Photo by Olesksandr P. 

With the ever-increasing popularity and ubiquity of social media, popular platforms like Facebook and Instagram have become significant tools for many companies, particularly for social media project managers and their teams. In this day and age, it almost seems as if it is required for your company to have a social media presence to survive, as it offers you a chance to connect with specific target audiences, receive vital feedback on your products or services, and build your brand’s presence worldwide. 

As we dive deeper into this blog, you will learn how to effectively monitor your social media channels as a social media project manager, including understanding what social media channel monitoring is, the different types of feedback, and best practices. 

The Role of Social Media Channel Monitoring

What exactly is social media channel monitoring? According to Matt Tesmond of Sprout Social, it involves showcasing genuine concern for your customers through monitoring social media channels for messages associated with your brand in addition to professionally responding to those messages. What’s more, it is noted that one factor contributing to the importance of this monitoring is due to the connections formed through finding conversations your company can join in on. Forms of social media channel monitoring can include: 

• The name of your brand 
• The name of your products or services
• Misspellings of your brand’s name and products or services
• Any mentions of leading competitors in your field
• Potential customers looking up your products or services in areas you serve in

Additionally, social media monitoring allows for the following:

• Managing your brand’s reputation
• Insights from customers
• Competitor research
• Crisis identification
• Current industry trends 
• Analyzing your brand’s sentiment
• Monitoring of influencers

Questions to Consider 

Now that you have a little bit of a better understanding of what social media channel monitoring is, what are some questions you should be asking yourself? In our book, Social Media Project Management, these questions posed by Amy Jauman, SMS, are crucial for any social media project manager to ask themselves: 

• Who on your team is currently monitoring your social media channels? 
• Do they know how to properly respond to the various types of feedback you inevitably will receive?
• Does your team feel confident enough to represent your company on social media platforms? 

Dedicated Personnel in Social Media Channel Monitoring

In answering the above questions, it is crucial to understand how different personnel across departments might influence your monitoring of your social media channel. For example, the following list provides a handful of roles that can effectively contribute to these efforts:

• Marketing Executives: Measure the campaign’s success, improve campaigns, and interpret the sentiment of your audience.

• Product Development Teams: Take advantage of the customer insights and enhance existing offerings or create a new version of them.

• Social Media Managers: Simplify the content creation and communication techniques. 

By assigning the right personnel to these roles, your team can act confidently on behalf of your company, while maintaining a professional image.  

Types of feedback in social media

As a social media project manager, you and your team should expect to receive all sorts of feedback regarding any given project. Depending on the feedback you get, ask yourself the following questions:

• Did you receive positive, negative, or neutral feedback?

• How can your company make use of the identified feedback?

• Is a response necessary? 

The types of feedback you will inevitably identify include: 

• Positive: Positive feedback shouldn’t be too tough to recognize. It could very well be a comment from a customer of yours on your recent Instagram post reading, ‘I am so happy that you opened this ramen shop near my home! I am going to go there every weekend! Thank you!’ As great as these comments are for you and your team, it is also recommended that you don’t miss any opportunities that come with this type of feedback. That is, we recommend responding to your followers in a timely manner, which can also deepen your relationship with them.

• Negative: Like positive feedback, this type will also be obvious to the reader. NISM’s Social Media Manager, Celeste Russell, highlights in her article Social Media Showdown: A Customer-Restaurant Dispute Goes Viral how being unprofessional on your social media accounts can lead to negative feedback. In her article, a party of two had to cancel their reservation at a restaurant since one of them fell ill. They then received a $250 cancellation fee and disputed it, winning the case upon showing papers from the hospital to their credit card company. Ensuing the matter, they received a nasty message on Instagram from the restaurant’s owner, regarding the disputed credit card cancellation fee. The party posted the embarrassing response to their X account which received the attention of many, including the publication “Eater Boston.” Rather than blowing up at the party of two on Instagram for disputing the $250 cancellation fee, the owner could have prevented hurting her restaurant’s reputation by not being defensive about this dispute and could have been a bit more human by genuinely understanding the party’s hospital emergency.

• Neutral: This type of feedback is as it reads, neutral. With this, there is a chance you can create valuable connections with those leaving neutral feedback. Annette Chacko of Sprout Social suggests that replying to neutral comments can be a valuable way of letting your customers know that you’re listening to them, contributing to brand loyalty, and having fun with your audience. To illustrate, a neutral post made by Celi | EthBarbie.x on X reads “GM @redbull ! ” with a photo of her holding a Red Bull can. Red Bull then responds with “GM.” 

Best Practices for Responding to Feedback

Now that we know what types of feedback there are, we need to understand what best practices to follow when responding to positive, negative, and neutral feedback. In his recent blog Best Practices for Responding to Social Media Comments, James highlights what to do no matter what type of feedback it is that you receive:

1. Respond to every interaction
2. Don’t neglect interactions on your paid ad comments
3. Don’t be afraid to engage with sensitive comments
4. Take advantage of direct messages (DMs)
5. Never delete comments
6. Use genuine responses, not generic ones

Conclusion

Social media channel monitoring is essential for social media project managers if they want to excel on their social media platforms. By understanding what social media channel monitoring is, seeking the perfect dedicated personnel, recognizing the different types of feedback, and how to manage that feedback, you are well on your way to taking the challenges of social media channel monitoring head-on!  

We encourage you to share any experiences or best practices that you have learned in social media channel monitoring in the comments below. We, along with our readers, would love to hear from you! 

 

Author: Sam Cuellar

Digital Marketing graduate from DePaul University, Marketing and Sales Coordinator at the National Institute for Social Media, and professional bass player with a passion for music, traveling, and weightlifting.