Monitoring your business’ social media presence is extremely important in today’s technology driven world. As it turns out, yesterday’s customer service call has become today’s customer service tweet — making it a public exchange. Although it is hard work and can be quite time-consuming, monitoring your social media channels is necessary in order to:

• Fully understand how people view your brand
• Avoid disasters 
• Build relationships with current and potential customers
• Understand the conversations happening around keywords associated with your brand 

Responding is equally as important as monitoring. Whether you like it or not, people are talking about your brand, your services, your industry, and your employees. Those conversations are hugely important to your brand and give you a great opportunity to connect with your customers and build relationships. With that said, who should be monitoring?

Marketing Team
Of course, your marketing team is the main monitor of social media within your company. This is because they need to fully understand the brand’s image, what conversations are happening around the brand, what thought leaders in your industry are talking about, and what conversations are happening around words or phrases that are core to your brand. This information is collected and then translated into marketing campaigns, which will be used to help your sales department move leads through the buyer’s journey, and delight your current customers.

• Leads — what product or service they are interested in
• Thought leaders — keywords used
• Conversation that include words or phrases that are core to your brand

Sales Team
One reason to monitor social media is to make connections with your followers and fans and use those connections to build relationships. With that being said, your sales team should be using social media monitoring to help them with social selling, the process of researching, connecting, and interacting with prospects and customers on social media networks.

• Leads — conversations they’re having, even those unrelated to your brand and products

Read "Social Selling: The New Cold Call"

Support Team

According to Search Engine Watch, 72% of people who complain on Twitter expect a response within an hour.

No matter how big or small your company is, there should always be someone wearing "the support team hat" for those times when a complaint rolls in. One of the biggest mistakes a company can make is to ignore negative comments on their social media channels. By ignoring those negative comments, it shows the disconnect between the company and social media, and causes your customer to feel snubbed by your brand — the same way they would if they were put on hold for 45 minutes.

• Questions or concerns people have about your brand
• Conversations your customers are having about your products or services
• Positive and negative feedback on your products or services

CEOs
Now more than ever, there is a growing expectation that chief executives and other company leaders should not only represent their brand, but also demonstrate their commitment to the brand by being visible and accessible online. It says a lot about a company when their CEO is present and active on social media and ready to interact with their customers. Not only does it build trust around the brand, but it gives customers the opportunity to go straight to the top with their inquiries, which can get you far during the relationship building process. 

• Conversations people are having about you and your executive team
• Conversations your customers and leads are having about your products or services vs competitors’ products or services
• Activity of other executives and influencers within your industry

Social Media is used for more than just sharing funny memes and wild news stories. It is now seen as the main connector between consumers and the brands they use. Instead of picking up the phone to solve their curiosities, or make suggestions, consumers are now using social media platforms to contact brands. Because of this, businesses have an opportunity to use these online interactions to build relationships with their leads and customers, to create future content, avoid disasters, and to better understand conversations happening within their industry. If conversations are being had about your brand, don’t you think you should be involved?