How do you use social media data to monitor and manage your online reputation and customer feedback?

This is key, with not only your overarching strategy, but also with each individual bit of content you plan to put time, effort and resources to. Social can be a frustrating place so having your strategy set with key objectives will allow you and your team to flourish. Also try not to set too many objectives. Focus on key objectives that will actually make a difference to your business goals for the year, and then go all in.

Planning out your goals is always step 1. This will help to figure out the purpose of the content you are creating. This will also help you analyze your results in the end.

Don't look at "social media" as one big bucket. Each platform is unique, with significant variations in user bases and online culture. As such, each should have a unique strategy, with its own SMART goals. Some of the platforms will have overlapping ROI, but still need to be independent. Without setting clear goals for each platform, you will be unable to accurately track ROI and will be comparing apples to oranges. For example, You can't expect the same content to be effective on both Facebook and Twitter. Likewise, you can't expect these two platforms to generate the same ROI to hit a generic "social media goal".

At YouScan, I monitor situations in social media that could harm our reputation and read what customers say about us. I observe our market peers: which channels they use (media, social networks, forums, Telegram channels, etc.), who they collaborate with, and which influencers they engage. Also, valuable to us is the tool for automatic sentiment analysis. By analyzing the sentiment of reviews and mapping it to the number of branches, we can get a fairly accurate picture of how customers rate the company's performance.

There are several reasons why it is important to look at your competitors: Benchmarking: Get a better understanding of how your own social media efforts stack up against theirs. This can help you identify areas where you might need to improve. Identifying Trends: Get a sense of what's working well in your industry or niche. Learning from their mistakes: By observing your competitors' social media activity, you can learn from their mistakes. Staying competitive: You can stay competitive and be aware of any new strategies or tactics they might be using. This can help you adapt your own social media strategy to stay ahead of the competition.

One of the best tools to use for this is Socialinsider. This tool will measure your success and can compare your efforts with those of your direct and indirect competitors. This tool will analyze content data and arrange top posts. When first treating out, I recommend looking at data at least 1-2 times per week. Once you have your content dialed in, you can go to bi-weekly, then monthly.

Consume the content you want to create. This is the number one thing most brands forget about when it comes to social media. Look at what your competitors are doing and track their metrics using tools such as Sprout Social. Identify your competitor posts that are receiving the most engagement. Analyze the tone, format, & message of the post. Ask yourself: ? What similarities are there between the high performing posts? ? Does the format of the post impact the message? ? What pain point is this post addressing? ? Does this post add value to my target audience? Once you have the answers to those questions, you'll be ready to apply your learnings to your own content.

A 2021 Harvard Business School article defines the four types of analytics as follows: Descriptive, which answers the question, “What happened?” Diagnostic, which answers the question, “Why did this happen?” Predictive, which answers the question, “What might happen in the future?” Prescriptive, which answers the question, “What should we do next?” Analyzing the data and answering the above questions will allow you to review your social media strategy and make data-driven adjustments moving forward. Source: https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/descriptive-analytics

When you're analyzing your data, you want to go back to the goals you committed to in the beginning. This will help you decipher whether you were successful or not and will help to figure out if you need to pivot at any point.

Analyzing large scopes of social media data can be tricky and very time-consuming. That's why we at YouScan have launched the first social media listening assistant – Insights Copilot. This assistant analyzes thousands of social media mentions in no time. You just need to ask it anything about your research topic, and it will provide you with relevant answers accompanied by real examples. So, it saves you time and offers qualitative insights, freeing up your schedule for updating and developing strategies based on social media data.

SWOT analysis is a strategic planning tool that evaluates: - Strengths: internal advantages - Weaknesses: internal disadvantages - Opportunities: external benefits - Threats: external risks The SCAMPER method is a technique that asks questions to challenge existing assumptions: - Substitute: Can any element be replaced with something else? - Combine: Can two or more elements be combined or integrated? - Adapt: Can any be adapted to serve a new purpose or function? - Modify: Can any element be changed or modified in some way? - Put to other uses: Can any element be used in a different context or for a different purpose? - Eliminate: Can any element be removed or simplified? - Reverse: Can any element be reversed or turned around?

The same content may perform differently across platforms. Take time to test what works best. Try different image sizes, video vs. images, trending audio vs. original audio, etc. When testing you should also continuously monitor post performance. It’s better to test and pivot than to keep doing the same thing expecting new results.

Experimenting with your content is the best way to identify what your target audience wants. Monitor the engagement on your posts to see what is resonating with your audience. Lean into A/B testing to see what works best. Does the same video perform well on YouTube Shorts and TikTok? Do you receive more engagement on your profile via post comments or story polls? What patterns do you see in your creatives that is producing better results? Answer these questions and do more of what your audience wants to see. Remember, social media is about your consumer, not your brand.