Ever wish that you had some sort of magical device that let you see what everyone was saying about you behind your back? Check out the social listening and media monitoring tool 20/Twenty.
If you are a curious marketer, then there is a tool which can do just that, and it is far from magic.
That tool is Social Mention, a search engine capable of scanning the web and producing results, in real time, of the current buzz on any keyword. Simply type in whatever you want to search, and Social Mention instantly provides you with a detailed analysis of who is talking about your keyword, how often, on what platforms, and much more!
To a first time user, all of the data and analytics can seem overwhelming, but with this beginners guide, you too can be a Social Mention guru in no time at all!
Picking a Keyword
Once you head to Social Mention’s home page, you will see a search bar, much like the ones on Google or Yahoo which you are familiar with. This is where you will enter your keyword. In this example, we will be searching the international soft drink brand, Coca-Cola (they’re bound to have quite a bit of buzz, right?)
To the right of the search bar, you will see a drop down menu. Clicking this will allow you to select what specific platforms you want the engine to search for your keyword in. The default setting is “all”, but you can select blogs, images, and more. Doing so will filter your search results, and provide you only with the metrics and results for whatever platform you have selected, while the all option provides you with results for your query across all platforms.
Once you have selected your keyword and which platforms to search, click search, and let the magic begin.
We have entered our keyword, “coca-cola” into the search bar. Filter your search results with the drop-down menu.
Breaking Down the Search Results
Once we have typed in our keyword, Coca-Cola, and clicked search, we will be brought to a page with what seems like an overwhelming amount of information. However, it is quite simple and straightforward.
Below the search bar in the center of the page, we can see hyperlinks to various pages which have mentioned our keyword, “coca-cola”. Clicking these links will take you directly to the page where your keyword is being mentioned.
Next to the title of each page snippet, we see a small icon which designates what platform the discussion is occurring on, such as Facebook or Twitter. The bottom of each of these page snippets also states specifically who was talking about Coca-Cola, and how long ago.
At the top of the page, you will see a list of hyperlinks, such as “blogs”, “microblogs”, “bookmarks”, etc. Clicking any one of these will limit your search results to just that particular category. For example, if we wanted to only see results of bloggers who were talking about Coca-Cola, we could select the “blogs” option.
Every time you refresh the page, this feed will update, placing the most recent “stories” involving your search at the top of the page. The further you scroll through the results, the older the posts will be.
An example of a standard snippet of a search result.
Understanding the Statistics
In addition to the hyperlinked pages, Social Mention also provides us with some useful statistics and analytics about our keyword, which can be found in a series of gray boxes at the top left of the page.
Strength: This metric shows a percent likelihood that people are talking about the keyword right now. In our example, we see that there is a 16% chance someone is talking about Coca-Cola at this point in time. The higher this number is, the more people are currently talking about your keyword.
Sentiment: Sentiment is a ratio of positive to negative discussions about our keyword. Coca-Cola has a sentiment ratio of 18:1, meaning there are significantly more positive discussions going on about Coca-Cola than negative ones. If the number on the left is significantly higher than the number on the right, people are saying good things about your brand. If it is lower, they may be saying some not-so-good things–in which case you may want to take steps to boost your brand image.
Passion: This metric measures how often the same authors are mentioning your searched keyword. When this number is higher, the same authors are talking about your brand frequently. However, a higher number is not necessarily better…you want new people talking about your brand, not just the same ones re-hashing it over and over.
Reach: Reach is calculated by the number of unique mentions divided by the number of total keyword mentions. The higher this number is, the more people are talking about your brand.
Also included with these four basic metrics are a breakdown of how frequently the keyword is mentioned, when it was last mentioned, and by whom. Relative to our search example, Coca-Cola is mentioned on average, about once every 29 seconds. It was last mentioned one minute before this search, and has recently been discussed by 100 individual authors, and retweeted 20 times.
Additionally, every time you click the refresh button, the page will update, supplying you with the most recent metrics for your search. This can be very useful to see how the “buzz” about your search changes over time.
Standard search metrics for a search result.
Below the boxes containing the metrics for our search, we can see some more statistics which further break down what we are monitoring.
Top Keywords: This shows us what key words were most frequently mentioned alongside our chosen keyword. Some of the top keywords mentioned around our search were link, delicious, and coke.
Top Users: Shows which authors are using our keyword, and how often. Currently, the users talking about our search the most are Coca-Cola (surprise!) and LIS Technology. Clicking on these names will bring you to the respective user’s page.
Top Hashtags: Shows us what hashtags our keyword is most frequently associated with.
Top Sources: Shows us what sites our keyword is appearing on. According to these results, our keyword is very popular on sites like “Delicious”, “Twitter”, and “YouTube”.
Making Social Mention Work for You
To get the most out of Social Mention, make sure you make use of the tools provided all the way on the right side of the page, as they are very helpful. You can create an RSS feed, create email alerts, and get an Excel printout of your metrics.
Clicking the RSS Feed button will allow you to create a feed which will update in real time, showing you the latest information on who is talking about your brand. If you click on the “email alerts” link, you will be able to set up and customize email notifications to be sent to you when your brand is mentioned in a given context or by a given author.
Now that you understand the basics of Social Mention, head over to their website and start finding out who is talking about your brand, and how you can use that information to improve!
Companies and brands around the world are rapidly realizing the benefits of utilizing social media as a tool in their marketing arsenal. Naturally, social media platforms can be a great way to spread your brand name to an audience that would have been difficult to reach a decade ago.
However, despite all the benefits that social media can offer a brand, neglecting a page or Twitter account can have detrimental effects to a company. Failing to respond to customers on social media is just as negligent as ignoring them in person–how bad would it look if a customer asked a brand representative a question face-to-face, and received no answer!
But don’t let this dissuade you from using social media platforms to further enhance your brand. As a matter of fact, when a page is monitored, and the operator takes care to respond to and engage fans, the results can greatly bolster a brand’s appearance in the public eye.
Recently, Social Bakers reviewed social engagement of a wide array of companies, praising those with the highest engagement scores. These included companies such as Dutch Airline KLM, Safaricom of Kenya, Personal Communications of Argentina and LBC Express Inc.
So how did these brands use quality engagement to boost themselves to social media stardom?
Let’s take a look at what they’ve been doing.
Responding to Inquiries
The brands below are doing it, and you should be too. One of the most important aspects of managing any social media platform is to always respond to your followers–the quicker, the better. Whether it is a question regarding pricing, a new product, or a policy, no question is too small, and consistent helpful answers will build a strong sense of trust and reliability between you and your audience.
It used to be that in order to receive customer service, you would either have to have an operator direct you to the customer service department via telephone, or physically go to the company’s nearest customer service center.
The dawn of social media has changed this. Now, individuals can report an issue with a product, troubleshoot a problem, and much more, directly through a company’s social media platform.
Offering customer service through your brand’s social media platforms is a great way to build engagement, and should not be taken lightly.
Reinforcing Relationships
This aspect of social media engagement is often overlooked, but can go a long way. The manner in which you address and respond to your followers will say a lot about your company. Doing so in a warm, friendly manner, and addressing the customer directly by name can work wonders for engagement. Oh, and the occasional emoticon never hurts 🙂
Occasionally, you will run in to followers who are particularly dedicated to your brand. Throwing these individuals a shout-out will not only reinforce your relationship with them, but will also reflect positively on the rest of your audience.
As it turns out, engaging with your users to improve your brand image isn’t so hard after all, now is it? By following these simple guidelines, responding promptly to inquiries, providing efficient customer service on social media, and reinforcing your customer relationship, your brand too can be on its way to social media stardom!
The Facebook page has become an invaluable resource to marketers in every sphere of influence, and the gaming community is no exception. In tandem with the launch of its newest gaming console, Microsoft hosts a Facebook fan page for its XBOX ONE. Here, they share content, updates, news, and more, all involving gaming and their console.
So how is this working for them? What are they doing right? What else could they be doing? Let’s take a look in our page review!
Visuals
First, let’s address the page visuals. The visual aspect of a page is one of the most important, as it gets an idea or message across with much less user engagement than an article or post, and leaves an initial first impression. Facebook gives a page 2 major opportunities to direct a visual message to its users, and the XBOX page does this very effectively. First, we have the default picture. For this, XBOX has employed its universally recognized “X” logo, as well as its name, “XBOX”. This reinforces the brand name and creates brand awareness.
For the XBOX page’s cover photo, we can see 4 very fit individuals in workout gear, with a caption that reads “Work out smarter with famous trainers, only on XBOX ONE”.
The XBOX page is doing something quite interesting here. Not only are they advertising the cutting edge capabilities available only on their newest system, but they are also attempting to expand their target market. Generally, video games are not synonymous with fitness, but Microsoft is seeking to change that. Thanks to this cover photo strategy, a fitness fan who lands on the XBOX Facebook page will be much more likely to stay, like, or comment on the page when 4 fitness trainers are the first image that they see.
Content
The XBOX page has acquired over 20 million likes, with over 100,000 Facebook users currently talking about it–they must be doing something right.
The key is in their content; the page has all of its bases covered by providing breaking news in the gaming community, entertaining videos, promotions, and posts that harbor user engagement. The key to their content is that they are not just pushing ads for their brand, but they are offering useful information that users value, and respond to.
A good deal of their recent posts are reminders of upcoming game releases, or trailers of anticipated games. This is valuable content for gaming enthusiasts who like to stay on top of the latest console tech.
Promotional events are another tool that makes this particular Facebook page effective, offering deals which gives users incentive to check back often.
Notices on new, downloadable content being released keeps users who already own an XBOX or XBOX games interested.They also frequently post comments which ask for user engagement, or commentary from fans, or mini contests, which further the community involvement with the page–a MUST for any aspiring Facebook page advertiser.
Additionally – they also have the odd gimmicky post which asks fans to \”caption\” a certain photo. While this isn\’t \”quality\” engagement as such, it gets the job done because given the size of the community, they\’re likely to come across some interesting fans who would have something funny to caption the photo with and drive some conversation.
What Could be Improved
The XBOX Facebook page is doing just about everything right (Their likes and followers are proof of that), but that doesn’t mean there is no room for improvement! Up until recently, the gaming community has been a relatively small one, which focused on “gamers” and tech enthusiasts.
However, in recent years the gaming community has exploded and gone much more mainstream, with companies like XBOX and Playstation becoming household names. One area in which the XBOX Facebook page could improve would be to further expand this market (they are already doing this a little, as we discussed with their cover photo).
In addition, here are a few recommendations that could make this page better:
Gaming Tips. How about the odd little tip about a particular game? Provide interesting shortcuts, talk about moves in the game and provide deeper insight into how to play a particular game better.
Gameplay Videos. This would drive a crazy amount of interaction. How about the XBOX team puts together gameplay videos of a gamer doing something cool? A 1,000 meter headshot? A perfect 360? Finishing a particular circuit in record time?
Crowdsourced Reviews. Did a game just come out a month ago? How about a post asking fans to give the game a rating on a scale of 1 – 5, and then put all those reviews together to provide an XBOX Community Score.
Got more tips for the XBOX Page? Tweet them to us at @BetaTwentyOne and we’ll add them in here!
Rating
Taking all aspects of the XBOX Facebook page into account, we give this page an 8.2 / 10. Well done XBOX, keep up the good social media marketing work! What are your key learnings from the XBOX page?
Complete guide to Instagram social listening and Tik Tok social listening.
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One of the most noticeable trademarks of the digital age we are currently in is the use of social media as an extension of ourselves. Just about everyone these days represents themselves on at least one social media site.
But social media isn’t just for the everyday ‘average-joe’ to express themselves; famous celebrities and large companies have also assimilated into the social media society.
Because social media is essentially an extension and representation of one’s self, it is important to maintain a positive self image and brand presentation on these platforms…but are some companies and celebrities going too far to bolster their online image?
Top Twitter Accounts Follower Breakdown from Statista
Faking the Way to Fame
The constant pressure of maintaining an optimized presence on social media has started an interesting trend–people are implementing zounds of “fake” accounts to “follow”, “friend”, and “like” their own account, resulting in an overall following which appears much greater than it actually is.
But just who is faking it on social media?
Honestly. the vast majority of celebrities, politicians, and musicians.
According to an infographic from WhoIsHostingThis, major celebrities like Lady Gaga and Oprah are ‘faking’ over 70% of their following on Twitter to make themselves seem more famous or successful. Even President Barack Obama is guilty of having over 20 million fakes out of his total 34 million followers.
And just where are all of these “fake” followers coming from?
It turns out that there are many companies working round the clock to generate fake fans and followers, for a price, of course. And surprisingly, that price is relatively low, with the companies charging about 1 cent per follower on most major platforms. So for $10, an individual can instantly boost their following by 1000!
Packaged Deals for Fake Followers
Does it Pay?
Sure, the concept of spend a few bucks to immediately boost your number of fans by the thousands seems like a great deal to any enterprising business or celebrity, but the fact of the matter is that you may be doing yourself considerably more harm than good.
Fake followers are essentially useless in all ways besides making your total fan base look bigger than it actually is. Fake fans will contribute nothing to your brand, will have zero engagement with you or your network, and are likely to be a gateway to spam on your page.
What’s more is that social media platforms are starting to crack down on these “fakers”, making moves to not only delete fake accounts, but also penalize accounts which use fake followers.
Additionally, having a band of fake accounts following your page is likely to negatively effect the metrics which measure your brand’s online influence.
Paying for followers is bound to hurt the level of trust between you and your genuine fans, and is essentially a waste of time and money which could be much better spent on legitimate advertising–just check out Best Bang For Your Buck: Facebook Ad Optimization Part One for some great tips!
There Are No Shortcuts to Fame
The reality of the matter is that if you want to build a large, successful, and trust-worthy brand, it is going to take a lot of hard work, time, and some (well spent) money and resources.
The rewards of building a genuine fan base through networking and quality content are much greater than instantly buying your reputation. Fans will trust your brand more, will be actively engaged with you, and are far more likely to respond to call-to-action. Additionally you will improve your online presence and avoid the penalties placed on fakers.
If you found this article helpful or interesting, make sure to check out all of our other great content on Radarr Blog, and be sure to follow @BetaTwentyOne on Twitter, because we like to keep things real!
Recently, at the end of 2013, Facebook made a significant change to its algorithm responsible for determining what posts appear in its users’ News Feeds. As an unfortunate consequence, many marketers experienced drastic drops in the amount of organic traffic to their Facebook pages.
This conundrum has caused many social media marketers to consider the option of cutting their losses and running–abandoning their Facebook marketing platform to focus on other channels.
Do not fall into this group! When used properly, Facebook can be one of the most effective advertising channels for reaching your audience, even with the recent algorithm change. I mean lets face it, Facebook has over one billion users world wide, 60% of which are active daily. Abandoning a tool like this would be foolish.
Instead, you will need to get smart with your advertising and optimize your Facebook ads. This means targeting just the audience you want to reach, making your ads as effective as possible, spending money only where it counts, and spending within your budget, (you don’t need to spend $1000 a month on your Facebook Ads for them to be effective).
This is a guide for beginners, those simply starting out with Facebook ads right now and don\’t have much experience with them.
Choosing Your Budget
Facebook offers a wide range of options for ads, to fit the styles and budgets of just about any organization, small or large.
Daily Budget – This option allows admins to set a specific budget to be spent on promoting ads daily, such as $10 per day, over a finite period of days. When you\’re starting out, you might want to go with a daily budget, given that you don\’t want to overspend during a particular day because you\’re just experimenting. See what works for you, spent $10-$20 a day and when you\’re comfortable and know what ad type, audience and specific interests are working for you – you can decide to spend more each day or set a lifetime budget.
Lifetime Budget – Similar to a daily budget, but the admin sets a specific budget for a finite period of time, and Facebook determines how that money is best spread out over the course of the time. For example, $100 dollars over a 10 day period, with Facebook using an average of $10 of your budget a day. Note, the keyword here is average. Depending on how well the ad is doing, Facebook may choose to spend a lot more than $10 or a lot less than $10 over the course of the \”lifetime\” or your ad. A personal recommendation: use lifetime budgets for ads that you\’re probably extremely confident about not editing in the future – so that you create 5 ads and set a $200 budget for the campaign over a week and just let it run.
Choosing a campaign budget.
Optimizing Your Bid Type
In addition to selecting a budget, admins can also select a bid type, based on what their ultimate advertising goal is (whether they want page “likes”, user engagement, etc) – helping them to reach their objective as cost effectively as possible.
Cost per mille (CPM) – best for total ad exposure, admin pays per 1000 users who see the ad. The ad is pushed to a huge amount of users – without Facebook taking into consideration if they\’re likely to click the ads or not.
Cost per click (CPC) – best for getting people to click on an ad, admin pays per click. Each click on your ad costs you the amount that you bid using CPC. Not something that\’s recommended for first-time marketers, it takes a while to get accustomed to what levels to set your CPCs at. Your ad will probably be shown to a lot less people, and to those who are more likely to click the ad.
Optimized cost per mille (oCPM) – Probably the best choice for ROI, puts your ad in front of the segment most likely to take action on the ad – while you\’re still charged by the number of times your ad is shown, Facebook will optimize it to be shown to people who are most likely to perform an action on your ad.
One of the best ways to optimize your ads is to make sure that you select specific audiences who will see your ad. Facebook allows admins to choose towns, counties, or states where the ad will be presented, which can be a great help for local businesses. Make sure you choose relevant interests as well – something we\’ll be covering in our next segment for Facebook advertising.
Creating an Effective Ad
An effective Facebook Ad shares many of the same characteristics of an effective ad in any other medium. There are 4 specific areas you will want to focus on in creating an effective ad.
1. Focal Point – use of a captivating visual aid to draw the user’s attention. If you’re targeting women, use more feminine shades – such as pink, to draw their attention. If you\’re trying to capture the attention of businesses and individuals – use figures, numbers or crisp messaging in your ads.
2. Brand – Emphasis should be placed on your branding, making your name memorable to the user. A good way to do so is to make sure your brand name shows up in the ad visual itself.
3. Tone – In 90 characters or less, you will need to get your point across in a friendly, engaging, and informative matter, which also captivates the user’s attention. Use keywords wisely. What you’re selling must be obvious and must come out to the person viewing the ad. He shouldn’t have to even think what the ad is about on Facebook – because people are there to engage with their friends, not with brands and advertisements.
4. Reward – The ad should offer some type of reward for engagement, such as eliciting an emotional reaction, or offering something intriguing to share with others. Unless they see what they get out of the ad, they won’t click it. An ad reading, We sell household furniture isn’t going to get a reaction, but when stating, Get 35% off on your furniture purchases and FREE home delivery this month! will definitely get home-owners very interested.
What kind of tactics do you employ when creating Facebook ads?
We have entered our keyword, “coca-cola” into the search bar. 
Filter your search results with the drop-down menu.
An example of a standard snippet of a search result.
Standard search metrics for a search result.
Top Twitter Accounts Follower Breakdown from 
Packaged Deals for Fake Followers
