Brand Monitoring: What It Is, Why It’s Important, and What to Keep Tabs On

What’s brand monitoring?

It’s about watching what folks say about your brand online and in the media. This includes public posts, private messages (if accessible), photos, videos, and, most importantly, the feelings and meaning behind them.

It’s not just seeing your brand name online; it’s understanding how people perceive your brand, how that view changes, and how online chatter affects your business. You learn about possible reputation troubles, customer desires, what competitors are doing, and what’s trending in the market.

To learn more about the brand monitoring basics, check out this link, which covers in-depth research and insights.

Why is brand monitoring important?

Keeping tabs on your brand is key to protecting your reputation, making good calls, and keeping your customers happy. Here’s why companies put money into it.

• Spot Trouble Early: Usually, big problems start small. Watching your brand helps you see the first signs.
  Like that time in 2017 when a passenger was dragged off a United Airlines flight? The video blew up before the airline even knew. By the time they spoke up, everyone was mad, and the company lost big time.
  With the right monitoring, you’ll be able to tell:
  
  • When bad mentions suddenly spike
    
  • When bloggers or reporters start mentioning you
    
  • When certain words or hashtags start popping up related to your brand
    

This helps you quickly check out what’s going on, figure out a plan, and fix stuff before it blows up.

• Find and Share Awesome User Content: Customers are always making stuff about brands—reviews, videos, photos, memes. A lot of it gets missed, especially if they don’t tag you.

Brand monitoring powered by image recognition and social media analytics helps you find content that you can reuse in ads, on social media, or as testimonials. People are always posting photos of Coke bottles without tagging Coke. These tools can still find those pics even if there’s no mention.
Chatting with the creators, posting their stuff, and thanking your customers helps build loyalty.

• Improve Products with Real Talk: Watching your brand gives you honest opinions on how people are using, seeing, and complaining about your stuff. It points out:
  
  • Recurring complaints or quality issues
    
  • Requests for features
    
  • Unexpected uses or issues
    
• Remember when Lululemon had to take back yoga pants in 2013 because they were see-through? People were chatting about it online early, but the company didn’t jump on it fast enough. They had to recall a bunch of pants, which hurt their sales and reputation.
  If they kept a closer watch, they could have nipped that in the bud sooner.
  
• Keep Tabs on the Industry and Rivals: Brand monitoring isn’t just about you. It tells you what’s up in your industry and what your rivals are doing.
  By checking keywords, hashtags, and who’s talking about competitors, you can see:
  
  • New stuff from competitors
    
  • Shifts in what customers want
    
  • New trends
    
  • Spaces in the market
    
• Like the #90DaysWithoutSoda thing—it shows that people’s feelings about sugary drinks are changing. Keeping an eye on this lets drink brands redo their ads, test out healthier drinks, or redo their branding.
  
• Give Better Customer Service: Every unsolved complaint makes it more likely a customer will leave. Brand monitoring helps you spot unhappy customers early—even if they don’t contact you directly.
  Responding to complaints online shows you’re responsible and care. Sometimes, a creative response can even turn bad feedback into good publicity.
  For example, The North Face once responded to a customer who complained about getting wet in a waterproof jacket. Instead of a simple apology, they made a video of a helicopter delivering a new jacket to the customer on a mountaintop. It went viral and made the brand look great.
  Brand monitoring makes these moments possible by making sure no customer is ignored.
  

What should you monitor?

With so much talk online, you need to focus. Here’s what’s most important to track.

• Brand Mentions: Anytime someone mentions your company or brand name. This can be in:
  
  • Social media posts
    
  • News articles
    
  • Blog posts
    
  • Forums
    
• For small brands, simple tools like Google Alerts can send you notifications when new mentions pop up. But for bigger brands, this gets overwhelming fast.
  Big brands should use professional tools that can:
  
  • Handle lots of data
    
  • Filter mentions by feeling or reach
    
  • Monitor more sites, like podcasts and print publications
    
• Product Mentions: Watching for specific product mentions is great when launching, updating, or rebranding. It helps you gauge excitement beforehand and get feedback afterward.
  
  For example, when Apple launched the iPhone 8 and iPhone X, they got tons of mentions quickly. Monitoring those talks showed them what customers expected, how they reacted, and what they thought of the phones.
  
  Tools can analyze this data in real time, letting you adjust your ads, prices, or product plans.
  
• Mentions of Staff: Important people linked to your brand—like founders or sponsored influencers—can affect how people see your brand. Tracking mentions of these people helps you know how their actions affect your image.
  For example, a founder’s charity work can make the brand look good, even if the company isn’t directly involved. On the other hand, scandals involving staff can hurt your reputation.
  
• Links and Mentions Without Links: Brand monitoring supports SEO. Links from other sites improve search rankings, while mentions without links represent missed opportunities. Using social media analytics tools, you can find these gaps, build relationships, and request links to improve visibility.
  
  • Find good websites that link to you
    
  • Build relationships with those sites
    
  • Fix negative coverage
    
• Mentions without links are missed SEO chances. Asking those websites to add links can improve your visibility.
  SEO tools can automate this.
  
• Industry Publications: Monitoring these publications makes sure you know about mentions that might not show up in regular alerts. Getting mentioned in respected publications can greatly boost your credibility.
  
  Tracking mentions without links in these publications lets you:
  
  • Share the news with your audience
    
  • Talk to the journalists
    
  • Build relationships in the industry
    

Conclusion

Keeping tabs on your brand is super important these days with everything online. It’s a smart way to keep your image good, helps you make good choices, makes customers happier, and grows your business. If you watch what people say about your brand, how they feel, what things look like, what your rivals do, what products are out there, and what’s being said in your field, then you’ll have what you need to move quickly and stay on top of things.