What are the most effective ways to measure social media listening and monitoring?

1 Setting SMART goals

Before you start listening and monitoring social media, you need to define what you want to achieve and how you will measure it. SMART goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. For example, a SMART goal for social media listening and monitoring could be: Increase brand awareness by 10% among target audience segments by tracking mentions, sentiment, and reach on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for the next three months.

2 Choosing relevant metrics

Choosing the right metrics to measure your social media listening and monitoring performance is essential to achieving your goals. Volume, reach, sentiment, engagement, and influence are some of the most common metrics to consider. Volume measures the number of mentions, posts, comments, or messages related to your brand, topic, or keyword. Reach is the potential or actual number of people who see or engage with your brand. Sentiment gauges the positive, negative, or neutral tone of these mentions. Engagement looks at the number of likes, shares, retweets, replies, or clicks related to your brand. Lastly, influence evaluates the authority and popularity of those who mention your brand.

3 Using tools and platforms

To collect, analyze, and visualize your social media listening and monitoring data, you will need to use some tools and platforms that can help you automate and streamline the process. There are many options available, from free to paid, basic to advanced, and general to specific. For instance, Google Alerts is a free tool that sends email notifications when your brand, topic, or keyword is mentioned on the web. Hootsuite is a paid platform that allows you to manage multiple social media accounts, schedule posts, monitor mentions, and generate reports. Brandwatch is another paid platform that provides advanced features such as sentiment analysis, topic clustering, audience segmentation, and influencer identification. Sprout Social is also a paid platform offering comprehensive social media management, listening, and analytics solutions like keyword tracking, competitor analysis, trend detection, and campaign measurement.