Getting more out of your social media tracking

If your firm has a dedicated social media strategy in place, there might be interest in tracking your efforts to compare your company with the general industry landscape and get an idea of how it stacks up against competitors and other players. While there are a number of services that can offer such information, it’s important to scrutinize what they provide. Most will offer flow charts and graphs giving a nice visual of where your company stands, but it’s important to dig a bit deeper.

Many tracking services provide insight on how many times your company was mentioned on various mediums, what the general sentiment of said messages are, and where they came from. The next step is to take that information and ask why. Why is this company dominating the landscape? Why are mentions of this company always perceived as negative? And most importantly, what sources are these mentions coming from?

While it may seem like a competitor is blowing you away in the number of posts or mentions, a quick analysis could show that the company uses social media as a sounding board with little to no interaction with clients or other industry players. A graph or chart may make their efforts look impressive but analysis can show they’re just spinning their wheels with no return on their investment.

Sentiment tracking is another tricky measurement. A reference to your company or firm may be perceived negative but in fact just has one word that the service’s program perceives as negative. This can happen on the positive side as well. A company could be offering “reduced” rates or have “low” turnover which could be perceived as negative but in reality the post sheds a positive light on the business.

It’s important to keep on top of how your company is doing with its social media efforts but it’s not enough to rely on an algorithm. If you want to see your true return on investment for your efforts, you’ll have to dig a bit deeper.

This article was originally published on ShiftCentral, now part of LAC Group.

• Bio
• Latest Posts
• Contact

Mario Thériault

Mario Thériault is Chief Business Development Officer and oversees all aspects of LAC Group’s growth strategy, partnership and alliance programs. Prior to LAC’s acquisition of ShiftCentral, Mario served as CEO and continuously evolved the company to emphasize the importance of strategic, curated intelligence to solve clients validated business needs.

Latest posts by Mario Thériault (see all)

• Build v. Buy - October 21, 2019
• ShiftCentral’s Mario Thériault on the evolution of CI and MI - July 11, 2019
• The history of information overload and your law firm’s market intelligence - September 20, 2018

Questions? Send me a message on our contact us form.