Social Media Monitoring or SMM in short is, as the name says, monitoring what is going on in social media which must be done very selectively.
This would surely change the game for current businesses, especially those on e-commerce. Even physical stores have an online presence anyway, which means monitoring what goes on in social media is very important.
The trend moving forward is that more brands will be taking their brands online (if they have not already done so). This would also mean that the competition is getting stiffer.
That being the case, how can any brand keep up?
What exactly is SMM?
In simple terms, SMM covers the process of knowing what your audience is talking about you on social networks.
It gives you the platform to find out what your customer liked (or disliked) about your brand, product or company.
If you sold shoes to your customers, SMM allows you to understand why they like your shoes so much that prompted their decision to purchase them.
However, it does not simply just mean ‘customer feedback’ as it entails more. Social listening is where the brand can start looking for new patterns or trends in the market to find out what its competitors are doing. The data is usually collected from social media which will then be converted and analyzed to be adopted into the marketing campaign.
Recognizing the importance of SMM
As a brand, you must pay attention to what people are talking on social media so that you know how to stay relevant and continuously engage with your audience the correct way.
SMM helps you to build your brand identity and enhance it. When you know the perception of your audience about your brand (and products), you know what you are doing is right and vice-versa.
You will read the negative comments and then find ways to overcome them (otherwise known as damage control).
SMM tools and getting them to work
Generally, SMM tools are algorithm-based tools that go very deep into websites and index them continuously. This is reflected by the basic concept of search engines and how they work.
Queries work very efficiently when a website is indexed and searched. Hence, SMM tools work similarly where Twitter is among the most actively crawled sites (real-time), among all other social media platforms.
In most cases, monitoring tools provide a subscription model that comes with a lot of features that can be easily adopted and integrated.
Problems with websites causing brand damage
The World Wide Web is an uncontrolled channel. When a company decides to put a brand online, the company should assign a department to handle and protect the brand. Besides protecting the brand online, the department is supposed to look out for errors or inconsistencies in the site.
Sadly, companies take action long after problems occurred. This in fact has damaged the brand and organization itself. Customers then identify the brand’s poor management and thus, the company loses its credibility. It often leads to loss of revenue and also might face the risk of litigation.
Best practices must be adopted
Since most companies have learnt their lesson from other occurring cases, they are now aware of the need to protect their brand online. Companies also implement stricter web managing standards. Company should not overlook web standards because the brand and web standards are both equally important.
What are the standards involved?
Web standards that are set by the company should cover:
- Brand
- Presentation
- Infrastructure
- Accessibility
- Search Engine Optimization
- Formal Mechanism
- Legal Standards that refer to Internet Protocol protection, privacy and data protection.
Accessibility standards ensure the web site works without problem for users with disabilities and other needs. And lastly, the standards should also include usability as this feature optimizes visitor experience.
Standards must be managed
Effective management of standards benefits a company in various ways. Firstly, it helps to protect the brand and company reputation, manage online risk, provides high quality user experience and other issues.
Tips to use standards efficiently
Web standards management are mostly implemented by ‘early adopters’ because other companies viewed it as a complex process. These companies are at risk of facing problems in the future. But no worries as here are practical tips to use standards effectively to manage the brand online. These tips help your organization to refine online performance as well as protect reliability of your brand and company.
- Tip 1: Know your medium – Besides emphasizing on the fonts and colours, the standard should include all these elements; usability, editorial, SEO, legal and technical standards.
- Tip 2: Establish authority procedures – As mentioned previously, companies need to set aside a central department to monitor the on-goings besides enforcing standards. It adopts the same set of procedures as offline brand.
- Tip 3: Communicate regularly with web editors – It is extremely important to keep your web editors updated with the on-goings and updates of the brand.
- Tip 4: Identify the standards – When you categorize the documents, if possible, avoid ambiguity to prevent confusion. Provide understandable and clear rules.
- Tip 5: Standardize the code – It helps you to monitor and handle the web site quality besides saving time and money. The standardization of codes prevents repetition of similar codes in the future.
- Tip 6: Keep the standard guidelines updated – You have to inform the web editors should you make changes in the standard guideline.
- Tip 7: Remember to measure the standards on regular basis – From time to time, you have the responsibility to measure and monitor the standards on regular basis. Besides that, you are also required to communicate issues with the web editors.
- Tip 8: Define the benefits for specific standard
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