66.7% of all public brand mentions on social media happen on Twitter.
Twitter is the key battleground on which your social reputation is won or lost.
This may sound overly dramatic, but you just have to look at the positivity around Oreo or Paddy Power since they entered social media compared to the highly publicised meltdowns of Ryanair or British Gas to understand that it’s a channel you have to tread carefully on.
Thankfully with a good social strategy and a fully trained social team or manager, potential Twitter storms can easily be avoided and positive engagement amplified to drive improvements in your brand perception.
To aid your team there are also various social media management tools that can help you monitor any mention of your brand, therefore allowing you to engage with followers and non-followers in real-time.
In this article I’ll be taking a look at five stats from the latest research from Mention, in which 35.7m company mentions were analysed, to show just how important it is to monitor your brand on Twitter
Company names are mentioned in 39 tweets per day
Or approximately 273 tweets mentions per week. As Rand Fishkin the founder of Moz has stated “the quantity of interactions on Twitter may now rival many businesses’ interactions through their customer service teams”.
Giving customer service over Twitter is not only becoming a necessary part of a brand’s social media presence but also one forced upon it by a consumer base who sees your unsuspecting brand operating in a public space and thinks “now I’ve got you!”
Engage with any customers directly mentioning your brand using your Twitter handle, whether it’s positive or negative, and listen to what people are saying about your company. If you show a human, easily approachable human face, it will only help your reputation and foster a deeper loyalty in your brand.
As social channels become the most popular way for customers to seek you out for customer support, it’s becoming more important to integrate your customer service teams with your community and social teams. This ensures a unified and consistent tone of voice, where customers aren’t receiving contradictory help from vastly different siloed teams.
31% of tweets containing company names don’t include their Twitter handle
If you’re not monitoring all mentions of your brand name, regardless of whether a user has forgotten to use your Twitter handle or not, you’re potentially missing out on 31% of negative and positive feedback.
It’s also important to track all variations and likely misspellings of your brand name too. Followers are not so precious about getting your company’s name right according to your house-style guide as you are.
Only 9% of tweets mentioning companies start with @
Which basically means that 91% of people are talking about you, not to you.
Again, make sure you’re monitoring all mentions of your brand name not just direct mentions, to keep a tab on your brand reputation.
It’s here where your company can surprise Twitter users by appearing agile, creative and happy to help with any flippantly tossed-off complaint in a conversation that isn’t necessarily directed at you.
Here engagement can lead to a surprising win and improve your perception, especially if the conversation is around something negative (if it works for James Blunt it can work for anybody). Just be careful not to come across as being a troll.
60% of tweets mentioning companies don’t get retweeted
On one side, this means you shouldn’t panic if somebody writes a negative tweet about your brand as the chances are it won’t go viral (unless you happen to fail as badly as one of these companies), especially if your team deals with the mention quickly and positively. The key is to avoid escalation.
On the flip-side, it also means that positive mentions of your brand probably won’t get retweeted either. Which means it’s up to you to share positive mentions of your brand. Although try not to do this too often, as it can get tiresome for people already following you.
60% of company mentions will happen when you’re not in the office
In terms of scheduling this means you have to work out the best times to schedule content-based Tweets. For your audience the best times may not necessarily be between 9pm – 5pm on a weekday.
You’ll need a social media manager or member of your social team to be able to react and engage with brand mentions at any time of day, including weekends. This can help to diffuse any possible negative situation that may arise and improve your perception as an ‘always-on, always-approachable’ brand.
It’s also important if you’re scheduling content outside of office hours, that there is somebody on your team ready to engage in real-time with replies or in case anything goes wrong (broken links, typos etc.).
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