Best Media Monitoring Practices for Optimal Brand Tracking

There are many benefits to social media monitoring. You can stay on top of your audience’s prospects and interests. How? By keeping tabs on your industry and see what your competitors are up to. Most importantly, track specifics that relate to your brand. Media Monitoring can change the way you approach your business by the use of its platform. 


To get the most of your strategy and tactics, let’s take a look at the best media monitoring practices for optimal brand tracking:

1. Leverage Good Media Monitoring Tools

When it comes to media monitoring, your results are only as good as your tools. Imagine trying to stay on top of your brand without some type of tracking tool. You, or your employee, would spend countless hours online. Instead, you can leverage media monitoring tools like Hootsuite, Buzzsumo, and Brandwatch. These tools help you stay on top of real-time brand mentions, sentiment, and influencer activity so you can respond quickly and optimally.

2. Don’t Neglect Negative Mentions and Misspellings

When you’re setting up your project or your brand tracking system, don’t neglect to monitor negative mentions and misspellings. A negative mention is exactly what you think it is. It’s when someone is unhappy with your brand, products, or services. They leave a negative comment or review. Grabbing these mentions in real time gives you the power to use them optimally. You can, of course, work to change their mind. You can also have fun with it, depending on how ludicrous the mention may be. For example, Smart Car gets a lot of grief on social media. They capitalize on it. Here’s one example of how:

Social media post: “Saw a bird had pooped on a Smart Car. Totaled It.”

Smart Car Response: “Couldn’t have been just one bird. Sounds more like 4.5 million. (Seriously, we did the math)”

They also included a visual representation of their calculations.

In addition to negative mentions, people can be bad spellers. Take the time and energy to track the most common misspellings so you don’t miss out on potentially valuable brand mentions.

3. Respond

Brand tracking is just one step in the process. For the best media monitoring results, respond to your audience. Create systems so that real-time mentions receive real-time engagement. You can create conversations, viral threads, and of course you can learn a lot more from your conversations.

Other optimal brand tracking practices include Grouping your mentions into different categories, for example:
  • Mentions from customers seeking assistance
  • Mentions containing customer feedback
  • Mentions about your competitors
  • Mentions from influencers
  • Negative / positive mentions

These groups will help you create the best response system and also analyze the data more thoroughly. Of coursem, the best media monitoring practice is to simply get started. If you’re not paying attention to what people are saying about your brand online, you’re missing valuable information and key opportunities.

Call us today to speak to one of our PR specialists: 1-800-713-7278

Anthony Santiago is Director of Marketing at Newswire. With over a decade of experience in PR, he helps ensure that clients understand the value of brand messaging and reach.

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