer reviews. You can see what’s working for them and what’s not and use that information to improve your own business.

Let’s say you run a small coffee shop and need help to attract customers. Use a competitor analysis tool to see what other coffee shops in your area are doing. 

You find out that a competitor is offering a loyalty program that’s really popular with customers. You could then implement a similar program at your shop to attract more customers.

That’s just one of the many instances where competitor analysis can be super handy. Here are some advantages of why you should invest in competitor analysis for guaranteed brand  growth:

1. Identify market gaps

Discover gaps in the market that your brand can fill. This can help you offer something unique and valuable to your customers, which can lead to growth.

2.  Improve product development

By understanding what your competitors are doing well and what they’re not, you can improve your own product development. You’ll be able to create better products that meet your customers’ needs.

3.  Stay ahead of trends

Keeping an eye on your competitors will let you stay ahead of trends in your industry. Be proactive in your business decisions and get your brand grooving to the beat.

4. Improve pricing strategies

Observe your competitors’ pricing strategies and know how much your customers are willing to pay for your products or services. Then, set up competitive prices to attract more customers and increase your overall revenue.

5. Benchmark performance

Monitoring competitors’ performance metrics will help you  benchmark your own performance. This can help you set goals and track progress toward growth.

6. Anticipate threats

Anticipate potential threats to your business, such as new entrants or changes in the market. Be prepared for these threats and minimize their impact on your growth beforehand.

Now that you know the umpteen opportunities that prompt competitor analysis can unlock let’s get you in action.

7 competitor analysis tools you can leverage right away 

It’s difficult to determine the exact category count of competitor analytics tools. But with the common goals of branding, here are the major ones with our top recommendations. 

1. SEO competitor analysis

SEO is the first step towards growing any brand organically. However, it’s not enough to simply optimize your own website for search engines – you also need to keep an eye on what your competitors are doing. That’s where an SEO competitor analysis tool comes in.

By using a proper tool, gain valuable insights into your competitors’ SEO strategies. See what keywords your competitors rank for, how much organic traffic they’re getting, and what content performs best for them. This information will help you spot the leaks in your own SEO strategy. 

Check for what keywords your competitor is ranking for, and if you are not targeting it, consider creating content around those keywords to capture some of that traffic. Or if you see that a competitor is getting a lot of traffic from a certain type of content (such as infographics or videos), go ahead and experiment with creating similar content to see if it resonates with your audience.

Recommended tool: Ahrefs

Pricing: $99-$999/month

Ahrefs is a top pick for SEO competitor analysis tool for several reasons. Firstly, it provides a comprehensive set of tools for analyzing competitors’ SEO strategies. 

With Ahrefs, you can analyze their competitors’ backlink profiles, identify top-performing keywords and pages, and track search engine rankings. It also has a large database of indexed pages to get a complete picture of your competitors’ online presence. 

Here are the top features of Ahrefs:

• Analyze any website’s backlink profiles, organic search traffic, and top-performing pages and keywords.
• Research keywords with accurate search volume data, keyword difficulty scores, and advanced metrics.
• Find the most popular content in any niche, track social shares, and analyze top-performing articles’ backlinks and organic traffic.
• Monitor your website’s search engine rankings over time and track your progress against competitors.
• Identify technical issues on your website and get actionable recommendations for improvement.
• Set up alerts for natural backlinks, lost backlinks, and mentions of your brand or competitors.
• Compare the backlink profiles of up to multiple websites and identify link-building opportunities.

Sarah G

I mainly use Ahrefs for keyword research and monitoring and for this it is an amazing tool and great for both long-tail and general keyword discovery. This in turn can help with blog research and both informational and conversion-based terms.

Evelyn A

Ahrefs is a user-friendly interface that provides a significant amount of data regarding a website’s SEO, conveniently organized into reports. The backlink and organic keyword reports are my faves.

2. Social media competitor analysis

Social media is indispensable for building brand awareness, engaging with customers, and driving traffic to your website. But just posting content on social media and hoping for the best won’t do. Watching out what your competitors are doing is essential too. That’s where a social media competitor analysis tool comes in.

Such tools show what types of content your competitors are posting, how often they’re posting, and how their audience engages with them. This will help you ideate your social media strategy for better engagement rate and reach opportunities.

For example, if you spot your competitor getting loads of engagement on their Instagram Stories, try experimenting with similar content types to see if it resonates with your audience. Or, if you see that a competitor is using Twitter to provide customer support, consider doing the same to facilitate your customer service.

Recommended tool: Keyhole

Pricing: Custom

Keyhole is a powerful social media competitor analysis tool with many benefits to getting you that competitive edge on social media. Its social media monitoring features studies competitors’ campaigns, influencers, and social media strategies. Track social media metrics, uncover competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, and take advantage of them.

Keyhole also provides real-time data and analytics to monitor competitors’ social media activity as it happens. Stay up-to-date on their latest social media strategies and adjust your own accordingly. The platform even provides a visual dashboard that is intuitive and shareable, allowing you to easily track hashtags, keywords, and accounts in one go.

Use Keyhole’s QuickTrends feature to identify trends and patterns across multiple social media platforms quickly. Notice a particular hashtag is trending? Just add that to QuickTrends and see its popularity breakdown. 

Not just competitors, track anything that’s generating a lot of buzz on social media and select the time range. You’ll get an idea if the trend is worth the hop.

Here’s a list of features that make Keyhole an excellent choice:

• It offers comprehensive social media monitoring features to track hashtags, keywords, and accounts across various platforms.
• Monitor various social media metrics, including engagement rates, sentiment analysis, and audience demographics.
• Schedule unlimited posts on top social media platforms at the optimal time to share for better reach. 
• Identify potential partners for influencer marketing campaigns and track their performance.
• Reports can be customized and exported in various formats, including PDF and Excel.
• Keyhole uses machine learning and natural language processing to provide automated sentiment analysis of social media conversations. 
• Set up customizable alerts for specific keywords, hashtags, or accounts.
• It also provides historical data analysis to track trends and patterns over time. 
• It offers API integration with various third-party tools, including these Slack alternatives, Zapier, and Google Sheets.

Tasmy G

I like how easy it is to generate my analytics report for my social media channels. The hashtag tracker is particularly useful and the insights have proven to be of great use for our campaign. 

Maria S

I like that I can track outside web mentions of what other people are saying about my company, as well as the ability to find influencers based on who is already talking about our company. It is also great to have one dashboard in which I can follow high rate analytics for all of our social domains, instead of jumping from each individual platform. 

3. Content marketing analysis

Content marketing is the prime activity of every marketer. And competitor analysis is an essential part of content marketing to understand and create a strategy that sets them apart. 

By analyzing competitors, create content to outdo them. Attract new customers and retain existing ones by adding more value than your competitors. 

Additionally, competitor analysis gives you an idea of what is working in their industry and what is not. It also helps to shortlist what type of content in what tone is trending on their website, like video marketing, website copy, feature sets, and more. 

Recommended: BuzzSumo

Pricing: $119-$999/month

BuzzSumo is a great tool for content marketing competitor analysis. Know the most popular content in your industry, track competitors’ content, and analyze your own content’s performance. With BuzzSumo, see which topics resonate with your target audience and identify key influencers. 

Additionally, BuzzSumo offers a range of features that make it easy to monitor competitors’ content, such as alerts when new content is published and the ability to track social media shares. Get insights into the content performance across different social media platforms, making creating optimized content for specific platforms easier.

Here’s a feature list that makes BuzzSumo a great choice:

• BuzzSumo analyzes content performance across different social media platforms.
• Identify key influencers in a particular industry or niche to build relationships with these influencers and amplify content.
• It can send alerts when new content matches specific keywords or topics to stay on top of industry trends and breaking news.
• Get detailed insights into the backlinks of a particular website or piece of content for testimonial link building, and improve search engine rankings.
• BuzzSumo offers a range of reporting options, including customizable reports tailored to specific needs and goals.

Stephen F

The content suggestion tools make it very easy to find topics with maximum potential reach for one’s posting and alliances. It’s very useful to be able to know what else is going on. 

Zahabiya K

The best part is analyzing backlinks using keywords. It really helps us know the competition and create strategies accordingly. Also, it has many other useful features which I think are better than other sites like Niel Patel. 

4. Competitive pricing analysis

Competitive pricing analysis is essential for a brand’s growth as it helps to understand the market dynamics. By analyzing competitors, a brand can experiment with its own pricing strategy and gain a competitive advantage. 

Such analytics help a brand to identify areas where it may be overpriced or underpriced compared to its competitors and adjust its pricing accordingly. A brand can attract more customers and increase its market share by staying competitive with pricing. 

Competitive pricing analysis is also vital in product development, so you know what new products or services can be introduced. 

Recommended: Prisync

Pricing: $99-$399/month

Prisync is an amazing competitive pricing analysis tool due to several reasons. Firstly, you can track your competitors’ prices and product assortments in real-time, giving you a dynamic market view. Use it and stay competitive by adjusting your prices accordingly.

It offers daily or instant notifications for price and stock changes to respond quickly to changes in the market. You also get detailed Excel reports to identify trends and make informed decisions about pricing strategy. 

Prisync also boasts proactive customer service, with 24/7 online support staff available to answer any inquiries.

Here’s why Prisync is a preferred option for competitor’s pricing analysis:

• Prisync provides a detailed analysis of competitors’ pricing strategies.
• It monitors the performance of products in terms of sales, revenue, and profitability.
• Customize your dashboard to suit specific needs and preferences.
• Track competitors’ prices and product assortments in real time.
• Get daily or instant notifications for price and stock changes to respond quickly to changes in the market.

Mark S

We love the way Prisync keeps us informed regarding our pricing compared to competitors. The dynamic pricing function takes a bit of time to work out, but really is helpful. Dealings with staff, both pre-sale and post-sale have been very positive. 

John C

We’ve been using Prisync for about 3 years and they’ve been brilliant to deal with the whole way through. Their support is faultless and the platform itself is very intuitive to use and maintain. 

5. Product feature competitor analysis tool

Product feature competitor analysis is for digging out the top product features of competitors. As a brand, you can identify areas where you can improve your products, differentiate yourself from competitors, and gain a competitive advantage. 

This analysis can impact areas where you may need to catch up on your competitors and adjust your product offerings accordingly. You can attract more customers and increase your market share by staying competitive with product features. 

Explore areas where competitors are weak and develop products or services that meet customer needs and stand out in the market.

Product feature competitor analysis is a valuable tool to improve product offerings, increase market share, and drive growth. 

Recommended: G2

Pricing: On request

G2 is a popular choice for product competitor analysis due to its extensive database of user reviews and ratings for various products and services. Know how to compare your products to your competitors regarding customer satisfaction, features, pricing, and more. 

It offers a range of tools and features for product analysis, including customizable dashboards, real-time data updates, and API integration with other tools. It provides a comprehensive market intelligence platform that includes competitor analysis, customer feedback analysis, and win-loss analysis. 

With its extensive database of user reviews and ratings, customizable dashboards, and market intelligence platform, G2 is a comprehensive solution for product competitor analysis.

Here are some features that make G2 the first choice:

• It has an extensive database of user reviews and ratings for various products and services.
• Customize dashboards to suit your needs and preferences, including the ability to track competitors, monitor customer feedback, and analyze market trends.
• It provides real-time data updates for product analysis to stay up-to-date on changes in the market and adjust product offerings accordingly.
• G2 offers API integration with other tools to automate product analysis and integrate with existing workflows.
• Get a range of reporting and competitor analysis tools for product analysis, including customizable reports, data visualizations, and trend analysis.

Mark C

G2 marketing solutions help people to choose what application they would buy by providing reviews from all users who have experience with a certain application. 

Jake S

I use G2 to collect customer reviews. As a Customer Marketer, that stuff is like pure gold to me. Both from a product feedback standpoint and from a market perception standpoint, nothing is more valuable than a constant influx of customer reviews. 

6. Customer feedback analysis 

Customer feedback and competitor analysis are critical to branding to understand what your ideal customers want, what they like and dislike about a brand, and how they perceive it compared to competitors. 

You can use it to improve the brand’s products or services, customer experience, and overall reputation. Know your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses compared to your brand. 

Learn what works and what doesn’t, and develop a unique and effective branding strategy that sets them apart from competitors like you. 

Recommended: Trustpilot

Pricing: $250-$999/month

Trustpilot is good for customer feedback and competitor analysis because it provides a variety of competitor analysis tools to analyze overall brand  performance and online reputation. Trustpilot’s Review Insights tool uses machine learning and artificial intelligence for sentiment analysis of reviews across a broad range of categories.

Trustpilot’s TrustScore overviews customer satisfaction across all Service and Location reviews while comparing performance to your competitors. It also collects and displays customer reviews on your website and social media channels to help build trust with potential customers and improve online visibility.

Here are the features that make Trustpilot an excellent tool:

• Collect customer reviews through various channels, including email invitations, website widgets, and SMS messaging.
• Manage your reviews, respond to reviews, report fake reviews, and flag inappropriate content.
• Get an overview of your online reputation and compare your performance to competitors.
• Engage with customers, send review invitations, respond to reviews, and resolve customer issues.

Sachin

You will get honest reviews on this site, so you will have confidence in buying or using any product. Consumers will be pleased if they get the same product as per reviews, and yes, you will get the same service as per reviews on the Trustpilot website. 

Alan T

Quick and easy to start using. Requesting reviews is easy and fast and the process to leave reviews is also simple, streamlined and very easy.

7. Product marketing analysis 

Product marketing analysis combines all the analyses mentioned above. It blends the games of the Product and Marketing teams into one, providing you with a complete picture of the landscape you operate in.

When you’re planning your strategy, it’s crucial to keep an eye on your competitors’ websites, social media, PR strategy, features they release, etc. Tracking these changes will benefit you a lot. The 360-degree approach of monitoring every facet of your competitors is a key component for success. 

Recommended: Kompyte

Pricing: Available upon request

Kompyte is a competitive intelligence tool designed to provide real-time insights into changes occurring on your competitors’ websites and social media platforms. Updates to pricing pages, the introduction of new features, social media announcements, and a multitude of other developments are seamlessly reflected in your dashboard.

These real-time insights not only help you come up with better offers for your clients but enable your sales team. The competition has never been more straightforward.

The following features make Kompyte an excellent choice:

• Competitor monitoring in real-time to stay on top of the competition
• Detection of changes through an automated alert system
• Tracking of market share in real-time
• Benchmarking capabilities to make sure you’re on track.
• Advanced reporting options that save you lots of working hours
• Sales battle cards are updated in real-time which helps your sales team to amplify the game.

Jesse L

We love the ability to benchmark and track our competitor’s marketing efforts in Kompyte. We get a clear picture of what our key competitors are doing in real-time, We evaluated the three best tools in this bracket, and Kompyte was clearly ahead. Onboarding has been well managed, well prepared and has set us up for success.

Eric S.

Kompyte is a great resource for us, as it allows us to check one source as opposed to searching multiple websites. We primarily use Kompyte to create customizable battle cards for our sales team to reference. Kompyte helps us save time and allows our sales team to quickly access useful information that helps them close deals.

Ready to beat your competitors?

Competitor analysis tools are like a spy in your pocket – they give you all the intel you need to come out on top. By using a comprehensive tool like Keyhole, dig out winning strategies from your competitors and leave them behind with your sound presence.

Since more than 4 billion people are actively using social media, we highly recommend starting with social media competitor analysis and using Keyhole. Take its free trial and gain a competitive edge instantly.

So, don’t let your competition get the best of you – arm yourself with the right tools and lead the race.

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The post 7 Must-Know Types Of Competitor Analysis Tools With Top Recommendations appeared first on Keyhole.

Most of the social media monitoring tools out there come with a pricey tag, making it seem like a luxury. And then, the needle points to a free tool. 

Yes, Google Alerts is that free tool that has become the first choice for many marketers out there, especially newbies to the monitoring world. And to some extent, it does manage to do a fair job.

However, is this totally dependable? Probably not! 

Like every free tool out there, Google Alerts lack loads of intuitive features. There’s no dedicated support as well. 

You might end up having spammy alerts flooding your inbox with totally unrelated mentions, sometimes making you miss the vital ones. 

So let’s first understand the gap that’s built. Despite the issues, is it actually worth investing your money in paid tools? Let’s have a look at it. 

Why should you look for Google Alerts alternatives in the first place?

While Google Alerts is a great free tool to monitor the web, it has some limitations that may require people to look for alternatives.

One of the main reasons to explore Google Alerts alternatives is to gain access to more advanced features. Although Google Alerts is a fairly-easy tool, it doesn’t offer some of the more advanced features. 

Some alternatives, like Keyhole, have the ability to track real-time mentions of your brand and sentiment analysis. This can help you identify trends and take proactive action based on real-time data.

Another reason to explore alternatives is to gain access to more sources. While Google Alerts primarily covers news articles online, some of the paid tools can track crisis on social media platforms. This is particularly useful for brands that want to track their social media presence, track competitors, and monitor customer feedback in real time.

As you get better at monitoring, you’ll need customization options. The paid tools come with custom dashboards for performance and results and get insight into competitors that Google Alerts doesn’t provide. 

While Google Alerts is a great tool, it indeed has some limitations. These tools allow you to get a more comprehensive view of your online presence and make data-driven decisions to improve your brand reputation and performance.

8 Google Alerts alternatives for efficient online media monitoring 

 Here are our top picks of Google Alerts alternatives in terms of price, features, and user reviews: 

1. Keyhole

Pricing: Custom

Keyhole is an amazing social media monitoring tool that scours the net for your brand mentions in real-time. Keyhole offers social media listening and analytics for top social media platforms and other online media sources, like news, forums, blogs, etc., all in one easy-to-use dashboard.

The tool is excellent for trend analysis as well. Just feed in keywords and select the custom period using QuickTrends. You’ll get the trend data without running out of any monthly credits.  

This quick feature lets you narrow down your tracker list so you utilize your monthly quotas only monitoring data that’s truly effective and impactful. Moreover, Keyhole comes with sentiment analysis and competitor monitoring features. 

Plus, you can track your profiles, campaigns, and influencers across multiple social media platforms and see what’s driving traffic and engagement to your profile or your fellow competitors. 

Here are some features that make Keyhole your go-to partner for branding.

• Connect and manage multiple social media profiles across your favorite platforms seamlessly. Keyhole makes it easy to stay organized and monitor your presence effectively.
• Keyhole works with a number of international languages, including ones that don’t use Latin or Roman script. So you can track keywords beyond English alphabets.
• Say goodbye to limitations on post scheduling. With Keyhole, you can schedule unlimited posts, ensuring your content reaches the widest audience at all times.
• Optimize your social media strategy with the Optimization tab. Get valuable insights and tips to enhance your presence on each platform and maximize your impact.
• Keep a close eye on your competitors. Keyhole allows you to compare your performance to theirs, including best posting times, popular content types, top hashtags, average engagement rate, and more.
• Dive into historical data using Keyhole’s comprehensive API. Uncover trends, identify patterns, and gain valuable insights for strategic decision-making.
• Stay on top of any keyword or hashtag with Keyhole’s robust tracking capabilities. Monitor your own brand’s online presence while keeping a watchful eye on your competitors.
• Engage with influencers seamlessly and track their ROI within your overall campaign. Keyhole helps you onboard influencers and measures their impact on your key performance indicators.
• Analyze sentiment analysis to understand how the world feels about your brand. Gain valuable insights into public perception and make data-driven decisions.
• Stay ahead of the game with the QuickTrends section. Monitor relevant keywords, brands, and hashtags to identify early trends within a custom date range.
• Streamline your reporting process with Keyhole’s automation. Generate custom reports with essential social media metrics and easily share real-time dashboards with your team, clients, and stakeholders.

Kyle H

Keyhole is an excellent tool for providing basic insights about social media accounts and tracking social media conversations. As a college professor, I have found it to be a great way to introduce students to social media analytics. 

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. Mention

Pricing: $49 – $179 per month

Mention is a decent alternative to Google Alerts for monitoring online mentions. With its comprehensive monitoring capabilities, Mention covers social media platforms, forums, Google reviews on website, and more. It provides real-time updates, ensuring prompt notifications and immediate engagement. 

Mention gives you advanced analytics, deep brand insights, customization options, and collaboration features. Its sentiment analysis helps gauge the sentiment associated with brand mentions. 

Pros 

1. It is easy to monitor the success of marketing campaigns. 
2. The customer support team is quite helpful and quick at resolving issues.
3. The UX of the tool is pleasing and easy to navigate. 

Henrik C

It was quite easy to understand how it works and get it set up for first use. I managed to get all of our accounts connected and started using features within an hour or so. 

Cons

1. Sometimes the results are irrelevant, which is frustrating for users. 
2. The pricing is steep for smaller companies and organizations. 
3. It tends to report on names similar to a brand and can’t distinguish the phrase that matches it.

Mark A

Mention has missed some critical mentions while my keywords were set up to capture those specific online references of our brand. If it wasn’t for one of their competitors, we would have completely missed this important mention. Note that I have the basic package, but this mention on a major news outlet should have been grabbed. 

3. Talkwalker

Pricing: On request

Talkwalker is one of the top Google Alerts alternatives that monitors all corners of the web, from news sites and blogs to social media platforms. All you need to do is set up alerts based on specific keywords, brand names, or even topics that are relevant to your business. And you’ll get the notifications you want when you want them.

Talkwalker also exhibits an intuitive and user-friendly interface, making it easy to set up and manage alerts. The tool provides a straightforward way to monitor and stay updated on brand mentions.

Pros

1. Their help pages are comprehensive and are great resources for quick solutions. 
2. The tool is easy to use and browse through features and functionalities. 
3. It provides a separate dashboard for quick segregation of each client’s data. 

Luis Enrique R

The thing I like the most is Talkwalker’s free search feature that allows you to get quick insights from large sets of social data without having to pay the large sums that social listening tools usually cost. 

Cons

1. Listening is limited when it comes to Facebook and Instagram. 
2. Some users have conveyed that there was a learning curve and needs for training in order to seize the maximum value.
3. Data mining and sentiment tagging can be improved a lot more. 

Vishal B

Data accuracy is very poor, query submission is also important, Sentiment tagging is very poor in Talkwalker and one can’t truly believe in its tagging. Data downloading is limited and if the data amount is high, then you can find a lot of data missing. 

4. Awario

Pricing: $49 – $399 per month

Awario is a manageable alternative to Google Alerts, thanks to its powerful features and capabilities. It comes with robust search and filtering options for defining specific keywords, excluding irrelevant terms, and focusing on relevant mentions.

It also employs sentiment analysis to determine the emotional tone behind mentions of your brand. You can even compare your brand’s mentions with that of your competitors using Awario.

Pros 

1. The onboarding process is made easy by the Awario team.
2. Setting up queries with customization is one of its best features. 
3. The clean interface is quite responsive and fast, unlike most listening tools in the market. 

Jordan B

The best part of tracking the information you need is through charts and graphs that make it easy to understand what information you are gathering. 

Cons

1. The monitoring seems passive and delayed at times. 
2. The monthly limits are quite less when compared to competitors. 
3. The tool is quite confusing for beginners. 

Katy F

I did dislike its sort of vagueness. Some of the metrics seem either pointless or lack depth. The reporting was fine, however. Also, you can only fine-tune your searches so much, so you may get irrelevant notifications or results. For instance, if a Twitter user has a similar name to yours, their tweets will show in your feed.

5. Brand24

Pricing: $99-  $499 per month

Brand24 can also be considered as another alternative. Just like Google Alerts, it  keeps an eagle eye on the web, tracking mentions of your brand across social media platforms, news sites, blogs, and more.

Brand24 goes beyond basic monitoring. It provides detailed reports and analytics, giving you comprehensive data on brand mentions, sentiment analysis, influencer identification, and more.

Pros

1. The CS team takes the crown in promptness. 
2. You can filter negative comments and tackle them right away.
3. You don’t need prior expertise to get the most out of the tool. 

Connor S

It is so easy to use, and it is easy to find what you are looking for. All the information is displayed very well, and it enables you to find all the data you are after in a flash. It’s very detailed too! 

Cons

1. The tool is pricey for solopreneurs and small firms. 
2. You might get spammy and irrelevant results. 
3. Insight generation and sentiment analysis are lacking. 

Brea W

The UI is pretty rough – the site feels crowded and sometimes 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. 

6. Sprout Social

Pricing: $249 -$499 per month

SproutSocial is much more than regular Google Alerts alternatives. While Google Alerts only monitors mentions of your brand across the web, Sprout Social offers a broader range of social media management and monitoring services that can replace Google Alerts and offer much more. 

You can monitor mentions of your brand on social media and proactively identify potential customers, track competitors, and evaluate campaign performance using Sprout Social’s analytics reports.

Pros

1. It is great for its publishing features, which are quite comprehensive.
2. You can easily respond to comments and direct messages across multiple social media platforms.
3. You can use it for auditing your competitors on social media as well.

Peyton R

Sprout Social made it simple to pull reports, gather data, and create digestible action plans in order to amplify our social media efforts across a very small team. 

Cons

1. There is a lack of advanced analytics. Hence, it might be the best tool for data buffs. 
2. Report customization is limiting, making potential tools like Keyhole a better fit. 
3. The plans with additional charges for each user are way too pricey for the features they offer at present. 

Juan Carlos D

There’s no way to rely on this tool. Downtimes here and there, it’s TOO expensive for what you get; it’s really overvalued. There’s a world of tools out there that fits the same needs for half the cost and double reliability. I don’t like the fact that many features are add-ons or only available to the most expensive plans. I don’t like either the fact that their support takes “their time” to solve your issues as if I could tell my clients to wait… Not satisfied at all. 

7. Brandwatch

Pricing: On request

Next up, we have Brandwatch in this extensive list of Google Alerts alternatives. One advantage of Brandwatch over Google Alerts is that it offers more advanced features, such as advanced sentiment analysis, in-depth analytics, and the ability to pinpoint key influencers in your industry.

Another key difference between Brandwatch and Google Alerts is that in addition to web alerts, Brandwatch offers social listening, allowing brands to monitor conversations happening around their brand or relevant keywords and analyze them for sentiment, location, and other factors.

Pros

1. The tool is great for listening to your social audience and gaining insights. 
2. It has team collaboration features, making working together easier for different members. 
3. The query writing is made easy with their NLP assistance. Tools and widgets are super informative.

Sarah K

Brandwatch is helpful to sort through sentiments about my brands when there are thousands of mentions online. I like that I can see the volume of what’s being said and can filter out some. 

Cons

1. The tool is often buggy at the publishing and reporting end. 
2. From the analytics front, users have often complained about missing metrics, empty reports, and more. 
3. No matter the filters, the results are often spammy and completely irrelevant.

Aston H

The data analysis in the tool is not at all intuitive compared to other social listening tools. To get to real topic segmentation analysis, you’re only allowed to go through pages and select up to 100 posts at a time to segment or mass groups of similar phrases together and call them a topic (but the latter means much less accuracy in topic segmentation). Not to mention historical data can be a hit or miss now that they charge to get 100% historical data on top of what you pay for their limited amount of mentions. 

8. Meltwater

Pricing: On request

Meltwater is a potential alternative to Google Alerts as a media monitoring tool. Unlike Google Alerts, which provides email notifications periodically, Meltwater offers greater customization options in terms of the time, frequency, destination, and type of alerts.

Its competitive intelligence solution helps businesses of all sizes track changes and monitor their industry landscape effectively. The flexibility and customization options offered by Meltwater make it a versatile tool for businesses to track and manage their online presence more effectively.

Pros

1. You can easily search for media coverage using Meltwater. 
2. Assess your social media strategy and know what’s working and what’s not.
3. With its simple data mining features, you can quickly pull data from multiple sources. 

Bob V

We don’t really like anything about Meltwater. It’s essentially a glorified version of Google Alerts that is more tailored to media and public relations, we’ve concluded that we need to have something like it, and Meltwater fits what we do better than the competition, but it doesn’t fit what we do in the regulatory arena of Washington DC all that well. 

Cons

1. The setup process is tricky, so digging into all useful metrics at once takes time.
2. The boolean logic strings are difficult to configure.
3. The UI is also dated and difficult to navigate through. 

Katey Y

There are always glitches, missing data, or simply won’t load. The customer service says that they will fix something, but really it takes weeks, and you basically have to put a fire under their butt in order to get them to do anything. The functions are not customizable, so a lot of times, the way that the functions are presented they are not in line with your business or what you need. Every time a social network’s API changes, the whole system is messed up for the next few days.

Which Google Alerts alternative should you choose? 

In conclusion, Google Alerts is an excellent and free tool to monitor the web and stay updated on industry trends, brand mentions, and competitors. However, it has some limitations, and that’s why it’s essential to explore Google Alerts alternatives. The alternative options offer more advanced features, customization options, and access to more sources online.

If you’re looking for a powerful alternative to Google Alerts, we highly recommend trying Keyhole. With Keyhole, you can monitor social media and other online sources in real-time, sentiment analysis, and custom reporting.

What’s great is that Keyhole offers a free trial to see the power and value of its features. So if you’re serious about taking your brand to the next level and see how it can help you monitor and improve your online presence.

Related Articles

How To Set Up And Optimize Google Alerts: The Ultimate Guide

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

The post 8 Best Google Alerts Alternatives For Brand Mentions And Industry News 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.

No matter what we call it, it remains something very unpleasant and undesirable for a brand.

It has become even scarier for businesses in the era of social media. A single tweet may hit with a hurricane of backlashes in a split second. You can just imagine the wild rides Tesla investors take when Elon Musk’s tweets move markets and affect the firm’s image.

A public relations crisis may occur at any time in any business. It has already happened to such brands as Pepsi, Samsung, Google, KFC, Starbucks, Uber… And this list could go on and on.

You can sit and wait your turn till it finally comes around.

Or – 

You can gear yourself up with some essential tools and knowledge to manage a PR crisis effectively. This ultimate guide can help you do that.

But first things first:

What’s PR crisis management?

Public relations crisis management is a set of procedures aimed to prevent or lessen the damage from unexpected events that may threaten the company’s operations or reputation.

How do you know you are facing a PR crisis and what measures should you undertake to cope with it?

If you answer “Yes” to any of the following questions, it’s time to act.

Question #1. Will this spoil your brand’s image?

Question #2. Are there any threats to the safety and health of your workers or customers?

Question #3. Can it lead to the loss of trust (inside or outside the company)?

Public relations crises may be of different types. Typically, these are employee-, customer-, or business-related situations like as follows:

• Massive service outages or connection issues
• Cyberattacks that lead to data leakages
• Injuries or deaths of employees
• Harm to customers caused by the company’s actions, products, or services
• Accusations of racism, abuse, or other forms of inappropriate behavior by the company’s top executives
• Claims or lawsuits against an organization or its leaders

For example, such giants as McDonald’s, Amazon, Disney, and Facebook, among others, were sued over discrimination. Other familiar names, like X and Yahoo, have suffered PR disasters after falling victim to cyberattacks that landed them on the list of some of the biggest data breaches of all time.

There may be tons of other accidents that disrupt business processes and undermine the brand’s reputation.

Not many entrepreneurs can say they are fully prepared for such emergencies. In fact, 95% of business leaders confess that their crisis management skills need improvement.

Don’t wait until the worst scenario unfolds before you. Play it safe, plan ahead, and make preparations to confront your next PR emergency.

How to prepare for a public relations crisis

Below are some basic things you can start with.

Create a crisis management team

You should set up a capable crisis response team and take care of coaching management software. For that, train your team to spot a social media crisis or any other PR fiasco before it’s too late.

Choose a spokesperson

When preparing for communication for PR crisis, it’s advisable to assign a spokesperson to speak on your brand’s behalf. It should be a good communicator and a credible deliverer of your messages.

Develop a strategic plan and exercise

You may need a preliminary action plan for managing a PR crisis. Roughly 62% of companies have such a crisis plan, but 40% have never conducted a crisis exercise.

Try to visualize and practice the “who-does-what-and-when” in phases or steps.

Pre-draft your responses and pick communication channels

41% of businesses can boast of communication protocols in their crisis management strategies. Fewer than half have pre-drafted messages for social media and the press.

Consider developing a dedicated social media strategy for crisis communications. Besides, don’t forget about such channels as a blog, newsletter, press conference, press release, SMS via a text subscription service, etc.

Track your online reputation regularly

Continuous brand monitoring is a must-do preventive measure against PR crises. If you want to maintain it effectively, take advantage of the following social media monitoring tools to track brand mentions:

• Keyhole
• SocialBee
• Brand24
• Google Alerts
• Awario, or the like

But what if you have already got into public relations trouble?

See how to wriggle out of it in seven steps.

A 7-step guide to manage a PR crisis

Here are seven steps for effective crisis management in public relations.

Step 1: Gather information and clarify the issue

“When a PR crisis breaks out, first and foremost, you should collect all the information and do fact-checking to evaluate the threat and determine the initial cause,” says Amy De La Fuente, Director of Public Affairs at Bosco Legal Services. “In case it’s a social media crisis, you may perform a social media investigation: examine posts, comments sections, blogs, and find social media evidence.”

Amy De La Fuente recommends gathering all the necessary data that concern the following:

• What (issue or situation)
• Who (responsible person or people)
• When (time)
• Where (place)
• Why (root cause)

You should also monitor the attitudes and reactions of people on all social platforms. That is when social listening becomes handy. Keyhole can help you find out who is talking about your brand and what they say with the social mention tracking tool.

Step 2: Be honest and accept liability

“Honesty is the key to effective PR crisis management,” claims Mark Pierce, CEO of Cloud Peak Law Group.

“You need to inform your stakeholders, team members, and clients about the crisis, its consequences, and how you’re planning to tackle it.

If controversial issues arise during a PR crisis, you might also need some legal advice. Businesses often work out legal response strategies together with their attorneys. It’s also crucial to identify who takes responsibility for damages and who is liable for compensation,” he adds.

Consider the following case of poor crisis management in PR.

When explaining hundreds of flight cancellations and delays in Atlanta, Georgia, in 2016, Delta Air Lines initially blamed the “power outage”. Georgia Power had to fire back by revealing the actual reason: Delta’s equipment failure.

Delta’s on-time reputation was tarnished by the initial blame factor. Later, the company claimed responsibility but the reputational damage was already done.

Read More: How To Find And Utilize Trending Hashtags On TikTok In 2024

Step 3: Craft a proper crisis message

According to Zach Leonard, President of Gembah, “You should write a good crisis statement that addresses the problem, mirrors your company’s values, and restores your brand’s credibility. Avoid aggression in your message and try not to sound overdefensive.

If it’s an apology, it must be sincere. It’s a common practice among companies to apologize to their customers during disruptive product shortages, for instance.”

Speaking of the devil.

In 2010, OB tampons by Johnson & Johnson disappeared from the shelves due to distribution problems. The company created a personalized apology to each of the 65,010 women in the loyal user base.

Here’s another example.

KFC became FCK to say “sorry” for the chicken shortage and massive closures of KFCs in the UK and Ireland in 2018. The company also apologized with the “We’re sorry” note.

The audience couldn’t stop sharing this creative apology on Twitter and calling it “a masterclass in PR crisis management”.

Step 4: React as soon as possible

“The response to any PR emergency should be generated as quickly as possible,” believes Jonathan Elster, CEO at EcomHalo.

He continues: “Don’t wait for the rumors to spread around and nullify your attempts to explain the situation. As a business leader or crisis manager, make sure your reaction is visible on all available social media platforms.”

Southwest Airlines, for instance, managed to stay ahead of the curve and eliminate the possible rumors about the Boeing 737 that landed on its nose at LaGuardia Airport. The company told about the accident on Twitter and Facebook just a few minutes after it happened.

Step 5: Act on rectifying the situation

Let’s see how the American Red Cross rectified a near-crisis situation in public relations.

One of their workers tweeted through the wrong account and shared a personal tweet about #gettngslizzerd with four bottle packs of beer. It was one of the hashtag failures that could potentially hurt the company’s reputation.

The American Red Cross reacted within an hour or so, apologized in a humorous form, deleted the tweet, and ensured that the employees were sober.

It turned out to be a feel-good story and even inspired people to donate blood.

However, you can’t expect such a positive outcome from every risky scenario. Jerry Han, CMO at PrizeRebel, is convinced that “In some cases, rectification and apology may not be enough when you manage a PR crisis. You should not only rectify but also compensate if appropriate. It can be monetary compensation for harm/damage, a delay in services, or a product defect.”

Take another example of public relations crisis management by Johnson & Johnson.

1982 was a catastrophic year for the company. The Tylenol tampering incident resulted in seven deaths of its customers. Johnson & Johnson offered financial assistance and counseling to victims’ families, even though the brand wasn’t responsible for the product tampering. In the aftermath of this crisis, Johnson & Johnson undertook a major PR effort to rebuild consumer trust and avoid rebranding Tylenol. 

Step 6: Address comments and reactions

Social monitoring is obligatory during any PR catastrophe. When it comes to a social media crisis, it becomes as vital as ever.

Priyam Chawla, Marketing Manager at Jolly SEO, insists on the importance of tracking social mentions:

“It’s impossible to manage a PR crisis well and move on any further without analyzing hashtags and social media mentions. They can help you review and interpret people’s attitudes to the situation and understand what they think and feel about it.

In addition to that, you should respond to comments and concerns about the crisis. This way, you can show your brand’s sincerity and transparency.”

Learn from the example of Starbucks.

The 2018 arrests of two African-American men at a Philadelphia Starbucks instantly sparked protests over racial bias. Starbucks started managing the PR crisis with an explanation and an apology.

After that, the company answered the questions and addressed the comments that followed.

Step 7: Draw lessons and identify possibilities to improve

Want to hear the end of Starbucks’ story?

The company took its PR crisis seriously, drew conclusions, and reached an important decision. Starbucks closed over 8,000 locations to perform employee training on racial discrimination.

You can write a public message that you’ve learned the lesson. Just like Slack did after the major service outage in 2022.

Ken Savage, Owner at Ken Savage, labels it “the analysis step” or the “post-crisis stage”.

He provides a list of significant analytical questions to answer while taking this final step:

• How well did you manage the public relations crisis?
• Did you respond fast enough?
• What could have been done better?
• How can you improve your crisis management strategy to avoid similar issues in the future?
• Does your team require additional training on PR disaster management?

Bonus: 3 Don’ts for Managing PR Crises

This guide also breaks down some of the most critical don’ts. Here they are.

1. Don’t ignore – communicate

If you think the stormy weather will subside by the weekend – nothing of the kind. It’s better to communicate with your clients as much as possible.

Richard Branson demonstrated an exemplary crisis response when the accident with the Virgin Galactic spaceship killed one of the test pilots and injured another one. The company’s founder headed to join his team, expressed his sympathy on his blog, and communicated with the press on every stage of the investigation.

In the Virgin Galactic case study, Alan Draper outlined the three key steps of Richard Branson’s crisis communications:

• Timeliness 
• Ownership
• Consistency

Sincere and open communication can also make your PR fiascos on social media milder and more manageable.

2. Don’t try to deal with it alone – ask for help

You may hire PR pros. In some cases though, even a team of professionals may not be enough to tackle this challenge.

Why not ask a brand ambassador or influencer to help you out?

Do you remember the Tide Pod Challenge?

It was a nightmarish situation for Tide when teens started eating Tide PODS. Of course, Tide had to react.

Obviously, the simple words “not for eating” didn’t work. So, the brand found an influential figure among teenagers. Procter & Gamble, the maker of Tide, partnered with Rob Gronkowski, aka Gronk, to create an advert with the “DO NOT EAT” message from Gronk.

Use influencer tracking & analytics tools to discover your best influencers.

Read More: Top 5 Online Reputation Management Tools For Transforming Any Crisis To Opportunity

3. Don’t let social media jeopardize your business – create a policy

You can’t expect all social media mistakes to become a smile-and-forget. Similar to the one with the Red Cross.

That’s why it may be beneficial to develop a social media policy for your employees to avert the risk of embarrassment or awkwardness. It can prevent simple posts or comments from devolving into a PR crisis.

Final Words

A public relations crisis can create turbulence you neither want nor can control. It’s like the Ice Bucket Challenge in its cruelest form. It makes your heart beat faster and you need to do something about it ASAP not to let yourself get drowned in the sea of negative repercussions.

Now that you’ve got this comprehensive guide, you’re armed with the essentials to survive a cold water bucket or even a tsunami of unforeseen situations.

Monitor your social media with Keyhole and always be ready for any surprises.

The post 7 Steps For Effective PR Crisis Management In 2024 appeared first on Keyhole.

Despite the risk, over 70% of businesses don’t reply to negative reviews. These unresponded snippets float around and become a looming threat to your brand. 

On the other hand, your credibility boosts up if somebody mentions your brand and talks about the wow experience they had with you. That’s the best form of marketing every brand dreams of. 

Though everybody knows these basics, what needs to be improved is its execution. How do we know what every customer is talking about? Is it negative feedback or a happy pat on the back?

We don’t have the luxury of watching out for every notification. And some posts won’t even tag you while reviewing. So the bigger question is how to dig those out quickly and improve your online reputation at stake. 

Well, all your worries point to one solution— brand monitoring! 

What is brand monitoring?

Brand monitoring is when businesses keep an eye on what people say about them online, especially on social media.

For example, a fast-food restaurant opens near you, and they start social media marketing aggressively. How will they know if they are delivering the best experience? 

They can use social monitoring tools to see what people say about them on Twitter, Instagram, and other social media sites. They might also look at reviews on sites like Yelp to see what people say about their food and service.

By doing this, businesses can better understand what people think about them and their products and use that information to improve their business. For more visibility, you can embed Google reviews on website, which leads to more engagement between customers and businesses.

They might respond to negative comments to make things right or use positive comments in their marketing to show people they’re doing a good job.

Brand monitoring is undeniably a promising way to keep track of what people say about them online and use that information to improve their business. 

Why is brand monitoring important for you?

If you have been on and off about committing to brand monitoring, here’s what you need to know. 

Improved customer service: By using brand monitoring tools, companies can quickly respond to any negative comments or complaints that customers may have. 

For example, if someone tweets at Domino’s Pizza that their pizza was cold, the company can respond and offer to make it right. This is an example of improved customer service by ensuring satisfaction and loyalty.

Better product development: Companies can use brand monitoring to see what people say about their products and services. 

For example, if people complain that their headphones keep breaking, a company like Bose can use that feedback to improve their products and make them more durable.

Crisis management: In a crisis or negative publicity, brand monitoring can help companies respond quickly and effectively. 

For example, if a product is recalled, a company like Tesla can monitor social media and news outlets to see what people are saying and take action to address any concerns or issues.

Competitive analysis: Companies can also use brand monitoring to monitor their competitors. 

For example, if McDonald’s sees people raving about a new burger at Burger King, they can use that information to improve their menu offerings.

Read More: What Are Social Mentions & How To Track Them

Brand reputation management: Brand monitoring helps companies to maintain a positive reputation. 

For example, if Nike sees people praising their new shoes on social media, they can use that feedback in their marketing materials to showcase positive reviews and build trust with potential customers.

Regret not starting early? You can start doing it right away with the steps we covered in the next section. 

How should you monitor your brand for free?

1. Login into the dashboard.

2. Go to Profile Analytics. Then add a new profile by clicking the “+Add New Profile” button on the top right corner of the screen.

3. Select the @Analyze New Profile option from the drop-down. Click on the icons to choose your preferred social media platform. Enter your profile handle. 

4. Select your profile from the drop-down and tap on “Analyze Profile”. You’ll be redirected to your account’s dashboard page. 

5. Select the date range for which you want to monitor the mentions from the top right corner. You can choose from the past week, month, or year or set a custom date range.

6. Select Mention from the navigation panel on the left. You’ll see posts that have mentioned you. 

Tip: If you notice a lock symbol next to that, you must authenticate your profile on Keyhole. You can go for the authentication process by clicking the Authenticate button below your profile name in the account dashboard. 

7. Now you can view the mentions in real-time on the dashboard. Click on posts that interest you and reply to them with appropriate responses. 

You can also discover sentiments by tracking your brand names, hashtags, keywords, etc., from the Listening & Campaigns tab. 

1. Add a keyword, brand name, product, or relevant hashtag by clicking “+Add New Tracker”. Fill in respective details.

2. Once added, you’ll see a tracker dashboard. From the left navigation panel, select Sentiment. 

3. Keyhole will display a sentiment analysis graph showing the percentage of positive, negative, and neutral mentions of your brand. You can also view the actual mentions and filter them by sentiment.

4. Filter posts and see the respective sentiments. Use the insights gathered from the monitoring and sentiment analysis to make informed decisions about your brand’s online presence and reputation.

And that’s it! Following these simple steps, you can monitor brand mentions and perform sentiment analysis without wasting much time and effort.

5 Expert tips for brand monitoring for beginners

Still not able to reap the benefits of brand monitoring? Here are some expert tips if you are just starting:

1. Choose a tool: There are many monitoring tools available. Choose the one that not only fits your needs and budget but also is easy to use. You’ll spend more time learning it, ultimately saving none of it. 

2. Set up your keywords: Be keyword-specific and try out different combinations. For example, if you want to monitor a brand’s name, you would set up multiple variations of your brand name in mentions.

3. Customize your settings: Most monitoring tools allow you to customize your settings, such as how often you want to receive notifications or what type of content you want to monitor (e.g., social media, news sites, blogs, etc.). So please make the most of it. 

4. Review your results: Once you’ve set up your monitoring tool, review the results regularly. Look for patterns or trends in what people are saying about the brand. Are there recurring complaints or issues that need to be addressed? Are customers expressing satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the brand?

5. Take action: The most important part of brand monitoring is taking action on the information you receive. If you notice recurring complaints or issues, work with the company or brand to address them.

If customers are satisfied, consider what you can do to continue meeting their needs. Also, find ways to communicate with customers that suit their preferences. For example, soliciting feedback through text messaging rather than intrusive calls lets you gauge your brand’s reputation less disruptively.

Read More: 8 Mistakes That Are Ruining Your Social Media Monitoring Efforts

Conclusion

Brand monitoring is important for any business or brand to track what people say about them online. It allows them to make better product or service decisions and maintain a good reputation.

Keyhole is the perfect choice if you’re looking for a great brand-monitoring tool. No need to be a data geek! You can access advanced analytics from day 1 and monitor your brand effectively. With Keyhole’s real-time tracking capabilities, you can stay on top of what people say about your brand and take action when needed.

And the best part? See why it’s the best choice for brand monitoring. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to take your brand to the next level!

The post Ultimate Brand Monitoring Guide For Tracking Online Reputation appeared first on Keyhole.

Sometimes, they have enormous resources at their disposal. But winning this battle has less to do with your budget and more to do with how attuned you are to the emotions and opinions of your audience. This is where social media sentiment analysis comes in to save the day.

Look, all those spreadsheets full of data in Excel are fantastic. But when was the last time you actually went to see what people have to say about your brand?

I guess we can all agree that marketing goes far beyond the numbers. Marketing is about feelings, opinions, and emotions (in the end, 95% of all purchases are emotional; it’s no secret).

So, isn’t this the perfect way to actually learn what your clients have to say? To help you out, today, we will explore the many benefits of social mention sentiment analysis and how to get started.

What is social media sentiment analysis and why does it matter?

Simply put, social media sentiment analysis is tracking brand mentions, gathering relevant information, and analyzing the data with one goal in mind – to determine how people perceive your brand and learn their opinions about you across social platforms.

This is exactly what you need if you hope to better understand your audience and create better-targeted content. But there’s even more to it. Most people already know how to check engagement metrics like comments, likes, dislikes, shares, etc.

But you also need to be able to turn all that into meaningful information that you can use to power up your marketing strategy. Generally, when people share content and mention brands, it might look great, but this doesn’t always result in a positive outcome for a business. 

For example, typing “Nestle” into X (formerly Twitter) search will bring up more instances of negative brand mentions than positive ones. You will see everything from someone complaining about a discontinued chocolate bar to the famous worldwide scandals. 

With sentiment analysis, you can quickly identify issues early on. Based on what you find, you can then respond quickly and effectively to control your brand narrative and take it in a different direction (if needed).

Often, the most effective way of doing this is by publishing press releases. You can reach out to media by yourself, hire a freelancer, or use a news sharing company (platform). But before you submit a press release, think carefully about the message you want to communicate.

Real-world examples of good social media sentiment analysis 

Social media is a powerful tool for online marketing, so you want to ensure that you are active on as many SM platforms as possible, especially the ones like Twitter (now X), which can be a goldmine for growing your traffic if you learn how to tap into it.

But that’s only the beginning of your journey – you must be able to understand the kind of interactions people are having with your brand, and this makes sentiment analysis an essential factor for growth. Here are some real-world examples of good analysis:

#1 Nike

In 2016, during the NFL’s preseason, Colin Kaepernick took a stance against police brutality by taking a knee during the national anthem. This sparked a heated discussion that went on for years, with people divided on whether this was the right action or not.

Nike, as one of the world’s top sportswear brands, had a decision to make and take a stand. So, they made the bold choice to support him – a move now called “the Kaepernick gamble” by the media. By monitoring public opinion, Nike was able to track brand mentions and public reaction to this campaign across social media.

Very quickly, it became apparent that their move was not only the right one but also the most profitable stance despite the initial backlash from some customer segments. The company made over $6 billion off that campaign within a year!

#2 Fitbit

A good sentiment analysis helps you align with your customers’ expectations, improve your brand credibility, and build trust. This is exactly what Fitbit experienced first-hand. By constantly monitoring what users say about them online, they were able to come up with new ideas to improve their services and products based on feedback and requests. 

For example, the “reminders to move” feature, which gently nudges users to get more active, is a successful result of this approach. Today, though relatively new to the scene compared to other brands, Fitbit has been able to build a loyal following of customers and grow their business.  

How to perform social sentiment analysis in 4 simple steps

Social sentiment analysis, when done right, can help you stay relevant and keep your competitive edge even if your ideal customers evolve. Here’s an easy guide to help you get started right away:

1. Monitor your brand mentions

Today, thanks to the many tools available (more on that later), it’s very easy to monitor brand mentions across all social media platforms. Also, you can now discover and track the conversations even when they don’t tag your SM handles. Most social listening tools like Hootsuite streams allow you to do that. 

The goal is to keep track of every instance where you are tagged and the times where you are not tagged but your brand name appears in the conversation. Still, monitoring your brand mentions goes beyond just names, so you should also keep an eye on the use of brand-relevant keywords and hashtags. 

2. Dig deep into the sentiments behind the mentions

While there are many types of emotions, some of which are more complex than others, in your social sentiment analysis, you want to focus on three broad categories, namely positive, negative, and neutral. 

To the untrained eyes, a comment may seemingly appear random and doesn’t really mean much. Yet, to SM marketers and specialists, there is always a word or phrase that highlights an emotion, even when it isn’t obvious. 

So you want to look out for those phrases or words like “perfect, “great,” “best,” “worst,” “meh,” “sucks,” etc. Once you identify these sentimentally loaded terms, you want to group them according to the emotions they convey, keeping context in mind. This way, you can know when your social media strategy to serve up humorous engagement hits the target.

3. Track social sentiment scores

Your analysis is not complete after you become aware of the words or key phrases used to describe your products or services. You should feel the pulse of your target audience and customers before and after launching a campaign.

But how? Calculate and weigh the percentages for the negative and positive mentions before, during, and after. 

If you check the percentage of your total mentions that are positive and there are more positive than negative, then you are clearly doing something right. But of course, you will need to keep an eye on this and ensure that it doesn’t tilt towards the other side of the scale.

Also, it’s important to come up with strategies to increase positive reviews while reducing the size of negative mentions in your chart.

4. Mind the challenges and know the limitations

Like everything else in life, there are hurdles to be aware of when running a social media sentiment analysis. For example, if you rely on unstructured or inaccurate data (which, let’s face it, is rampant on social media), then inevitably, the conclusions will be incorrect. Then, sometimes, it might be complicated to really get the right context for a comment. 

What’s worse is that your preferred monitoring tool might not pick up on nuances such as irony, sarcasm, etc. This is why no matter how well your algorithm is trained to analyze sentiments, it’s always a good idea to have a human go over the data and double-check it. 

There is also an argument as to whether online sentiment scores reflect offline opinions. But the truth is they both count because offline clients are also the ones coming online to express their contentment or dissatisfaction. So, both groups overlap, and usually, it’s hard to distinguish them.

Best ways for tracking brand mentions & more

If you are in a competitive niche, getting new customers can be challenging. Many marketers rely on guest posting to improve their SEO rankings and get more customers with varying success. Adding social mention analysis can help you better understand how to make your guest posts more aligned with what your audience actually wants to see. 

And the right sentiment analysis tools are crucial if you want to stay on top of your game. You may have heard of options like HootSuite Insights, Brand24, Semrush, etc., but here’s why we recommend Keyhole for tracking your brand sentiment analysis on social media: 

Real-time social listening

Use our #Listening & Campaigns section to catch relevant insights as they happen to help you grow your brand. Imagine you put in a lot of effort learning how to create a new social media style guide or launch a new product. How do you know if it resonates with your audience? 

With Keyhole, you are able to instantly capture brand mentions and keep tabs on your reputation across all social platforms. Get notifications and more.

Track your keywords, gauge how your target audience is feeling about your latest campaigns and launches, and know exactly how to respond. Cut through the jargon and understand the conversations. All it takes is a keyword or more and the click of a button. 

Influencer tracking 

Marketing requires collaboration, not just with anyone. Keyhole gives you the data you need to make strategic decisions when it comes to working with influencers.

With this, you can find the one with the most engagements and track ROI for every campaign. You don’t need tons of subscriptions to different software to stay ahead in your niche. 

Stay ahead of the curve with profile analytics

Track your growth over time and see where your strategies worked and where you need improvements. It can be difficult to make sense of all the social media noise and really get the insights that make your business strategies more effective.

The interface is also easy to use and organize, making it easy to see the data that matters. Don’t forget to do a competitive analysis to know where you stand. 

Tap into current trends

Never go out of relevance as you keep up with the constantly changing trends. It can be hard to keep up with the latest trend, but you don’t have to struggle if you have access to the right tool.

You can tap into current trends, map out the popularity of trends, and even do market research using keywords and hashtags. As a result, you will be able to better understand your audience’s pain points and how to best serve them. 

Remember that good tactics paired with consistency bring real results. The Nike story proves that. So don’t quit when the conversations are not in your favor. Instead, find a way to turn it around.

Wrapping up

The power of social media sentiment analysis lies in what you do with the information and data at your disposal. Use them to adapt your marketing strategy and SEO efforts in real time.

Find ways to respond promptly and positively, even to seemingly neutral or negative feedback, in a way that highlights your decision to constantly do better. And, of course, don’t forget to use the insights you gain to maintain and increase the customer’s happiness. 

While there are many tools for social media sentiment analysis, you want to use one that can handle almost anything you throw at it. Join over 100,000 global brands who are using Keyhole for their decision-making process.

Take the guesswork out of your strategy, and know what your consumers really think and feel about you, your products, and your services. Sign up for the free trial now.

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The post Social Mention Sentiment Analysis: A Comprehensive Guide For Marketers appeared first on Keyhole.

It also indicates how often customers turn towards your brand when discussing trends, ideas, and insights in your industry. 

If you were to visualize it, it might look something like the market share graphic below: 

Why is measuring share of voice important?

Measuring SOV is particularly helpful because it helps you understand exactly where you stand in the industry and how and where you can leverage your voice to make an impact or improve your reputation. 

For example, a situation where SOV can be valuable is understanding ‌online conversations around controversial and/or sensitive topics like mental health.  

By tracking ‌mentions of Adderall alongside discussions of anxiety or depression, brands can gain valuable insights into ‌public perceptions of mental health solutions. Through this monitoring and research, health brands can better understand effectiveness and potential risks. 

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Measuring SOV can benefit businesses of all sizes, regardless of industry. 

In the case of measuring the share of voice on social media, you can leverage social signals, social listening tools, and brand visibility analytics. But that’s not all you can do. 

Without further ado, let’s dive into the meat and potatoes of how to measure the share of voice on social media.

Share of voice metrics you should know

Here are a few SOV metrics worth tracking. 

1. Volume of mentions: This share of voice metric indicates the number of times you’ve been tagged in tweets, posts, stories, etc. For example, here’s what a social media mention looks like on X:

2. Social media reach: An indication of how your content is being viewed by a large public (e.g., people from different states/countries, age groups, genders, ethnicities, etc).

3. Other social signals: Other social signals, such as post views, impressions, social media shares, comments, likes, etc., also indicate your share of voice on social media.

At this stage, if you have all the insights you need, you can use the following formula to find your share of voice on social media: 

Share of voice formula = Your Brand Metrics / Total Market Metrics

Alternatively, you can leverage social media monitoring or listening tools (like Keyhole) to do the heavy lifting and find your social media SOV. 

For example, here’s a screenshot of a social media listening tool analyzing your brand metrics vs. overall market metrics. 

Having said that, measuring your impact on social media isn’t all that easy. We say this mainly because we’ve only discussed measuring our SOV with quantitative metrics.

So, let’s take the next section to analyze how to do a complete 360-degree measurement of your share of voice with quantitative and qualitative data. 

How to measure SOV on social media

Here’s the lowdown on properly measuring SOV across all your social media platforms. 

1. Competitor analysis 

Before we even get to measure our own metrics, we need to analyze what market metrics are, and for that, we need to do a competitive analysis. 

How to do that, you ask? It’s simple. 

All you need to do is hop onto a social media listening tool. This can be any tool, but our recommendation would be to use the insights of Keyhole. 

These tools indicate who your top competitors are. They also show you how you stack up against them (as shown in the visual above). 

Ideally, once you have access to these tools, note down the metrics of your top competitors. Try to jot down the metrics of individual companies as well as take an average to see what the industry standard for market presence looks like. 

2. Sentiment analysis

If you have the metrics down, the next task is to look at the sentiment around your brand. 

We know the saying, “All PR is good PR.” However, a negative mention can severely tank your social media reputation when you’re playing the social media game. 

So, always check the conversations surrounding your brand. Are you receiving words of affirmation (like Elf Cosmetics in the above post), or are your customers angry with you (like the image below)? 

If you can, try to also analyze other emotions customers have with your brand aside from happy and sad. For example, are they content with your service? Do they find your approach welcoming? Do they trust your brand? Would they recommend you to a friend? 

All these things make an impact and eventually help you analyze the vibe you give off to your customers, which will help you rework your communication approach accordingly. 

The bottom line is you need to do sentiment analysis to check if your share of voice is positive or negative. 

3. SOV Calculations

Lastly, as we previously mentioned, you can use the formula: 

Share of voice = Your Brand Metrics / Total Market Metrics 

Multiply the output by 100 to arrive at your SOV percentage (%). 

Alternatively, if you use social media management tools, the software will directly show you your SOV something like this:

Keyhole: The best tool to help with SOV management

While there are multiple social media monitoring tools in the market, our whole-hearted recommendation would be to move forward with a tool like Keyhole, and here’s why:

• With this tool, you can monitor your brand mentions, keywords, competitor performance, your loyal customers, conversations around your brand, hashtags, etc. 

• Not just that, Keyhole is a complete social media management tool. That’s to say, it can help you with brand monitoring. But it can also help you with campaign management, influencer marketing, competitor analysis, market research, etc.  

• You can also leverage Keyhole to schedule and publish your posts, give you insights on social media trends, and provide historical data about campaign and profile performance. 

• It has received a solid rating of 4.3/5 on G2. 

Strategies for increasing SOV

Looking for ways to improve your SOV? Here are three simple strategies that you can implement today. 

1. Content optimization

For content to perform well on a social media platform, you must optimize it to match the algorithm’s needs. 

For example, LinkedIn bumps up content in the algorithm ‌that gives relevant insights and has fresh perspectives. 

An HR company, Remote, demonstrates a prime example of using this strategy to its advantage. It uses LinkedIn as the host for a webinar series focused on what’s driving SMBs to hire independent contractors globally.

Posting this webinar on LinkedIn (vs. another social media platform less conducive to this type of content) generated an impressive amount of engagement, with over 200 comments and 170 reactions.

So, how do you follow a similar strategy for your own content? Consider your user requirements. Leverage heatmaps and social media analytics to find which topics do well and how customers engage you with your content. 

You’ll end up increasing your SOV as the algorithm will boost your brand’s visibility, and your audience will engage with your content since it’s written/structured the way they want. 

2. Engaging content creation

A critical factor contributing to a robust share of voice involves consistently crafting relevant content across various platforms. This entails the creation of high-quality, engaging content designed to resonate with the target audience.

Recess hits the nail on the head by combining eye-catching visuals, giveaways, and helpful tips in their Instagram feed. 

Damian Grabarczyk, the co-founder and growth marketer of PetLab Co., says, “In our journey of building social media as a growth channel, we recognized the crucial role of engaging content in amplifying our share of voice on social media.

With over a million followers across platforms, we focused on creating content that engaged and resonated with our audience’s core interests in pet health and wellness. This strategic shift towards content that educates, entertains, and informs has led to a significant increase in our social media influence. It wasn’t just about posting regularly; it was about posting with purpose.

As a result, we saw our messages spread wider, and our community engagement deepened, solidifying our position as a trusted voice in the pet care industry.”

3. Influencer partnerships

Influencer partnerships are, again, an excellent strategy that can help you boost your brand’s visibility. 

Experts recommend partnering with different types of influencers for different reasons — for example, you can partner with micro-influencers to boost your brand’s sales or partner with mega-influencers to build your brand’s credibility and increase your visibility. 

Try to look for influencers whose content and values closely align with your brand’s values and content. That way, you’ll attract the right audience. 

Don’t forget that leveraging influencers can also help improve your SEO score, which can again help boost your brand’s visibility. 

Experts recommend asking your influencers to:

• Link to your brand (especially your landing pages) on their own website
• Target long-tail keywords you want to rank for
• Co-write blogs on your website
• Create multi-format content

What’s next?

Just to quickly summarize what we discussed above, here are a few things we should keep in mind:

• You need to track your social media reach, social signals, and brand visibility to analyze your share of voice.

• SOV can clarify where you stand in terms of market discussions and how you can leverage your voice to make an impact. 

• You can leverage influencers, optimize content performance, and create engaging content to increase your SOV. 

• You’ll likely need a social media monitoring tool to help you properly analyze your SOV.

For the last point, Keyhole could be one of the contenders you can consider to improve your marketing efforts. We already discussed why it’s a helpful tool.

Author Bio

Guillaume is a digital marketer focused on handling the outreach strategy at uSERP and content management at Wordable. Outside of work, he enjoys his expat life in sunny Mexico, reading books, wandering around and catching the latest shows on TV.

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The post How To Measure Share Of Voice On Social Media appeared first on Keyhole.

When we talk about social monitoring, we’re focusing on the “what” – understanding what’s being said about your brand. 

On the other hand, social listening is like tuning in to your audience’s favorite radio station. It’s about understanding the “why,” gaining a deep understanding of your audience, and refining your campaign strategy. 

So, when we delve into social listening, we’re exploring the “why” – the motivations and sentiments that drive the online discourse.

Monitoring tackles the symptoms, and listening dives deep to reveal the root causes.

However, the distinction between social listening vs. social monitoring isn’t always as clear-cut as this definition might suggest. These two strategies often overlap and work together.

In this article, we’ll dive into the intricacies, demystify the nuances, and shed light on the areas where social listening vs social monitoring meet and mingle. 

Understanding social listening

At its core, social listening is a strategic approach to monitoring and analyzing digital and online conversations on different social media platforms to get useful insights into customer sentiments, trends, and discussions related to a brand, industry, or specific topics. 

You need to gauge and analyze the overall sentiment of online conversations related to your brand. Understanding whether sentiments are positive, negative, or neutral can help you assess the public perception of your brand and make informed decisions to enhance customer satisfaction.

You’ll be able to come up with campaigns that get results and even use website feedback tools more effectively because you’ll better understand what your audience wants from you wherever you interact with them.

Spotify has nailed social listening with its @SpotifyCares account on Twitter. With this platform, the brand can answer questions, offer tips, and share feature updates with its audience.

Social listening provides insights into how your brand compares with competitors, identifies growth market trends, and uncovers opportunities to differentiate and improve.

Good social listening can positively affect how you run your campaigns. You can refine your marketing strategies by evaluating the success and impact of ongoing campaigns.

Methods used in social listening

There is quite a lot involved in good social listening. Let’s check out what it’s all about, starting with effective methods.

1. Keyword monitoring

• Track specific keywords, hashtags, and phrases relevant to your brand, industry, or any related topic to uncover important conversations. 
• Identify trends, monitor brand mentions, and understand audience sentiments associated with these keywords.

2. Sentiment analysis

• Analyze the tone of online conversations to determine whether sentiments are positive, negative, or neutral. 
• This type of analysis will make it easier to assess public perception, gauge customer satisfaction, and identify areas that may require attention or improvement.

3. Competitor analysis

• Monitor and analyze online discussions related to your competitors to gain insights into their strategies, strengths, and weaknesses. 
• Identify opportunities for differentiation, benchmark against competitors, and stay informed about industry trends.

4. Influencer tracking

• Identify and monitor influencers and thought leaders in your industry or niche. 
• As a result, you’ll understand the impact of influencers on audience perceptions, identify potential collaboration opportunities, and stay informed about industry thought leadership.

Tools used in social listening

Let’s look at some of the best tools for social listening.

1. Keyhole

Keyhole provides enterprise-grade social listening together with analytics to help you track your competitors’ critical activity, stay on top of the industry’s top trends, and never lose sight of what your customers are saying on social media. 

2. Hootsuite Insights

Hootsuite offers social listening capabilities, sentiment analysis, and trend monitoring to help businesses stay informed about online conversations.

3. Brandwatch

With Brandwatch you get a comprehensive social listening and analytics platform with real-time monitoring, sentiment analysis, and competitor benchmarking.

4. Sprout Social

As one of the most popular social listening tools, Sprout Social lets you combine social listening with engagement tools, allowing you to monitor conversations, analyze sentiments, and respond to audience interactions.

Benefits and applications in brand management

There are several advantages to using social listening tools to manage your brand.

1. Crisis management

Social listening tools play a crucial role in detecting potential crises early on, allowing you to respond swiftly and effectively to mitigate reputational damage. Additionally, integrating call center software can enhance this process by collecting and analyzing customers’ social media interactions and current emotions using AI.

This data provides real-time insights to agents, helping them handle customer calls more effectively during crises and ensuring a more personalized and informed response.

2. Content strategy optimization

Analyze discussions around relevant topics to inform content strategy, ensuring content resonates with the audience’s interests and preferences.

3. Campaign effectiveness evaluation

Assess the impact of marketing campaigns in real time, allowing for adjustments to optimize ongoing campaigns for maximum engagement and effectiveness.

Understanding social monitoring

Social monitoring is a proactive process of tracking and observing online conversations, mentions, and activities related to a brand, product, or industry across various social media platforms. 

It’s important to gather and analyze customer feedback, sentiments, and opinions expressed on social media. By monitoring sentiments, you can gauge customer satisfaction, address concerns promptly, and make data-driven improvements to products or services.

Monitoring industry trends can help you adapt to changing market dynamics, capitalize on opportunities, and align strategies with current industry discussions.

For example, you can use these insights to build chatbots that are tailored to resonate with your specific audience, providing a responsive and relevant customer interaction experience that reflects the current industry landscape.

Thus, social monitoring provides insights into the impact and effectiveness of various initiatives, guiding future marketing strategies.

Methods used in social listening

Fortunately, there are several methods and tools to make use of that will make social monitoring easy.

1. Brand mentions tracking

• Directly track mentions of the brand name or product names across social media platforms. 
• Assessing the frequency and sentiment of brand mentions to gauge overall brand visibility and sentiment.

2. Competitor analysis

• Monitoring and analyzing the online presence and activities of competitors can greatly benefit your brand. 
• Benchmarking against competitors, identifying areas for improvement, and staying informed about industry trends.

3. Sentiment analysis

• Analyze the sentiment of social media mentions. 
• Better understand the overall sentiment around the brand and identify areas that may require attention or response.

4. Audience demographics analysis

• Get a grip on the demographics of your audience engaging with your brand on social media. 
• Tailor content and marketing strategies to align with the characteristics of your target audience.

Tools used in social listening

1. Google Alerts

With Google Alerts, you can set up email notifications when specific keywords or phrases are mentioned online. Basic brand monitoring allows you to stay informed about online mentions.

2. Keyhole

This tool aggregates user-generated content from various platforms to provide a comprehensive overview. You can brand mentions and overall brand sentiment across the web.

3. Talkwalker

With Talkwalker, you’ll have access to real-time monitoring, sentiment analysis, and influencer tracking. Comprehensive brand monitoring with a focus on sentiment and industry influencers is great for social media marketing.

Benefits and applications in brand management

There are also quite a few advantages to social monitoring tools.

1. Crisis preparedness and response

Use social monitoring tools to detect potential crises early on, allowing for timely and effective responses to protect the brand’s image.

2. Competitive intelligence

Social monitoring tools let you track and analyze competitor activities, sentiments, and market trends for informed decision-making.

3. Campaign effectiveness evaluation

You can assess the impact of marketing campaigns in real-time, allowing for adjustments to optimize ongoing campaigns for maximum engagement and effectiveness. You can also integrate these tools with other digital marketing platforms to have a bird’s eye perspective to your marketing strategy

Social listening vs social monitoring

Social listening and social monitoring are two essential components of a comprehensive social media strategy. While they share the common goal of tracking online activities, they differ in their focus, scope, and utilization

Focus: Past vs real-time data analysis

Social monitoring

• Focus: Primarily on past and present online activities.
• Analysis:  Involves tracking brand mentions, keyword usage, and overall online presence.
• Benefits: Helps you understand historical trends and track the impact of past campaigns or events.

Social listening

• Focus: Primarily on real-time data analysis.
• Analysis: Involves interpreting current conversations, sentiments, and emerging trends.
• Benefits: Enables you to respond promptly to current issues, identify immediate opportunities, and stay relevant in the ever-changing social media landscape.

Scope: Audience insights vs immediate engagement

Social monitoring

• Scope: Emphasis on gathering data about your audience’s interactions with your brand.
• Insights: Provides historical data on customer preferences, feedback, and overall sentiment.
• Use case: Useful for understanding your audience’s perception over time and making informed decisions based on past interactions.

Social listening

• Scope: Emphasis on gaining insights into audience behaviors, preferences, and emerging trends.
• Insights: Offers real-time analysis to understand current sentiments, preferences, and discussions.
• Use case: Valuable for immediate engagement, addressing customer concerns, and adapting strategies to meet current market demands.

Utilization: Strategic planning vs tactical actions

Social monitoring

• Utilization: Mainly for strategic planning.
• Application: Informs long-term strategies, marketing campaigns, and overall brand positioning.
• Outcome: Helps in shaping your brand’s image and long-term customer relationships.

Social listening

• Utilization: Mainly for tactical actions.
• Application: Supports quick decision-making, immediate responses to customer feedback, and adapting strategies on the fly.
• Outcome: Enhances agility in responding to real-time market changes and customer sentiments.

Read More: 2024’s Top 25 Social Listening Tools [Free Included]

The overlap between social listening and social monitoring

While social listening and social monitoring have distinct purposes, there is a significant overlap between the two practices.

Interconnectedness and collaboration

Data synergy

Social monitoring provides a foundational layer of historical data, while social listening adds real-time insights. 

By combining historical trends with current sentiments, you can gain a comprehensive understanding of audience behavior and preferences.

Holistic analysis

Social monitoring establishes a context, and social listening refines it with up-to-the-minute data. The collaboration ensures a more nuanced and holistic analysis, allowing you to make informed decisions that consider both past and present perspectives.

Feedback loop

Social monitoring identifies patterns and customer feedback over time, and social listening captures immediate reactions. Creating a feedback loop where historical insights inform real-time responses, and vice versa, helps in building stronger connections with your audience.

Leveraging both for social media management

If you want to create an effective social media campaign, you should definitely use social media listening as well as social media monitoring. A tool like Keyhole is ideal for easy and efficient integration.

The combination allows you to balance stability with adaptability, responding to immediate needs without losing sight of overarching goals. By seamlessly integrating both, you can proactively shape and protect your brand image, addressing both long-term and immediate concerns.

Choosing the right approach: When and how

In social media management, selecting the appropriate approach depends on the specific needs and goals of a business. 

Situational analysis

Social monitoring is ideal for assessing the overall health of your brand over time. It helps track brand mentions, sentiment trends, and the impact of past marketing efforts. 

To understand how you compare to competitors in terms of online presence, social monitoring provides valuable insights into competitor mentions and industry trends.

Social listening is crucial during crises or emergencies, as it provides immediate insights into customer sentiments and concerns. This enables you to respond promptly and effectively.

Social listening is also ideal for identifying emerging trends and staying ahead of industry shifts, ensuring that you remain relevant in a rapidly changing landscape. 

You’ll be able to create interesting, beautiful social media posts that actually resonate with your audience.

Complementing strategies

Combining social monitoring and social listening creates a balanced and comprehensive social media strategy.

Use insights from social monitoring to inform long-term strategies and insights from social listening for immediate actions, creating a continuous feedback loop.

Social monitoring aligns with long-term strategic planning, while social listening is tailored for short-term, tactical decision-making.

Read More: 2024’s Top 21 Social Media Monitoring Tools for Brand Mentions

Tips for optimal implementation

Let’s look at how you can truly make the most of social listening and monitoring.

1. Define objectives clearly

Understand the objectives of your social media strategy, whether you are focused on long-term brand building or short-term crisis management.

2. Use tools effectively

Invest in and use social monitoring and listening tools that align with your goals and provide the necessary insights.

3. Establish protocols for action

Have clear protocols in place for how your team will respond to insights gained from monitoring and listening activities.

4. Regularly review and adjust

Regularly review the performance of your social media strategy, making adjustments as needed based on both historical and real-time data.

Harmony in social media management: Social monitoring vs social listening

The nuanced interplay between social monitoring and social listening gives you a holistic toolkit for navigating the intricacies of the online marketing landscape. Social monitoring, with its focus on historical trends and brand health, lays the foundation for informed, long-term strategies. 

On the other hand, social listening, attuned to real-time conversations and emerging trends, properly equips you to swiftly respond to immediate opportunities or challenges. Explore both with Keyhole and make sure your social media management is taken care of.

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