The TweetSpout Blog

Social media management has been a thriving industry for many years now and by using social media management services, businesses can experience significant growth in brand recognition, lead generation and customer satisfaction. However, for many Social Media companies, the main performance metric is often follower growth. Due to the explosion in popularity of 'bots' on social networks, proving added value through follower growth is questionable - for example, we at TweetSpout are frequently offered 1k followers for just $10! Rapidly gaining an extra 50k followers might sound tempting, but will any of them convert into real customers? Nope. Does it look spammy? Definitely. 

A more valuable and interesting statistic to measure social media management performance is the growth of discussion about your brand or products. For example, if after a month of using a social media manager you have seen strong growth in positive discussion of your brand, then it's a good indicator that they're doing a sound job. After all, if more people are talking about your product, then ultimately more people will be intrigued and join the discussion as well as having a positive mindset when they first interact with your brand or product.

TweetSpout allows you to monitor discussions about your brand or product through keyphrase filters, and provides graphical analytics that allow you to easily measure the level of activity regarding your brand on Twitter. This kind of Social Media Monitoring is essential for either companies who are using a Social Media Manager and want to check their progress, or for Social Media Managers who want to proactively prove their impact in a more tangible way to their customers. 

Step 1 - Signup

To get the ball rolling head over to the TweetSpout signup page and create an account - all you need is your first name, a password.

Step 2 - Subscribe

To start streaming, you first need to choose a subscription then click the Subscribe button and enter your card details.

You’ll get 7 days free to try us out and you are free to cancel whenever you want, no long term contracts!

Step 3 - Create a Twitter App

Go to Twitter Apps (login if required) and hit the ‘Create New App’ button. 

Note: You must have linked a mobile phone with your Twitter Account in order to create a Twitter App. This can be done from the mobile page of your Twitter Account Settings.

Enter the details Twitter is asking for and hit the ‘Create your Twitter Application’ button

Step 4 - Enter Your Consumer/Access Token Keys and Secrets on the TweetSpout Account page

Now your app is created, you should be on the page for your Twitter app (or you can access it by going to https://apps.twitter.com and selecting the newly created app). Click on the Keys and Access Tokens tab.

Scroll to the bottom of this page and hit the ‘Create my access token’ button to generate an access token and token secret. Now all you have to do is copy the Consumer Key, Consumer Secret, Access Token and Access Token Secret over to the TweetSpout Account page and hit the ‘Save’ button.

If you’ve done everything right, you’ll see a green success message.

Step 5 - Setup Your Stream and Let the Tweets Roll In

Head over to the Stream page on TweetSpout and click on Setup or click here. Enter a few search terms which are relevant to your business (for best practice on choosing search terms, read this article), select any language or country filters and save them.

Now all you have to do is click on the word Stream at the top or visit here and wait for the Tweets to arrive.

Simple!

Remember, it can take up to 10 minutes for our system to configure your account. Don't be alarmed if you don't see any Tweets immediately - it's a real time stream so you'll have to wait till someone mentions one of your keywords. If you want to test, try doing a Tweet from your Twitter account with one of your keywords in it!

Do: Build Lists of Potential Leads

Data regarding who is Tweeting about your product can be invaluable for lead generation and improving conversion rates.

Social monitoring tools provide invaluable data in many forms, but not all companies realise the full value that these tools offer. Identifying Tweets which are about your brand or product is good, but even better is getting to know the person behind the Tweet. Use features such as the custom webhooks offered by TweetSpout to mine Tweet data and build a list of potential customers that have expressed an interest in your product or service. Data regarding who is Tweeting about your product can be invaluable for lead generation and improving conversion rates.

Don’t: Automate Your Customer Service

Take a look at some of the Twitter accounts of the worlds biggest companies. Those that are truly interacting with their customers, and even having a little fun, are reaping the rewards. 

Bots, however sophisticated, are not an effective substitute for real life customer interaction. Automating responses to complaints via social media is never a good idea. A common strategy these days is to provide a stock response asking the customer to email you with their complaint, but that doesn’t satisfy the customer, and the same response is out there over and over again for the world to see. A little human interaction, though more costly, will make a customer feel more valued and potentially re-engage them with your product.

Need proof? Simply take a look at some of the Twitter accounts of the worlds biggest companies. Those that are truly interacting with their customers, and even having a little fun, are reaping the rewards. For just having a sense of humour, the likes of Tesco, Virgin Trains, Domino’s and Oreo are making headlines in a positive way, and enjoying the increased following and exposure that goes with it. 

Do: Make an Introduction to Customers

Your introductory message should promote conversation and open a new dialogue with the customer.

There are many tools which allow you to message new followers as soon as they start following you. Getting this message right can be difficult, as many Tweeters are becoming ‘numb’ to them. However, there can still be some value in acknowledging a new follower. 

Your introductory message should promote conversation and open a new dialogue with the customer. Or at the very least engage the customer in such a way as to make them feel valued, such as giving them a special offer e.g. a 10% off discount code.

Don’t: Spam Followers with Generic Direct Messages

Automated tweets or direct messages should aim to build a rapport with readers, and subsequent communication should by a human! 

Whilst the above “Do” advocates carefully crafted auto-messages to new followers, getting the content of this message right is an art. Does an automated direct message saying “Thanks for following, please check out our website..” add much value? In our experience, the answer is no because it doesn’t provide a strong enough incentive for your customer to really care about your message. Automated tweets or direct messages should aim to build a rapport with readers, and subsequent communication should by a human! 

1. Lead Generation

By tracking a variety of search terms such as your product name or keyphrases relating to your company purpose, you can identify potential customers who require your product or service. Once you’ve identified them as a relevant lead, you can then reach out to them directly with offers to convert the opportunity. 2. Competitor Analysis 

Keeping one eye on your market is essential, as is knowing your competitors. By monitoring the social activity of your competitors and industry, you can gain insights into the ways other industry players are achieving success and also to ensure that you keep pace with them. This sort of data can be invaluable to making certain your brand remains competitive.

3. Brand Awareness

If someone has a gripe with a company or a bad experience, they won’t always reach out on Twitter to the company directly, but they’re pretty likely to have a moan to their friends. The Tweets which are directed at your Twitter handle form only a portion of the total number of Tweets out there that will be about you. Twitter wouldn’t notify Coca Cola, for example, if someone Tweeted “love the tune on the new Coke Zero advert”. Social listening tools allow you to also capture any mentions of your brand, both positive and negative. 4. Marketing Analytics 

If you’re running a marketing campaign, you can use social media monitoring to keep an eye out for an increased number of mentions of your brand, your product/service or even the marketing campaign itself. This can be a useful metric for understanding the impact your marketing campaign is having and if it is getting the right people talking about your brand in the right way.

5. Customer Interaction

Twitter veterans who’ve built up legitimate followings (and not just a bunch of Twitter bots) all say the same thing - interacting with people is essential for building a following. After all, it’s a social network. By using social media monitoring tools to get notified of discussions around your brand or your industry, you can generate new opportunities for fostering brand loyalty through customer interaction. People love to talk!

This is just a flavour of why social listening should form an important part of your social media strategy; there are a whole host of other ways in which it can help your business which I’ll discuss in future posts.