CASA Marketing (Social Media Monitoring and Analytics)

Social media monitoring and analytics are two important tools to consider for social media marketing purposes. In short, social media monitoring revolves around initiating conversations and posting content to social media platforms. Most importantly, social media monitoring should involve social listening, that is, searching for feedback from customers. On the other hand, social analytics refers to the ability to measure performance metrics, such as likes or conversations.

Delving even further into this topic, social media monitoring and listening can be broken down into two components; owned media and earned media. Owned media relates to properties that you control, such as a personal Facebook or Twitter account. On the opposite side of the spectrum, earned media contains conversations or shares on a social media account that you do not control. In either facet, learning how to use tools like Facebook Insights, Twitter Analytics, or Radian 6 is an integral part of the social media monitoring experience.

An ideal time to utilize social media monitoring is during a time of social media crisis, similar to when Target suffered a data breach. During a fragile time like this, social media enables a company to respond to harsh situations that could potentially tarnish its image. This is especially true if a company does not have a Public Relations department, as social media allows messages and conversations to spread at an almost uncontrollable speed. Consequently, this can either positively or negatively a company's financial position in a specific industry depending on how its followers respond to a particular crisis.

Finally, social media monitoring is useful for a company when a customer complains about a product, raises a question, or wishes to engage in a conversation online. Overall, utilizing social media monitoring and listening truly helps improve customer service efforts for a business, which can also have an impact ROI as well.