by Irene Lizarraga

Created on: July 13, 2010

One of the most important but often overlooked aspects of Social Media is Social Media monitoring. Keeping track of what is going on in the Social Media space is vital to generate current content, adapt initiatives and even fix PR disasters before they have a chance to really harm your brand. However, small business don’t often have the luxury of having a full marketing department to track and analyze this information, and for this reason knowing what absolutely you need to monitor in  terms of keywords can make a great difference.

Company or brand name
The first thing a small business needs to monitor in Social Media is their company or brand name. You really want to be the first to know if anybody mentions your company or your own name on their blog or tweet, be it to say thanks or help a dissatisfied customer. You should also consider monitoring common misspellings of your name or company name, or alternative names you may have been referred as in the past.

Your slogan
If you have a marketing campaign with a specific slogan, it’s worth keeping an eye on how it is spreading, and if people are using it. Just imagine the joy of Specsavers marketing department when their slogan was mentioned during the World Cup 2010 final. At the same time, it’s another way unhappy clients may be talking about your brand... Monitoring your brand message would alert you of things such as “All your needs in Widgets... but only if you have very few needs, they never have stock”.

Your competition
Your second set of keywords on Google Alerts or your social media monitoring tool of choice should be your competition names and nicknames. If any of them are big companies, you may want to also keep track of their CEO or spokespeople. Either because they do something great or they put their foot in their mouth, you want to know what they are up to.

Your clients and business partners
If you have clients who release press statements or company news, you may want to monitor them as well. First of all, they may mention you. Second, it’s a great excuse for some positive interaction with them, such as sending a congratulations message. And third, if there’s any problem with the companies you work for or with, you want to be the first to know.

Your industry and industry leaders
Being informed about your industry isn’t something new for many business. A subscription to one or several trade publications has always been a popular business expense, and not only to display it on the waiting room for your clients to see. Monitoring the Social Media presence of your industry leaders can give you access to groundbreaking news or events much earlier than a monthly magazine, and also allows you to participate and create a reputation for yourself.

If there’s only a limited amount of time you can devote to monitoring Social Media, make a point of at least setting alerts for the above keywords. While some of them can be obvious, the information they can provide about your company and industry and their presence on the Internet is priceless.

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