It is undeniable that opening a brand to social media exposes it to public dimensions until recently unknown. But not by working an active presence in social media brand image will be eroded. This is a myth that is worth being eliminated once and for all and on which social media monitoring can give you a lot of light.

We dare say that who has that myth by flag is quite rusty and runs the danger of generating gangrene in his digital tissue. Similarly, this effort to understand change does not lead anyone to conclusions such as “if one has to be, one is”. This is not enough.

Generate opportunities for your audience: More social than technological

As in marketing in general, active presence in social media must generate opportunities ; opportunities that can be transformed into sales, although, let’s face it, not necessarily directly. If you are looking for direct and measurable sales in the digital sphere it contemplates other actions like a good SEM campaign, that can be directly related to your results account. But in what refers to presence in social media, the matter is different. Also, it is not advisable to base your action on digital marketing only on Facebook or Twitter because you may see too limited the application of different objectives. Extend the branches of your presence online, even if you have to level intensities.

We could say that social media responds much more to factors of social science than of technology. And this is where monitoring goes. In fact, those who work on it every day are tekis themselves, but we essentially use technology to interpret data on attitudes that, today, cook at high temperatures and in large doses in social media. Then what are we talking about? Well, to understand our audience, looking for those opportunities that we talked about before.

Measures your reach and capacity: internal and external monitoring

In this sense, knowing where you are in social media is key. Understanding the importance of this facet, there are two options when monitoring your brand: one external and one internal. We could refer to external monitoring in which you measure comments related to your brand or product outside of your own digital media and that configures the general view that you have of your brand or business in the network. Usually it allows to measure those flashy concepts for so many responsible of marketing like the positioning of mark or its reputation online. This will require tools, not precisely economic, such as Radian6. Very useful as long as they are well interpreted since the degree of effectiveness is quite low – the most pessimistic put it at 15% and the most optimistic at 50%. This fact reinforces the vision that we always insist on: look at the trend rather than the quantitative, because it is what commands and what can really help to articulate the course of your online presence.

Now, let us not leave any value – not even out – the internal monitoring of your brand, that is, the one that accumulates data about the activity within its own communities, whether profiles on Facebook, Twitter, blog or even corporate web as open as it may be. In my opinion, it would not make any sense to obsess in an external monitoring if what you are dynamizing in your own community lacks direction because, simply, the activity data is not monitored and interpreted. That is, the logical order would be internal monitoring and then and while the? Presu? hold, external. Confirm that your direct audience is satisfied with what you do in your communities, and then brag about yourself to monitor what is being said beyond your Facebook.

In this internal monitoring, you can move through different indicators according to platforms and that will conform in turn a series of variables that will establish a reliable scheme on your activity in a specific period. Each can have its own choice of indicators and variables. In the following list you can see a sample of the ones that I recommend to be able to monitor, for example, your official Facebook page and to have a very accurate idea of your social temperature and contrast it with your objectives (variable : detail – indicators).

• Dimension: Determine the growth progress of your communities. – Likes + Unlikes -.
• Activity: Determines the degree of activity of your environments. The increase can be related to the interest you generate. – General impressions of your page + unique users -.
• Link by content: The famous engagement, which determines the degree of participation of your users through your publications. We like to make it clear that linking is by content. % Scope + Likes + Comments + Shares + Linked Users +% General Linking +% Linking for each post.

All are more or less clear, if there is any question do not hesitate to comment. But the variable that perhaps we are most passionate about its effectiveness in evaluating the effectiveness of our communication through a Facebook page is the one related to content linking. About her we’ll talk in a next post. It is important to pay attention to this variable, because it evaluates the capacity you have to generate participation in your community.

In future articles we will detail what the linking consists of, since it has to do directly with the actual scope of each post (fans + no fans) and the size of your Facebook page, among others. We also recommend that the monitoring be reflected month by month in a control panel that you can create yourself, for example, with a well worked Excel, to be able to have a general progressive view of your activity where you can also show percentages of variation (upwards or downwards) of the indicators that measure. At all times you can have your trend controlled.

Attention, the degree of participation will be deeply linked to the goals that you have marked your action on Facebook and it is very important that you do not overshadow the numbers. Forget the quantitative role of your page, because quality also matters. A satisfied customer through a comment of the brand hidden under a post and among other several comments is possible that has much more value and effectiveness than 100 Likes in the post of an image that you published for a certain time slot.

Everything is relative. All data are interpretable. But above all, what will mark the sense of the data that you get will be the contrast with the goals that you have marked, not only in social media, but in the different areas of your digital marketing.

The tools do not go alone, you also need instinct and affection

There are many tools that can help you monitor, but on the other hand we also recommend that manual tracking through a specialized human profile is never abandoned. There are areas that the tools will not be able to cover and that necessarily must be attended by the instinct and the affection of the person in charge of the account , as for example to detect those more active users to know to leave any comment that provokes in the positive sense of the word a new dialogue.

In short, that theme gives of itself. The important thing is to be clear that nothing is casual but it will not make sense if you do not know why it happens. In reality everything has more relation with the social than with the technological. But for a successful articulation of this combination you will need a lot of time and dedication.

The article has been directed towards monitoring, we have not talked about the Twitter indicators (there will be more posts), but it is important not to forget either that the most effective is to form the basis of a digital presence in all environments where you can establish a communication direct with your customers : search engines, web, eCommerce, own blogs, foreign blogs, search engines?

Anyway, never forget to monitor Do you already do it?