The lifecycle of any social media campaign will warrant immediate and responsive attention at one time or another. This is particularly critical in times of a crisis, or when your brand is trending or newsworthy. It could be a positive story such as a company announcement or an article on a high-profile site. Monitoring and reporting on these issues can offer a deeper level of insight, aiding smarter decision making.
Below is a checklist of considerations when reporting on the fly:
Who, what, when, where and why – be sure to include to these in any report. Though it may seem commonsensical, whipping up a report under pressure can make it easy to forget ‘second nature’ details such as the date (when set issue initially occurred and how long it has been going on for), a link to a significant post, or even mentioning where (across syndicated media) the issue is documented
Assess the peaks and troughs – A trending graph will show when peaks are occurring and if the topic is continuing to trend upwards or if it’s left the building. We like TrendsMap, which can be especially useful when monitoring global Twitter trends and hashtags
Understand your topic reach – Post volume will give you a look into how many people are actually discussing this category on the social web. Explore sub-categories, to see what other types of stories are associated with the trend. Otherwise, indulge the inner logophile with WordStorm to consider which types of keywords are relevant to the unfurling story
Track the sentiment – Clearly identifying if the issue is Positive, Negative, Neutral, or Mixed will allow top dogs to realise/react to the seriousness of each given situation. Here is a handy list of free, mid-range and upper echelon sentiment tools to help with your analysis
Do the math – if you break down your numerical data, work alongside an analyst to make sure you can report accurately all the way to the top. For example, if you include a media breakdown, make sure the sum of each media type adds up to the overall post volume
