Social media is a big part of your customers’ day-to-day lives, so it makes sense as a business to tap into this way to connect with them. However, as good as it is to put yourself out there on social media, it is important to approach it in the right way.
If you’re failing to monitor social media effectively then you could end up with inappropriate posts on your feed or customers reaching out and not getting a response – and it makes sense to try and avoid all of these scenarios.
The great news is that setting up a social media monitoring dashboard doesn’t need to be too much of a hassle. Instead, it gives you a central point for you and your social media team to monitor your whole social media presence; allowing you to stay in control and on top of the whole thing.
What Is A Social Media Monitoring Dashboard?
Social media has become an important tool for marketing and if used correctly it can bring major benefits and business growth. Understanding your own performance on social media can give you the insight you need to maximise the benefits available.
By employing a social media dashboard you can easily track and monitor the important metrics that indicate performance. Data generated on your social media like the number of subscribers or followers, engagement and audience types can be effectively used to tailor your marketing and content for the best possible results.
A social media monitoring dashboard brings together the data and metrics from all your different social media platforms. This means data from sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook can be viewed and interpreted in one place. This gives you fast access to the data you need to make appropriate marketing decisions at the time they are needed.
Benefits Of Using A Social Media Monitoring Dashboard?
If you want to effectively monitor your online presence then a social media monitoring dashboard is a must. This allows you to see when customers have contacted you directly if they have responded to your post and even if they are mentioning you without directly tagging you in.
It can seem like a big job to keep on top of all of these different metrics, but that is where a social listening dashboard comes into play and makes life easier.
1) Staying Ahead Of your Competition
Keeping ahead of your competition is greatly simplified by the use of a social media dashboard. You can gain valuable information in many ways by listening to what is being said both about your competitors and by them on their social media feeds.
2) Keyword Tracking
With the ability to track keywords used within your industry and by your customers, you can monitor all mentions on social media that relate to the products or services you offer. This means seeing what keywords your competitor is using and what is being mentioned by your customers – great for keeping an eye on things and seeing if there is a gap in the market that you and your products could fill.
3) Traffic Origins
With a social media monitoring dashboard, it is simple to see which posts and which platforms are generating the best traffic for your business. This allows you to see what sort of posts are working and which are bringing down your engagement rate.
By knowing what posts your customers respond well to, you can then tailor your future social media posts in a way that you know your customers and potential customers are going to appreciate.
4) Early Problem Alerts
Being able to quickly catch a problem on social media is simplified and the use of a social media monitoring dashboard can mean you are able to assess the problem and put effective mitigation in place quickly to minimise any potential damage.
5) Understanding Engagement
Understanding how your customers engage with your posts can be extremely valuable in ensuring they are effective in generating interest and traffic. Knowing if your customers are more responsive to video, or text descriptions and a photo can make your future posts significantly more effective.
How do I build a Social Media Monitoring Dashboard?
Working with a company such as WatchMyCompetitor helps you to put all of your social media listening in one place. Being able to monitor your feeds, check for mentions and analyse all of this data so you get the most out of the information is essential if you want to ensure that your company is using social media to its maximum potential.
Here are 4 simple steps for building a meaningful social media dashboard:
First, identify all the social media channels you are currently using. This can be quite an extensive list, of course, obvious choices like Facebook and Twitter will feature in most people’s lists but don’t overlook smaller, or less well-known social media like Reddit or Quora.
Choose your metrics carefully. There are many metrics available; you should only include those of use to yourself. These metrics will be obvious as they will be the ones that aid and support your own goals. These may change during specific business events, like a new product launch or a sales drive on a specific existing product.
Keeping a regular review of your social media dashboard, appropriate metrics and suitability will ensure you get the best from it and that the data provided is both relevant and up to date.
Different types of dashboards may be required depending on the goals you need to achieve; this may mean you need to run multiple dashboards for various aspects of your business.
Careful use of a social media monitoring dashboard can bring your customers and potential customers closer to you. Reacting fast will show your customers you care and are listening to them. This not only affects your perception by the person directly interacting with you but potential and existing customers will be reassured in seeing you react quickly and positively to any issues your customers may be having.
What To Include In A Social Media Monitoring Dashboard
Building your social media monitoring dashboard is all about putting visibility of the metrics that you want to see at the front. This gives you easy access to essential data and allows you to tweak any future movements your business makes accordingly.
The good news is that you can personalise your social monitoring dashboard to suit you – and working with a company with expertise in this area can help you get it right from the offset.
Key Metrics For A Social Media Monitoring Dashboard
Followers or subscribers
Keeping an eye on your follower volumes is very important, with the hope of driving an upwards trend, live monitoring of this metric can give an indication of the progress you are making with customer awareness and brand recognition.
Tweets and posts
Quickly seeing where your brand or business is being mentioned can give you the opportunity to react and respond quickly. It can also give you a feel for how your business is being received on social media.
Impressions
Impressions give you data about the exposure your post has seen. It records the views your post has received, regardless of the following interaction taken. It is simply a metric indicating how many people have seen your posts.
Unlinked mentions
Also referred to as fresh mentions, or simply brand mentions, they are a metric of how many mentions of your name, website or other keywords directly associated with your brand that does not directly link the reader to your website.
Reach
Reach is a metric of how many individual people see your content. When it comes to followers and social media, not all followers will see each of your posts, sometimes the percentage that does will be quite small, knowing this figure and its change over time can help you build more engaging content.
Watch time
Watch time is the amount of time in aggregate that a viewer spends watching your content. YouTube refers to this metric as audience retention, increasing this figure is a good indicator that your content is receiving higher overall views.
Engagement
Social media engagement is a catch-all term for any interaction your content receives. This can include likes, shares and comments. Each platform has its own style of interactions that will fall under this metric.
Social media is a great tool and in many cases a really cost-effective way to reach customers and grow your business. However, if you are going to make use of social media then it makes sense to do this to the best of your ability and collecting data and analysing what is happening is the best way to do this.
A social media monitoring dashboard allows you to put visibility of all of the important data in one place – meaning you can see what difference various campaigns make and use this data to perfect future campaign efforts.
