By David Neuman

I’ve been frequently seeing companies asking the question “Do I really need to monitor my brand name?”.   A lot of businesses don’t see the value with setting up a Google Alert and getting an e-mail alert everytime their name pops up somewhere.  The importance of brand monitoring isn’t obtaining the information, it is how you leverage it.

You can’t expect to see any impact on your business if you gather what everyone has been saying about your brand and then do nothing with that information.  It’s the same thing as setting up a Twitter account and never tweeting from it (which an overwhelming amount of businesses do with the expectation of randomly obtaining followers).  When I say “the importance of brand monitoring isn’t obtaining the information”, this isn’t entirely true.  If you want to see the full extent (as much as possible) of all brand mentions, you need to ensure that you are using the right tools and keywords.

The best brand monitoring tool on the market is Radian6. Radian 6 scans pretty much every single Social Media website in existence and provides you with real-time data.  This is the most expensive tool on the market (starts at $500 / month and can cost upwards to $50,000 / month depending on how data Radian6 is feeding you), but well worth the month if you have the budget for it.  If you’re working with a lower budget, try ViralHeat.  You won’t get as many results with this tool, but it will definitely provide you with enough insight on conversations taking place related to your brand.  Additionally, you can always set up Google Alerts and Twitter Alerts. If you can handle it (and willing to sort through the redundancy), you can set up all four.

The keyword to monitor is extremely important if you want to fully monitor brand activity.  This sounds like a simple enough process….just enter in your company name, but there’s more to it than that.  Are people misspelling your company name regularly? Are they spelling it with one word or two? Do they refer to your company as “Company” or “Company.com”?  Check your analytical program to see all brand-related keyword traffic.  If there are misspellings or different variations of your brand driving traffic to your website, make sure to include this as part of your strategy.  Of course the amount of “keyword traffic” related to these variations is also dependent on how your website ranks for each individual term.  If you are a popular enough brand, you can use Google’s Keyword Tool to see the total search volume related to each variation of your brand.

So you’re using Radian 6 and are seeing thousands of different brand mentions daily…now what? There a hundreds of different ways to leverage your brand monitoring activities.  Below are one of the most common (and effective) methods:

• Counteract the Negative – It can significantly enhance the brand image of your company if you make the effort to reach out to individuals directly who had a bad experience with your business.  A lot of companies are hesitant in doing this because they are worried that it will add “fuel to the fire”, but there really is no negative in replying to an angry customer and doing what you can to fix the problem.  Some companies have taken this strategy even further by creating Twitter accounts specific to customer service. Comcast, for example, has http://www.twitter.com/comcastcares to combat negative buzz.
• Find a Common Theme - If you’re finding that thousands of people are saying the same thing related to your brand, you should use that to your advantage.  Godiva implemented a strategy based on this and saw great results.  They were always hesitant in launching their products in supermarkets because they felt it would “cheapen the brand”.  However, an overwhelming amount of their current (and potential) customers expressed how they wished there were Godiva products in their local grocery store.  Godiva listened to these people and released an entirely new product, Godiva Gems, for supermarkets which ended up performing exceptionally well. This is a great strategy to apply to your business.  Find a theme, and use it to better your company.
• Remember to Focus on the Positive – People don’t always talk about a brand negatively.  If somebody tweets something positive about your brand, you should send a response to the individual (as a representative of the company) thanking them.  Every once in a while, it’s great to go “above and beyond” with this type of strategy.  If somebody talks about how much they love your product, why not send them a coupon for their next purchase.  It’s a great way to keep your customers loyal to your brand.

Remember that each mention of your brand should be treated differently.  By effectively monitoring and leveraging brand mentions you can significantly enhance the overall image of your company.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 11th, 2009 at 1:02 pm and is filed under Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.