Social Monitoring

Social Monitoring

You are an account executive at a publicity firm and everyone left the office to go to lunch and left you there. Then a new client walks in, and says they need your help urgently, and they lay $10,000.00 down on the table. "Can you help me? I just want to know what the public thinks". So you say, "sure, no problem, I'll do a search right now. Please feel free to drink a cup of coffee while you wait." So you need to do some research using various tools.

What can one do to research this client? What company is this client representing? How is this person or company viewed by the public? There are a lot of questions that may come to mind when attempting to research a client. It is essential to gather information through research using various tools.  Without a doubt, Google is the first thing that comes to my mind when needing to do a search on something or someone that I am not familiar with.  However, when it comes to certain people, brands, products, companies, etc., it takes more than just a search through Google to get what information you are looking for.

Social media has clearly made a prominent impact on our world today and has become a leading source of the news and is the key source that allows access to the public's opinions on almost any topic or person of discussion. So in regards to researching the client who wishes "to know what the public thinks"... here are some of the things that I would do:

• Start by gaining background information through Google
• Definitely use www.socialmention.com - this site is life changing! Just by searching your topic of interest, you will instantly find out the search's strength, sentiment, passion, reach, in addition to: average seconds per mention, last mentioned, etc.  It truly is a great way to get the information you are looking for quickly and effectively.  
• Check Twitter by using the infamous hashtag (#) by putting the topic of search in front of it. (For example, when searching Barack Obama, I would personally type #obama into the twitter search bar to find what topics are trending about him and to see what the public is saying about him)
• Check other social media sites that use the hashtag (Facebook, Instagram, etc.) by searching the same way (#obama)
• Search blog sites! This is a way of finding a more detailed description of a person's view and opinions on the topic or person that you are searching.