How much do you monitor on Twitter? There are a few different social media manager tricks that I’m sure you’re familiar with. For many, Twitter is an “instant” channel and as a result, you have those who’d rather have their phone and desktop notifications fixed “on” for every time someone tweets their brand handle. Like a first responder, ready to be on the keyboard, replying in an instant.
Then you have those who check in once a day, with the help of a calendar notification or similar, ready to give any mentions the time and thought they deserve.
Then there are others who fall in-between, perhaps due to resource, where mentions are checked every now and again and responded to then.
Truth is, there’s no “right” answer. Because some content is best responded to in real time, some can wait a while and some is a “nice to have” rather than an essential.
Twitter Content Monitoring Guide>
Monitor Twitter Content In Real Time
Why do most people use Twitter today? For customer service. When there’s an issue with an order or a question on opening times, hundreds of users turn to Twitter, expecting an instantaneous response.
Here, a user is contacting the fashion retailer Missguided after trying a discount code they’ve tweeted that ends in a few hours time. How useful would it be if Missguided picked up this tweet tomorrow? Or didn’t see it until the week after? By this time, the user would have given up, possibly disgruntled, and they would have missed the opportunity to make a sale and help a customer who was ready to buy.
This is why it’s so important to monitor any tweets sent directly to your brand in real time. This could mean:
- Having Twitter open in your desktop and regularly checking for notifications
- Using a tool like Buffer Reply where you have a social media inbox that can be managed
- Setting up email alerts with Twilert where you receive real time emails when someone tweets your brand
Asides from using the notification tab you may also want to use the below Twitter search query, to ensure you capture all of the tweets that need an instant response.
to:missguided – this to:user search is invaluable as it captures every single tweet sent to your brand (nearly all of these will require a response).
By setting this up in Twilert, or another tool of your choice, you’ll see every time someone tweets your brand, looking for a direct reply.
Daily Twitter Content Monitoring
As well as monitoring conversations sent to your brand, you’ll also need to monitor conversations about your brand. For example, searching @missguided will give you all the tweets sent that contain this brand handle.
Top tip: if you want to see tweets mentioning your brand but not from your brand you can use the search @missguided -from:missguided
These tweets potentially don’t need a real time response as they often aren’t urgent but they do need monitoring. Some of the tweets will require help and support from your customer success team, others may need a nod of recognition (for example someone sharing your clothes could require a thank you) and others show you what is being said about your brand online (check out the last example above).
These tweets could be added to a daily Twilert, that sends a digest of all of the brand mentions to your inbox at a specific time each day. Giving you a great reminder to log on and reply to all of your brand mentions in one hit.
You may also want to monitor mentions of your brand that don’t contain your brand handle.
For example, both of the tweets above would have been missed in a search looking specifically for @missguided and wouldn’t have shown up in notifications, yet still relate to the brand in question.
Monthly Twitter Content Monitoring
I think we’re agreed, monitoring your brand mentions needs to take part in the here and now. But what about other mentions and searches which aren’t as crucial to in-the-moment monitoring?
For example, perhaps at the end of each month you have to create a report that looks at your industry. Before you get to the end of the month, why not setup a Twitter alert that captures all of the content around a specific hashtag or series of keywords? Once you’ve found the correct keywords, you can save this search (or Twitter alert) and organise to have it sent to you monthly, or to view it at the end of each month.
For example, monitoring “new social media marketing agency” once per month will give you a digest of all of the new agencies within your industry.
Similarly, healthcare statistics will ensure you save any tweets over the course of the month that contain the latest data from your industry.
Monitor now, later or next week?
Set yourself up to success and take a few moments to audit what you’re monitoring, if you’re getting a full 360-degree of your brand online and if it’s working alongside your schedule. If not, you may want to set up different elements to monitor at different times. Helping you to stay on top of all of the Twitter content that matters and reassure your customers that your brand is listening when it matters the most.
