How to Monitor Your Business Brand

Monitoring your business brand is important because it is how you will know if your marketing strategy is effective or not. With businesses taking their brands to social media sites, the need to monitor how brands are perceived by consumers is a must. It is through monitoring that you find out what others are saying about your brand. It is where you can get ideas on how to improve your product, services, or just about anything that can help you improve your business.

Using social media monitoring tools can assist you with your brand. When you have a lot of followers and you want to know what everyone is saying about your brand, you can gather the information you need by listening through such tools. You can also find out what other people are saying, even those that don’t follow you. This is a way to measure if you are meeting your marketing goals.

Here are some ways on how social media monitoring tools can help you improve your brand:

Gives you ideas for content marketing – Through social media monitoring tools, you can get ideas for your website content. It is not easy to come up with content ideas but if you have access to such tools, you can come up with content ideas just by reading through what your customers are saying about your brand. You will also get an idea on what kind of content best engages your readers or customers. If you continue to give them engaging content, you are likely to hear more from your readers.

Find out your demographic – Knowing who your followers are will help you come up with effective ways on how to engage them. The more you can engage your followers, the more chances you have of building a network with them. This can also help you make more informative business decisions.

You can even track conversations made by others who are not following you. With this type of information, you can strategize on how you can attract these people to follow you and join your community.

Customer service – Because social media is an easy way to reach out to brands, customers like to use the platform to call the attention of companies when there is a problem. With a monitoring tool, you can get to those customers faster. And customers love it when they get immediate response from brands regarding their concerns. It makes them feel that they are valuable to the company.

Monitor your brand and other brands – It is always good to know how the competition is doing. If you are in a competitive market, it’s wise to find out how your competition is doing. This helps you stay focused on how you can constantly improve your brand. You can also monitor brands that inspire you. All these will help you measure where you stand as a brand and push you to keep improving even when you are already ahead.

Engage in conversations – Because you can see conversations happening around your brand, you can join in on the conversations. This will help close the gap between brands and customers. If your followers or customers feel comfortable talking to you, then they are much more likely to share their ideas about your brand. It is also a good opportunity to build your brand reputation because you are reaching out to your customers yourself. This is your chance to make them feel valuable to you.

These are just some of the things that you can get from monitoring your business brand. Know what is happening around your brand and gather ideas on how you can constantly improve your brand. Listen to what your customers are saying about you and try to strategize on how you can get your needs and their needs to meet.

Social media monitoring tools can really help your business brand. Just remember that when you are using social media, you have to look into building a community and engaging customers instead of just focusing on making sales. Customers like it best when you make them feel that they belong in a community and not that you just want them to continue to buy your products or services. If you strategize your social media campaign well, you will be able to gain customers just by engaging and interacting with your readers and without having to drop a sales line. Just remember to be true to your brand values. Social media is a great place to build brand reputations so be sure you plan it well and have ways of monitoring your online presence.

Compel Others To Speak Positively

What are you doing to compel others to speak positively on your behalf? We know that 87% of people make a decision about someone else’s word of mouth. We know that word of mouth is a beast that can “devour” you or “promote” you.

Here are the three basics:
Move
Touch
Inspire

1. Move

How do you move someone to speak on your behalf? First, have you “asked”? So many of us would like to sit on our yoga mats and meditate someone to walk in and be our customers. However, that’s not realistic! People are very busy in their lives. If you remember that we are all “extras in someone else’s play”, you’ll realize how focused they are on “their lives” that they barely, if any, have time to think of yours. So, it is your responsibility to ask. Ask! Ask! Ask! It’s amazing how beautifully people will respond, if only they are asked.

ACTION STEP: Ask someone for one thing a day. Stretch your asking muscle!

2. Touch

How do you touch someone’s life? You focus and value what they value. How do you know that? The wisdom is revealed in “listening”. Listen for meaning, passion and care as someone speaks of what is important to them. If their child is struggling to find the basic struggles in MacBeth, and you email some websites where that info can be found or drop off an copy of “Cliffs Notes” that you have on the story…you have “touched” someone’s life. The best tips to finding out someone’s touch points, is Dale Carnegie’s book How To Win Friends and Influence People.

ACTION STEP: Call up a client or a friend you know and listen to what’s important to them or ask “how can you help” and then be very quiet. This is NOT the time for “might I suggest” or for “let me invite you”….Please - we are not seeking someone to fix us - we are seeking someone to value us. Listen!!

3. INSPIRE

How do you inspire someone? I am an inspirational speaker so you might be thinking - what does she mean…do what she does? No. Inspiration comes in many shapes and sizes. To inspire someone is to really do something that is GENUINE and to their benefit. For example, when someone helps me on a committee and really does go “above and beyond”, I like to recognize them by sending a thank you note to them (something 97% of the U.S. population doesn't do) and then I send a letter to their supervisor praising them. It is a professional letter so that it is suitable to be included into their employee file when they are reviewed. I copy them on the letter so they know that I shared my gratitude for their contribution with their employer.

ACTION STEP: Who can you inspire today? Sometimes just a contact from you can be inspirational. There is someone that will only hear the message that they need to hear from you. Act on your promptings and contact that someone!

7 Habits Confident Communicators ALWAYS Are Mindful Of

1. Internal

The conversation you have with yourself is the most important conversation ever! With sales people, I say “the biggest sale you’ll make everyday is to yourself!” This is so true! And, it is the foundation for anything that you do. If you are not pleased with yourself or if you are negative, it will shine through in all of your actions. Make sure you are pumped, passionate and positive before you connect with other people.

ACTION STEP: Start a gratitude journal - it will change your internal language.

2. External

This is image and your body language. It is all communicating louder and clearer than your words. Whether you’re one on one, working a crowd or a couple of people, your external language is 85% of your communication.

ACTION STEP: Work with a professional coach or a professional team of friends who will be willing to tell you what is hurting your external communication.

3. Music

People hear your music…not your words! It is important to be POSITIVE! However, there are many people who “say” they are positive. The best way to tell if someone is positive, is to listen to their words. If they’re speaking negative words - steer clear.

ACTION STEP: What are the things that keep you in the “happy” frame of mind? Stay focused on those things. Like a magnet, you attract others with similar thoughts and strong feelings.

4. Tone

Your tone - like your music - will give you youth or portray you as immature; it will show you as focused or controlling; it will highlight if you are fun or ditsy. The tone determines the type of person delivering the message.

ACTION STEP: Are you a lyrical talker? Do you speak in monotone? Are you animated? Find out which is your communication style and the predominant tone you exhibit.

5. Words

Yes, words can be powerful words or those weak words such as “I was JUST wondering…” or this is what you “SHOULD” do. I used SHOULD today by accident and it took away from everything I said.

ACTION STEP:  One by one remove those weak words from your vocabulary.  Practice using another word in their place. Practice for at least 21 days - it takes 21 days to change a habit.

6.  Credibility

Do you know your stuff?  Do YOU believe you know your stuff?  Your credibility is not just doing what you say you’ll do - it is also believing in what you know.  Someone I know “says” he’s passionate about what he does and yet when you ask him what he does or what he enjoys about what he does, he hesitates EVERY SINGLE TIME.

Action Step:  Do you believe in you?  That doesn’t come from outside influences like other people or owning a nicer vehicle…that comes from within.   Sit down right now and write down the 25 things you accomplished last year and then the top 10 things you do better than any one else.

7.  Knowledge

Yes, you do need to know your stuff.  From “book knowledge” to “experiential knowledge”, you need to know your information inside and out.  As you're learning it, you may know more than anyone else in the room.  That’s a great start. However, as a professional it is your duty to continue to learn more.  Did you know that if you read about a subject everyday that in a course of a year it is like you studied with the intensity of a college degree on that certain subject?

ACTION STEP:  These were listed in order of importance.  Begin on the area you need help with first and it will make a world of difference in your communication.

Like a well grounded radio station, you will be heard loud and clear.  Miss any of these aspects and you will communicate with static and be difficult if not impossible to understand.