Top 3 Facebook Monitoring Mistakes of 2017

By now, most businesses understand the important role social media monitoring plays in the improvement of their overall performance. As a result, many brands are using Facebook monitoring to track and analyze data in order to create and improve the customer experience.

As technology advances and social media monitoring tools are created and improved, businesses can dive deeper into customer conversations, analysis, and trends. However, even after realizing this potential, companies can still miss their mark, causing them to miss out on the power of Facebook monitoring as a customer engagement tool. It’s no secret that customer engagement is important for businesses. In fact, according to Bain and Company, “engaging with customers equals 40% more revenue per person.”

To give you a “leg up,” we’ve highlighted three big mistakes that we see brands make when it comes to their Facebook monitoring so that you can realize each and every opportunity to improve your customer engagement.

Facebook Monitoring: 3 Mistakes You Must Avoid

1. Missing Out on Trends, Opportunities, and Threats

Improving customer engagement starts with brands monitoring their customer conversations and figuring out their wants and needs. The benefit of social media monitoring tools is that they make the process of finding such conversations much easier.

However, one mistake that brands make is that they stick to searching “brand-specific” keywords. These are the keywords that are directly related and owned by a brand – such as brand name, slogan, and any other relevant keywords.

But the “real magic” happens when brands go one step beyond and monitor “category-specific” keywords. These are the keywords that are related to the industry in which the brand operates. These keywords will help reveal trends, opportunities, and threats present in the industry.

For example, the skincare company Kiehl’s could monitor keywords such as “purchasing skin-care online” to find industry trends that could aid in the improvement of their social media customer engagement strategy. In this example, if Kiehl’s discovers that their target audience prefers shopping online, they can work on engaging with their customers and guiding them to the website.

Avoid this mistake: Don’t get stuck on brand-specific keywords. Create and continuously update a list of “category-specific” keywords that will give you a “big picture” look at industry trends, threats, and opportunities on Facebook. Doing so will help you understand your customer’s wants and needs in greater depth and allow you to create better social media customer engagement strategies.

2. Missing the Mark

Customer engagement is about engaging and interacting with your customers. The faster your response time, the more likely that customers are going have positive thoughts towards your brand. In fact, according to the Forrester Research Centre, “77% of US online adults say that valuing their time is the most important thing a company can do to provide them with good service.” At the same time, a report from Global CX revealed that 35% of customers had a poor customer experience because of poor response times. The mistake that brands make is they don’t focus on the right conversations using the right team.

The right conversations can be found by searching for the right content. “Owned media” refers to content that was created solely by a brand. “Earned media” refers to content created by anyone but the brand itself. The mistake is when brands get caught up in monitoring their posts and campaigns on Facebook, focusing on vanity metrics such as the number of likes, shares, mentions, etc.

However, the truly valuable information can be found by monitoring “earned media,” which reveals content that the brand’s customers, competitors, and marketers are generating – such as questions, comments, and articles. This is where brands can find their audiences’ thoughts and opinions about their products, services, and customer experiences as well as answer their questions and dispel any misconceptions.

Avoid this mistake: There are over 2 billion monthly active users on Facebook and over 5 billion comments left on Facebook pages each month. That’s a lot of information to sort through and track in real-time! Luckily, social media monitoring apps make the process of organizing and tracking data much more straightforward. To utilize all this information, put together a social media monitoring team that will stay on top of the questions, comments, and concerns of your customers, competitors, and marketers. Furthermore, your staff should be responsible for reporting relevant information to upper management so that your entire team can work together to create an overall customer engagement strategy.

3. Focusing on Demographics Rather Than Psychographics

Facebook demographics include statistic such as “83% of women and 75% of men use Facebook” and “People Aged 18-29 are the most prevalent facebook users.” Facebook psychographics refer to the attitudes, opinions, and behaviors of your target audience.

The mistake made by brands that focus too much on demographics is that it puts their customers into a box. For example, let’s say that Trader Joe’s discovers that their key demographic is “female millennials living in Los Angeles,” and so they base all of their marketing and engagement strategies around this demographic. The mistake is that not all “female millennials living in Los Angeles” are going to have the same attitudes, opinions, and behaviors.

If Trader Joe’s was to focus on Facebook psychographics, they should monitor for more than “female millennials living in Los Angeles” and dive deeper into categories such as “female millennials living in Los Angeles who love trying new food products” or “female millennials living in Los Angeles who hate eating vegetarian food.” The words love and hate are italicized here because psychographics has to do with feelings.

Once Trader Joe’s finds conversations that these individuals are having, they’ll be able to create segmented marketing and social media campaigns that will receive high engagement rates because they focus on more specific interests.

Avoid this mistake: Go beyond demographics by monitoring which Facebook groups and pages your target audience is a part of and use this information to create more specific categories that can help improve your customer engagement on social media.

Conclusion

Facebook monitoring can be your best friend when it comes to customer engagement as long as you realize the full potential of your social media monitoring tools. Avoid the three mistakes discussed above, and you’ll be well on your way to discovering more about your customers’ wants and needs, which is key to improving your social media customer engagement!

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