It’s time for another Swift 6 and in this latest video, I’ll be walking you through how to keep track of your brand, the market and your competitors.
Understanding what people are saying about your business and other businesses is absolutely crucial. It can help you identify problems you need to solve, and opportunities you can exploit.
On top of that, if you know what’s happening in the market in general, and what your competitors are doing specifically, you’ll be able to make sure you’re at the very least keeping up with things. From there you can go on to steal a lead against your rivals.
As always, if you have any questions get in touch on Twitter or Facebook.
Oh and if you’re not able to watch the video for whatever reason, I’ve included my script under the video.
1 – Decide on your keywords
Draw up a list of relevant keywords. This is probably going to be things such as your company name, the names of rival companies, the names of products related to your industry, and other industry related terms.
It’ll probably be easiest to put together a spreadsheet to keep your keywords in.
2 – Discover relevant hashtags
Facebook and Twitter make especially strong use of hashtags. By building up a list of hashtags that are relevant to your business, it’ll be easier for you to monitor social media conversations that may be relevant to you. They’ll be some overlap with the keyword list you’ve put together in step one.
But you’ll also find hashtags that are especially for businesses in your area, or that are used for regular discussions on topics related to your business. Add these to your keyword sheet, but keep them separate. A good tool to help you discover relevant hashtags is Hastagify. Just search on there using a topic keyword and it will show you the most relevant hashtags.
3 – Set up Google Alerts
Using your list of keywords, set up a series of Google Alerts. Essentially, you’ll be telling Google to email you every time they crawl a new mention of your keywords. So if your competitor announces a new product or gets some good press coverage, you’ll be in the know straight away.
4 – Use TweetDeck
TweetDeck is a great way to monitor your social media accounts, and any keywords or hashtags. Simply create a new column for each keyword hashtag you’re interested in and you’ll be able to see at a glance what people are saying about that particular subject.
This way, you’ll quickly be able to jump into the conversation if you need too. It’s a great way to engage with potential and existing customers.
5 – Use Mention
If you’ve got a bit of budget to spend on this, take a look at Mention. It’s a paid tool that combines a lot of what we’ve talked about here. It also lets you find Twitter influencers and if you can engage with them, you’ll boost the number of people who are paying attention to you. Check it out at Mention dot com.
6 – Keep track of your competitors’ websites
If you want to take things to the next level, then use Visual Ping to monitor any changes to your rivals’ websites. When a rival makes a change, you’ll get an email. You’ll be able to keep track of all the things your competitors are doing to entice people to do business with them. Find it at “Visual Ping dot I O”.
So that was “6 ways to keep track of your brand and market”. I will see you next time.
