Listening or monitoring is one of the critical aspects of communicating. With the advancement of social media and digital communications, monitoring conversations online has become increasingly refined and accurate. There are now advanced techniques such as hacking, or planting cookies in individuals computers without their knowledge; we are not discussing that today. However, the less controversial techniques below will not only improve your company’s PR efforts, but they can also be used to spot valuable information that might help your brand gain publicity.
1. Creating lists on Twitter is a powerful way to monitor specific conversations. For instance, I have created 2 important lists which we monitor frequently in the office: politicians and journalists.
2. Using Hootsuite and similar decks are very helpful because you can monitor multiple streams on multiple social networks at once: specifc hashtags, Facebook pages, Twitter lists and so on. In this world of instant communication, it is crucial to keep up to speed on breaking news. These tools can significantly help you keep track of live conversations.
3. Setting up a Twitter alert is handy because not everyone knows how to use social networks, but most of us know how to use email and outlook. Ask your social media manager to set up a Twitter Alert which picks up key words of interest that can be emailed to you at a specific time every day. For example, you would select keywords like your company’s name or a specific issue that affects your brand. There are many apps out there, but we prefer Twilert because of it’s simplicity and reliability.
4. Google alerts are probably the most commonly used form of digital monitoring. Easy to use and reliable. Similar to Twilert, you can specify keywords which are emailed to you every day.
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