Social Media Monitoring

In this chapter I will discuss the practice of social media monitoring. Social media monitoring, which is also known as social media listening, is an important part of social media marketing.

The majority of social media marketing involves posting attractive and relevant content, and initiating conversation with followers; but another important part of social media marketing that many people may not think of is listening to what people are saying. For example, one great way to see how effective your social marketing has been is to see what people are saying about your posts or advertisements. These people are who you are targeting with your posts and advertisements, so their reactions to them is most important when measuring effectiveness. There are tools out here that can help you see how your social media marketing actions are going. An example of this is social analytics which will allow you to measure impact, such as number of likes, conversations, and performance of a web page or a social media account. This can also help you effectively allocate your time and resources.

What is social media monitoring and social listening?

Social media monitoring and social listening are terms for basically the same thing, and they can be divided somewhat into owned media and earned media. Owned media is the actual social media page that you can control such as Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. This is where you post content and have the ability to engage in conversations with followers. If you only have one social media page that you are operating, then you can simply log onto that account and look at what people are saying about your posts and content. But, if you have multiple social media accounts that you are operating, then you may want to find a tool that can help you monitor each account easier.  A tool like Hootsuite will allow you to do this and it will save you a lot of time.

"Earned" media is everything that does not fall under your owned media. People starting their own conversations or someone sharing a post of yours with someone else is described as earned media. You do not control this media but you'll definitely want to generate because it will help you generate more "buzz" about the content or advertisement that you created. This type of media is also often refereed to as "word of mouth" marketing which is  the type of marketing that people are most willing to trust and believe. This media is not going to be on the social media account page that you will be able to control. So again, there are tools out there that can help you with this and make your life easier!

For more information about Social Media Monitoring, I suggest taking a look at Chapter 8 of CASA Marketing: Intro to Social Media Marketing.

How Much Time to Spend on Social Media

In this blog post I am going to talk about how much time you should devote to social media. There are many time plans that you can choose from, those of which I will list below.

"Pardot's Rock Social Media in 30 Minutes a Day"
  According to Pardot, most social media marketers do not know how to monitor their social media presence. The people at Pardot developed an infographic that outlines how to monitor your social media marketing in 30 minutes per day. Below, I will briefly go over how much time to spend on each social media sites.

• Twitter: You should devote ten minutes to Twitter each day to respond to any tweets or messages your followers send to you. You should also promote any recent blog posts, content, or events, and you should scroll through your feed to retweet or share any content that your followers could be interested in.
• Facebook: Facebook should be allotted six minutes of your time per day. On Facebook you should respond to comments, and scroll through your news feed to see if there is any relevant content to share or comment on. Lastly, and most importantly, you will want to share and promote your own content that consumers will want to see.
•  LinkedIn: LinkedIn should also be allotted six minutes of your time per day. On LinkedIn you should share content and engage with your groups and company page
• Pinterest: You should devote four minutes to Pinterest.  The four minutes should be spent pinning new content of your own, and repinning others content that is relavant to your brand.
• Google: You should only spend two minutes on Google sharing content and posting questions.
• Instagram: Like Google, Instagram should also be allotted two minutes to post interesting photos. Also, as I mentioned with the other social media sites, you should scroll through your feed to comment on any images that are relevant.  

If You do not have a presence on some of the social media sites listed above, devote extra time to the profiles you do have. The most important thing is to engage with your followers, and create relevant content on a weekly basis.

"Chris Brogan's Social Media Time Management"
 Chris Brogan is the CEO of Owner Media Group. Brogan recommends that you break down your social media marketing into four chunks. Brogan believes that two hours per day is the minimum  marketers should spend on social media. Americans spend an average of three hours per day so spending two per day on marketing to the targeted consumers seems about right. Below I will show you in bullet points how Brogan divides up the social media time.

• 1/4 time= listening: You should start each day finding out what the world is saying about you, your competitors, and the market place. Scanning a few social media sites will allow to see what people are saying. This will help you see what is working or what is not working for your company and competitor companies.
• 1/2 time= commenting and communication: Commenting and communicating with your targeted audience is important.  People will appreciate you taking the time to engage with them and answering questions that they may have. Most if not all companies have someone commenting and communicating to targeted consumers.
• 1/4 time= creating: Again, creating relevant content is very, very important. Creating content may include blogging, posting photos or videos, or even creating email newsletters.

Connecting and Posting to Hootsuite

I promise, this will be  my last post about Hootsuite. I first gave you a background of Hootsuite and talked about how it can help you with social media marketing. I then talked about how Hootsuite works and how you can get started with it. In my last post I briefly covered the steps that would help you manage your social networks. Now, I will further describe how you can add, reconnect, or delete social networks, and I will also help you with publishing and scheduling messages.

Add, recconect, or delete social networks
So, now that you have created a Hootsuite account, you are most likely interested in adding, reconnecting, or deleting a social network. The social networks that you can add to Hootsuite are Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. To add a social network, do the following steps: 1. tap the main menu, 2. tap settings, 3. tap social networks, 4. tap add+ and finally, select a social network and enter your credentials to authorize the account. To reconnect a network: 1. tap the main menu, 2. tap settings, 3. tap social networks, and 4. tap the social network profile. Finally, if you want to delete a social network: 1. tap the main menu, 2. tap settings, 3. tap social networks, 4. swipe left on the social network profile that you want to delete, and tap delete.

Publish messages
Once you have connected some social networks to Hootsuite, you will be ready to publish messages via your profile. You can pick whichever networks you want to post to from the "Social Profile Picker" to publish the same message to several profiles at once. It is important to note that LinkedIn posts have a character count maximum of 685 and Twitter  has a limit of 10,000 characters per message. To send an actual message, select a social profile from the "Social Profile Picker", and then click "Send Now"

Schedule messages
Now that you have a brief understanding of how to publish messages, it would be helpful to schedule your messages. You can manually schedule messages to publish on a specific date and time, or you can use Auto Schedule to schedule your messages. You can edit, reschedule, or delete scheduled content from the "Publisher" section of the Hootsuite dashboard. You can choose to manually schedule messages or use the Auto Scheduler that is offered on Hootsuite. If you want to manually schedule messages, do the following: 1. click scheduling, 2. select date and time to publish the message, 3. click schedule. If you want you can check a box to receive an email when a message is sent, and you can view the date in publisher to review other content scheduled for that day. If you would rather auto schedule your messages, do the following: 1. select a  profile from the Social Profile Picker, 2. click compose message and enter a message, 3. click scheduling, and 4. click the toggle button to turn Auto Schedule on, and then click Auto Schedule. If you are one that often times forgets things, I would definitely recommend using the Auto Scheduler so do you don't have to worry about remembering to post a message every day.

Quick Start Guide for Hootsuite

In two of my previous "Social Media Marketing" blog posts I wrote about Hootsuite. I gave a background of what Hootsuite is and how it can make life easier for someone. I then briefly blogged about how to set up a Hootsuite account. In this blog post I am going to further write about Hootsuite, and I am going to give you steps that will help you successfully manage your social networks in the Hootsuite dashboard.

1. Create a Hootsuite account
To create a Hootsuite account, click the following link: https://hootsuite.com/ and then click Sign Up in the top right corner of the page. You should then click the "Get Started" button and  select the plan that best fits your needs. Lastly, you will be requested to enter your information and follow the prompts to connect social networks, add streams, and send messages.

2. Add social networks
Adding your social profiles will allow you to publish and schedule content, and monitor engagement all from your Hootsuite dashboard. Hootsuite allows you to add up to three social networks to manage on your account. To add social networks to your dashboard, click "Streams" from the launch menu, and then click "Add Social Network". When you click "Add Social Network" it will give you a list to select from to add your social networks. So, pick which your networks that you want to connect and you will be ready to manage your dashboard.

3. Set up tabs and streams
Now that you have finished adding your social networks to your dashboard, you can set up streams for each network so you can monitor content. Each social network has its own unique stream type. Tabs will help you organize your steams into groups.

4. Publish messages
If you want to engage your audience and gain more followers, you should definitely think about setting a schedule to post messages regularly. Hootsuite will save you time because you will be able to post a single message to multiple networks at once. To post a message, click "Compose Message", enter your message in the compose box, and then click "Send Now".

5. Install Apps
To install any apps you may want or need, select the App Directory from the launch menu. You will then need to click "Install App" next to the app, and then click "Finish" to install it.

6. Download Hootlet
Installing Hootlet will allows you to quickly share content to your social networks from anywhere on the web. Learn more about Hootlet by clicking the following link: https://help.hootsuite.com/hc/en-us/articles/204585060-Share-content-with-Hootlet 

7. Download Hootsuite mobile
If you want to manage social media on a smart phone, you can download the Hootsuite mobile apps for android and apple. These can be downloaded from your device's app store.

Facebook Insights

In this blog post, I am going to tell you about Facebook Insights. Facebook Insights is a tool that can be very helpful to businesses who want to track user interaction on their Facebook fan page. If you use Facebook Insights you'll be able to see what is the best time of day to post, the best time of the week to post, and what type of content is most popular to your target audience. The Facebook Insights tool is updated constantly to reflect your page's developments and to show any patterns that may evolve on your page. It would be beneficial to check this routinely to stay up to date on everything.

Below are the six steps that could be useful for anyone who is new to Facebook Insights

1. How to Access Facebook Insights
You can gain access to your page's insights by clicking on the gear wheel and then selecting "view insights". A graph will appear like the one shown below. This graph will show you the number of likes, the number of friends of fans available, how many people are currently talking about your page, and your total weekly reach.  All of this data would be important because it will allow you too look at what content has worked in terms of gaining likes and buzz, as well as what content has not really worked.




2. Virality of Posts
The virality of a post will help you what posts were most successful. Knowing the virality of your posts will help you create content that your fans may like which will hopefully increase traffic to your page and website. You will be able to sort posts by the following types: posts, photos, links, videos, platform posts, and questions. This will also allow you to see how many users engaged with a certain post, as well as how many spread the word about it, aka "buzz".

3. Likes
If you click "likes" you will be able to see the demographics of your fan base. For example, you can see the genders and ages of your fans as well as what area your fans are mostly from. Knowing the demographics of your fan base will allow you to develop personas which can be helpful when creating landing pages, and marketing messages.

4. Reach
The reach of your Facebook page will show how much of your content is reaching your fans, who is talking about your page, and whether or not your fans are referring your page to others or sharing images. This section also helps you see page views, as well as your reach in terms of organic searches, and paid and viral searches, all of which are important.

5. Talking About This
The "Talking About This" section will show who is talking about your page. It will show the demographics of the people that are talking about it as well as the percentage of people in different age groups. This is important because it will help you see how your content trends over time. It will help you better time the planning of posts and promotions on your page.

6. Check-Ins
This section will only be important if you have physical locations. It will show the demographics of the people who are checking in at your physical store location. This can be helpful in monitoring the social media impact on your sales.

If you want even more information on Facebook Insights, please visit the following link: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/guide-to-facebook-insights/

Hootsuite 2

 

As I mentioned in my last Social Media Marketing blog, I am going to dive further into to Hootsuite in this post and give you the steps it takes to create your own Hootsuite account.

Hootsuite University

To further understand how Hootsuite works, I would suggest clicking the following link: www.youtube.com/user/HootSuiteUniversity. These videos will give you a better perspective on social media. In addition to these videos, the Hootsuite Help section is also worth looking at. Hootsuite Help will help you understand the basics and things you can try. The links in this section are "Getting Started", "Hootsuite Status", and "Live Webinars". Each of these links will help you get better acclimated to Hootsuite. If you are interested, Hootsuite also even offers social media analytics which can be very helpful in tracking your results. The analytics will allow you to really see how your social media sites are performing.

Creating and Configuring a Hootsuite Account

So now that I have given you ways to understand Hootsuite works and what it offers, it is time to get started with an account of your own! To get started, go to hootsuite.com, and click "Sign Up".(If you are already signed into a social media account the screens may appear differently) It will give you the option of starting with a free regular account and a free advanced account. I would suggest starting with the free regular account for now. It will then ask you to enter your email address, name, password, and location, and then you will click create account. Next Hootsuite will walk you through the process of adding your own social media networks, meaning that you will be able to connect your social media accounts to Hootsuite so you can use Hootsuite to post to all of them. I would suggest adding Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. You can add these networks by simply clicking on them on the page.

 My main goal of these last two blog posts was to give you a background of how Hootsuite works, how it will help you, and how to get started with it. If you need more help configuring your Hootsuite account I would suggest getting your hands on CASA Marketing: Intro to Social Media Marketing. You can purchase the book by clicking the following link http://www.amazon.com/CASA-Marketing-Intro-Social-Media-ebook/dp/B0103LB4HS

Hootsuite

In my last three Social Media Marketing blogs, I talked about three different social media sites: Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. In this blog post I am going to move on from social media sites and talk about Hootsuite. Some of you may not be aware of what Hootsuite is and how it can help you. So in this blog post I am going to describe what Hootsuite is, and tell you how you can use it to help you manage social media sites.

Hootsuite is a social media management site that was created in 2008 by Ryan Holmes. It was created to be a system that would provide assistance with brand management by allowing someone to to develop and post content to multiple social networks. I would suggest creating at least two or three social media accounts to post to. Once you create them, I would suggest connecting them to Hootsuite. Connecting the social media sites to Hootsuite will make it easy for you to post content on multiple networks. It will save you the time and hassle of having to post the same exact content separately on each social media site. Anything that makes it easier and/or less hassle, to develop and post content it is a good thing.

Understanding Hootsuite
To fully understand the kind of things you will be able to do in Hootsuite, I suggest taking a look at www.hootsuite.com. The menus at the the top of the Hootsuite homepage are: Products, Solutions, Plans, Services, Resources, and About Us. I would first suggest looking at the "About Us" page to get familiar with the site and understand how everything works on it. Once you gain a brief understanding of it, I would then suggest taking a look at "Plans", and "Pricing". It will show you the plans they have and how much they cost. These pages will also show that there is a free version, and there is "social listening", which will help you get a sense of what people are saying about you on any of your social media sites. In my next Social Media Marketing blog post, I will further talk about the benefits of Hootsuite, and I will also tell you how you can create and configure your own Hootsuite account.

LinkedIn

In my prior two blog posts, I talked about Facebook and Twitter, and discussed how they can help a business advertise and market to possible customers. In this blog I am going to talk about LinkedIn. LinkedIn is another social media site but it is much different compared to Facebook and Twitter. LinkedIn is a site that college students and professionals use to connect with each other. Facebook and Twitter are different because they are more for sharing pictures or posts with friends. LinkedIn is used to build one's brand image to impress possible job recruiters. It is even described by some to be the new resume. If you get involved  and establish a presence on LinkedIn it can help your career and/or organization.

Understanding LinkedIn

Like Facebook and Twitter, the best way to fully understand LinkedIn is to get on it and use it regularly. If you currently do not have a LinkedIn account, I would definitely suggest creating one. LinkedIn will allow you to connect to people that can help you with a project, job, etc. Your goal on LinkedIn should be to connect to as many people possible so that you can grow your network. It will  much more powerful than Facebook or Twitter will be. My suggestion is to get on LinkedIn, and spend time on it each day so you can start building your network!

Creating a LinkedIn Page is different than creating a website, a Facebook, or Twitter. If it is a personal or corporate account it is important that you make it official. So, to get started with making a LinkedIn page, go to www.linkedin.com. If will require you to add your personal information, password, and e-mail address. After you have added all of your information, it will require you to go to your e-mail and confirm your account. Once you click confirm, you account will be ready to go! You will be able to make posts, add information about yourself or company, and of course, connect with other people. If it is a company that your are making one for, you may also want to consider making ads. LinkedIn has a few different options that will allow your company to target customer your ideal customers.


If you are interested in building your own LinkedIn presence, please consider visiting the following sites.
jobsearch.about.com/od/linkedin

www.powerformula.net/free-resources-for-learning-linkedin/

Twitter

In this blog, I am going to be talking about Twitter. Twitter is a social media site that is similar to Facebook, but also very different. I will discussing the steps to make a Twitter account, and what it offers that could be valuable to a business or an organization. There is no right or wrong about using Twitter, but the most important question for a business should be: What audience do I want to address, and is this audience on Twitter?

Overview of Twitter
If you are are unaware of what Twitter is, or how it works, I would suggest talking a look at the following link: www.twitter.com/reuters. It is an example of a common use of Twitter. To give you some more information about Twitter, I will state some facts about it and how it works in a bullet point format.

• Twitter posts are limited to 140 characters-this means that the post is a very concise comment, possibly with a link or a picture attached.
• If you want to mention an account in a tweet you must use the @ symbol and then scan twitter for whatever account it is that you want to tweet at. The @ symbol is the way of letting someone know about something.
• Something very common on twitter that you may have heard before is a hashtag. A # is another "tag" you would use, if your post is involving someone or something. An example would be be if you were talking about a play that happened in the Super Bowl, you would follow the comment with a #SuperBowl.
• There are many companies and brands that have an active Twitter page to tweet information, or advertise to their target market. There are also many celebrities who have a Twitter account.
• If you need more help or are still confused about how Twitter works, visit https://support.twitter.com/categories/281 .

How to Create a Twitter Account
Now that I have went over the basics of Twitter, it is time to get ready to create a Twitter Account! First, go to Twitter, and start entering your name, your email, and a password. It will then direct you to a screen where you can choose a username, which can be whatever you would like. Once you have picked the username, click create my account. It will then send you to a page that shows you how things work. If you want to learn more about Twitter go ahead and read each page, otherwise you may keep clicking the "next" button until it suggests people to "follow". If you see people or brands that you want to follow, click follow and you will see all of the tweets they make. Lastly, go to your e-mail and once you confirm your e-mail address and your account. Congratulations you have created your own Twitter page!


ROI and Strategy
Just like Facebook, Twitter offers advertising. You can also include promotions, coupons, and special offers in a tweet. But again, the most important part of advertising or promoting on Twitter is including a link that will allow you to see how many people came to the company website from Twitter, and how many people purchased something. A large amount of people spend time on Twitter, and the majority of these people are of a younger demographic, and are tech savvy. They likely have the Twitter app on their cell phone and are most likely checking their Twitter feed a few times per day. So although advertising on Twitter may sound like a great idea, it is important to make sure that a large portion of the target market uses Twitter.   If you need more help with advertising on Twitter, I suggest clicking on the following link: https://business.twitter.com/marketing-twitter

Facebook Pages

The main focus of this chapter is to introduce the concept of Facebook, and walking through the steps of creating one. In this blog, I will talk about what a Facebook is, the pros and cons of using it, and how to create one. If you are in the marketing side of a business and your company is interested in developing a presence on social media, Facebook could be a good place to start. Facebook will be the first of many social media platforms mentioned in my Social Media Marketing blogs.

What is a Facebook Page?
A Facebook page is a great way to establish a social media presence for your business. It is like creating a company website but within the Facebook format. On Facebook, you can post text, pictures, videos, etc., to communicate whatever it is you want to your potential customers. Customers will be able to see all of your posts if they click the like page button for your company's page. If they like your page they will also be able to interact with you by commenting on posts. Facebook pages also include web addresses which you can take advantage of to promote or advertise. An example of this is Matrix's Facebook page: www.facebook.com/TheMatrixMovie. Lastly, when you access a Facebook page, you will see a profile photo and a cover photo. You should add a picture of a company logo or a picture of a product that the company sells so customers can easily identify that it is your company.

Creating a Facebook Page
Creating a Facebook page can be fairly easy. Go to www.facebook.com/pages/create. There are a variety of page types that they offer for you to create, for example, click on company type, and then choose a category. After you have a chosen a category, it will give you an option to type in the name for the business and then you will click get started. Next, you will be led through a series of screens where you will be able to enter some basic information for your business. The titles of the four screens are About, Profile Picture, Add to Favorites, and Reach More People. The Reach More People screen will be important because it will allow you to promote your page with an ad to get more people to like it. Once you have gone through all these screens, you have officially made a Facebook page!

If you need more help in creating a Facebook page for your business, visit Facebook.com, or you can read the rest of chapter 3 of CASA Marketing: Intro to Social Media Marketing.

Skillbox-Content

In this blog, I am going to be talking about content related to social media and tools you can use to do it yourself. I'll briefly summarize what you'll want to try when working with social media. The overall goal of the chapter is to introduce concepts and tools that are worth trying so that you can have some material to work with when looking at social media channels later in the chapter.

Curation vs. Creation vs. Collaboration 

The general approach recommended by the author with content is to think about these three areas.

1. Curation- When you curate content, you are finding it, sharing it, reviewing it, and commenting on it. Even if you are not creative, you can still go out and find content that is interest or relevant for a company you are working for. This would be a good way to get started. An example of this would be to find a YouTube video that relate to a particular topic and then link it or embed it to your blog post. Then, I would suggest posting your blog on social media to try to generate some traffic and awareness.
2. Creation- In the book, this is what is said to be the most fun. It will take time, but it will alos most likely result in the highest quality. Writing a blog post or posting a video on social media can be the best kind of content to share on social media because it is more unique. The kind of content you create is going to depend on the company, but you should also ask yourself who the audience is and figure out what they would most likely be interested in. Even though you are not a social media expert, it can be helpful to try to develop some basic content. You should also ask others to review your writing and videos. Overall, you should focus on what you do best.
3. Collaboration- This one is described to be the most helpful for independent business owners, and students. It can help you possibly save money, and find people you can work with. An example given is the book is that you can find someone who is a writer, offer to co-write content or do some research, so you can still get the benefit of writing skills, or their reputation. So, if you aren't confident in some of your abilities, or can't afford to hire anyone, you should be able to find people who are looking to collaborate, even if it's only a learning experience.

Starting a Blog

There are plenty of platforms available for blogging, but I would suggest blogger.com because it is the easiest to use. If you are really interested in developing social media marketing as a skill, it would be smart to create a blog and set a goal of posting on it at least once a month. All you need to do is choose a topic or tool that you are learning about, or interested in learning about, do some research, and get in a habit of developing ongoing posts. Even if you already have a blog, it would still be smart to create one in blogger because it will allow you to learn some new tools. It can also help you help a client create a blog and get them familiar with the different tools that offered on blogger.com. You can get started by visiting blogger.com and signing in with your Google Account, or you can click the "create an account" link at the bottom.

If you are interested on learning more from this chapter, you can purchase this book on Amazon. (link below)

http://www.amazon.com/CASA-Marketing-Intro-Social-Media-ebook/dp/B0103LB4HS

Intro to Social Media Marketing

In each blog that is tagged as "Social Media Marketing", I will be discussing some of the major concepts that are discussed in CASA Marketing: Intro to Social Media Marketing. In this blog, I am going to be discussing chapter one which is titled: "the basics for having fun, finding work, working better".  The main concepts of this chapter center around ROI, WOM marketing, and social media platforms,

ROI

The first concept discussed in the chapter is ROI. No, it does not talk about what ROI is, but rather how not measuring ROI can have some serious consequences. In terms of social media marketing it simply means, "when a business spends money on social media marketing, what is the return on that investment". This is important because it allows a business to see if their money spent on social media marketing is giving them positive results. When social media first came out, every business HAD to have it. So businesses were just getting their brand on social media sites without measuring the effect it was actually having. That is why people were getting hired and fired so quickly. No one knew how to measure social media ROI. Having Social Media Marketing skills will help you get hired. In fact, it was the number one skill that was getting people hired in the past year.

WOM Marketing

For those of you who don't know, WOM stands for word of mouth marketing. On the internet, WOM marketing can be very beneficial to a business. However, WOM marketing can only work if the brand and the products are great. To help a business with this, one should listen to what people are saying about a company's brand and its products. Listening to what customers are saying can help a business make or keep their products excellent. That is how WOM marketing can help with social media platforms.

Social Media Platforms

There are many social media platforms, but the only ones covered in this book are Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, which were the top three most visited social media networks in the past year. LinkedIn is also discussed in this book for B2B purposes. In general, most companies that do social media marketing will likely have a Facebook page or Twitter account. They will use these platforms to post pictures of their products, offer promotions, and even interact with their customers. One new network on the rise is Pinterest. So one thing to keep in mind is to first learn about the primary networks, and then do research on other networks that could be on the rise. It could also be helpful to their about the types of audiences social media networks attract. An example of this would be a fashion retailer making an effort to get onto Pinterest. If you are not really aware of some of these Social Media Platforms, go to google and search them to understand what they are all about and how they can help a business.