Monitoring the social networks of a brand is essential for a business that is entering and expanding on the Internet.

By being aware of what is said about your brand on social channels, you will have an idea of ​​the image that your customers have of your company and, from there, evaluate possible strategies to enhance online channels.

There are various tools that offer the monitoring service, some free and others paid. If you are a beginner in the world of ecommerce and have a small marketing budget, it will be convenient for you to choose a free tool.

But if you are already at an advanced level of your online business and you have a large volume of users who interact with you on your social networks, site or blog, it is worth using a paid platform.

To help you choose the most suitable tool for your business, we investigated which ones are on the market today and made an analysis of the most relevant ones. Look!

How to use Sysomos Tool

This Canadian tool was born in 2007 and today has large clients such as Coca-Cola, Nike and BBC.

Main advantages

• Collect a large volume of data instantly.
• Flexible and intuitive platform.
• Wide variety of monitoring reports to analyze.
• Possibility of integrating the platform with Google Analytics to obtain more analytical reports.
• Possibility of requesting a demo version to test the tool.
• Excellent customer service.

Main disadvantages

• It collects a lot of spam in its search for keywords, especially on blogs.
• Sysomos has a blog and various tutorials, but only in English.
• In turn, technical support is also only in English.

Price

On its website, Sysomos does not mention the price. For more information about this, you can contact them .

How to use Radian6

Like Sysomos, Radian6 is one of the most popular foreign tools around the world.

Main advantages

• It collects a large volume of data with great speed.
• Flexible and intuitive platform.
• Excellent customer service.
• Possibility of requesting a demo version to test the tool.

Main disadvantages

• Very complex start-up process.
• It can be an expensive tool for SMEs.
• It has a YouTube channel with many informative videos, but only in English.

Price

Radian6 does not report its plans or prices on the web. For more information contact them .

Tip:  as the tool can be quite confusing at first, we recommend you click on ‘Request a demo’, fill out the form and wait for the response.

Advantages of Sprout Social

Founded in 2010, SproutSocial is known for its friendly interface. Companies like Dove, Nokia, Yahoo!, and Ups use this tool.

Main Advantages

• It offers 30 days free to try the tool, on any plan you prefer.
• Simple and intuitive platform with all the information from the different social channels compiled in a single main stream (a single column).
• Allows you to schedule future posts.
• Great customer service.
• Gives you a quick score on how well you’re communicating with your Twitter and Facebook audience .

Main disadvantages

• It can be expensive for SMEs.
• Facebook users cannot be tagged in posts from the platform.

Price

It has 3 paid plan options , starting at $99 for the most basic.

other tools

In addition to the four tools mentioned above, there are other platforms that provide this service and can help your business, regardless of the stage it is in.

Compare them to make the right decision!

• Hoot Suite
• Spredfast

Helpful tips on monitoring

If you are new to the world of monitoring social networks and you are just starting to use one of these tools, pay attention to the tips that follow to boost your performance:

1. Analyze what your real needs are before hiring a tool

What are you looking to obtain by monitoring your social networks? Do you just want to observe what is happening or get involved in the conversation with your followers? Is there a very large volume of users that interact with your brand or is it possible to control the dialogue with your followers without major difficulties?

Platforms like Sysomos, Radian6 and Sprout Social generally have large clients with a huge volume of online referrals.

If your store is that big, it’s worth the risk to pay for one of these tools, but if not, we recommend trying a tool with a free plan first and see if it meets your needs.

2. Create a keyword list

Choose relevant keywords to find out what people are saying about your business online.

Start by including your brand name, the products you sell, and the name of your website. Keep in mind that if you define very general keywords, you will attract useless information that will harm your analysis.

For example: if you have a shoe store and you define ‘shoes’ as a keyword, the tool will collect many mentions that have nothing to do with your brand. Therefore, put emphasis on specific words.

3. I defined the most relevant metrics for your business

The main monitoring tools offer multiple metrics to be analyzed, such as ‘influence’, ‘sentiment’ or ‘interaction’. Still, they may not all be useful for your particular business.

Therefore, before hiring one of these platforms, analyze the strengths of each competitor and choose the one that provides the greatest amount of benefits for your business.

Beyond the variety of indicators, focus your efforts on those metrics that have value for your company.

4. Use sentiment metrics to reverse dissatisfied customer cases

It is inevitable that an online store receives negative reviews. As we already said, within the monitoring tools there is a ‘sentiment’ metric with which you will be able to see if your brand was cited in any social channel in a positive, neutral or negative way.

If you discover that you received constructive criticism, use it to improve your business: there is nothing like the feedback (opinion) of a consumer to make you grow.

Here it is important to detect who the people who complained were, and to the extent possible, get in touch with them to better understand the reasons for their discontent. That can earn you points in favor with the customer, who will probably look at your store with different eyes.🙂

5. I invested in relationships

Being attentive to the needs and desires of the client is to be one step ahead of the competition.

You will not always be able to respond to all consumers, for this reason, analyze which of them have the greatest influence on your business and the other followers.

Those who often interact with your brand will be more relevant and it is important to take care of their happiness by answering them and offering them some compensation (a discount for example).

The important thing, at this point, is to make the client feel important since, in the end, he is going to be the main spokesperson for your brand.

Conclusion

Whether you are a small, medium or large company, there are many reasons why it is important to monitor what is being said about it on the internet.

Study the most relevant metrics, analyze your business in depth and, above all, find out the behavior of your customers to improve the positioning of your brand .

Do you have any experience to share with us? Tell us in the comments!🙂