Blog posts tagged social media monitoring

Do I need social media monitoring?

So you want to get involved in social media – you’ve read about it, about how it’s going to help your business, and you’ve got some time at the end of the day to do something with Twitter and Facebook. But now the guy says you ought to be monitoring – and that could well cost you money.  Do you need to do it? I say monitoring of some sort should come before you make your first post, and this is why.

A while back, there was an idea going round that social media was like a cocktail party, and you had to find the right people and talk to them.  But when you got in front of the girl, it was like speed-dating with the next guy trying to muscle in on her – you had to act fast.  Though I haven’t heard the analogy in a while, it is as true now as it was two years ago – if not more so, as the number of people on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn has grown, and the forums and networks have multiplied.

In today’s crowded online space, it’s more important than ever that your message goes to the right place. But when you are starting off, how do you know where the right place is? You may join Twitter and Facebook, but how do you know who is interested in what you have to say? Who is blogging about your particular area of business?

And that’s where monitoring comes in. When I go to a function, or a networking event, I stand in the doorway for thirty seconds, looking around, checking who’s there and who I want to talk to.  In the same way, with social media, you should listen first – for mentions of your business area, for people talking about your subject.

Online there isn’t a doorway that you can hide in and watch; you need a tool.  Plenty of others have listed the wide range of social media monitoring tools, from Social Mention, Giga Alerts, or Google Alerts, which are free, through Simple Web’s MediaGenius, Alterian SM2, and all the way up to Radian6, with many more on the side. These tools – to carry on a tired analogy – will help you to identify which part of the cocktail party to head to, and who to talk to when you get there. But without them, you’re going to be standing around, a lost and confused Billy-no-mates, on your own.

• Nigel Legg is an independent social media monitoring and marketing consultant based in Bristol, UK.