Understanding the terminology that surrounds social media monitoring will allow you to grasp just how beneficial and important these tools are for brands. These tools offer a great way for brands to gain insight into how their customers perceive them, as many consumers utilise social media platforms to make reviews of various products and services and to express their sentiments about a particular brand.

However, in order to fully understand how valuable these solutions are for your business, the team at content management platform amaSocial has dived into the terminology.

Here, amaSocial provides social media monitoring terms surrounding its service:

1. Activity

This refers to any action occurring on your brand’s social media pages. For example, if someone has engaged with one of your posts by either commenting, ‘Liking’ or sharing it, that would be referred to as the ‘activity’ happening on your page.

Additionally, if someone mentions your brand on their own platform and uses the @handle, that would also be considered to be an ‘activity’, as the mention involves your brand and followers, and therefore, links to your page.

2. Content verification

amaSocial’s content verification service is used to track content posted by brands or influencer’s social media profiles. This allows brands to see whether their staff, including their social influencers, are meeting the requirements of the company’s social strategy.

For example, if you asked one of your influencers to post about a particular product or service and use a specific branded hashtag, you’ll be able to see whether that post went out and when.

3. Engagement metrics

This essentially allows you to measure the numbers surrounding the activities of your posts. For example, if your post received five ‘Likes’, you have a total of five engagement metrics. These metrics are then tallied and compared to the rest of your posts, allowing you to see which one has performed the best.

You can use the insights you gained from this measurement to improve on your social content strategy.

4. Hourly Insights

This is a feature that allows you to find insights about your brand’s posts, as well as spot trends in engagement, across multiple social media platforms at specific times.

This also allows you to pinpoint the exact timeline of a crisis that may have occurred or even identify patterns in your audience’s behaviour.

5. Keyword Tracking

amaSocial’s ‘Keyword Tracking’ feature allows you to monitor every mention of your brand’s keywords in real-time.

This allows you to see the surrounding conversations of your keywords, meaning you’ll get a first-hand look at how your audience is perceiving the posts that make mention of your keywords, as well as which of your campaign keywords are gaining the most traction.

6. Mentions

This refers to when your brand is mentioned on social media as well as on blogs. Specifically, on Twitter, a ‘mention’ is when someone utilises your @handle (or username) to bring you into a conversation or to refer to you in a post.

amaSocial tracks these mentions to help brands keep track of who’s talking about them as well as which users are engaging with them. The insights gained from this will allow you to optimise your customer service and your marketing strategy. Not only are you able to see how your brand is being perceived online, but you can also see which messages from consumers need responses.

7. On-demand reports

These reports are based on the insights you’d like to receive about any potential influencers that have been tracked, which geo-locations your followers are ultimately based in, any topics that are currently trending on social media and more.

amaSocial’s ‘On-Demand Reports’ are formatted for ease of viewing and can be made available to brands whenever they need to make use of them.

8. Reaction list

This is a tool used by brands to safeguard their reputation. A ‘Reaction List’ is used by businesses to get alerted to posts that require immediate attention, allowing you to respond appropriately and instantly.

This is especially useful on social media, as crises have the potential to go viral, making it best for you to protect your brand with this feature.

9. Sentiment analysis

Sentiment analysis is an AI-powered technology used to perceive the favourability surrounding your social posts, in terms of whether they are positive, negative or neutral. This allows you to see whether your consumers are enjoying your products or services.

And if their sentiment is negative, whether there is anything you can do to change their minds or better your offerings.

10. Social media ROI

Social media return on investment (ROI) is the value you gain from your brand’s marketing efforts. For example, you can measure the ROI of your engagement (likes, shares, comments, etc.) you received on a campaign, ad or blog post.

amaSocial allows businesses to track their ROI by monitoring @handles, campaign phrases, #hashtags, profiles, URLs and topics on social media platforms and blogs.

For more information, visit amasocial.co.za. You can also follow amaSocial on Facebook, Twitter or on LinkedIn.