Social media marketing is almost a given for website owners these days. It is important to brand yourself effectively, even on social media and hashtags are an excellent way to accomplish that branding. They are also an effective way to track how well your online marketing is doing.
That's where Socialert comes in.
What Exactly Is Socialert?
Socialert ([icon link] URL: http://socialert.net) is a professional hashtag tracking service that lets you measure Twitter activity surrounding your brand all in one panel. With the monitoring tools Socialert offers, you can track not only hashtags but keywords that are related to your industry and jump in on trends with marketing campaigns.
The Voice Behind the Brand
WHSR had the pleasure of interviewing Pankaj Narang, one of the founders of Socialert.
The company was founded by Pankaj, Ashish Arora and Rohit Khariwal. He shared that the three of them make a great team because they all focus on different domains and bringing the highest level of perfection to their tool. Additionally, they have four proficient in-house developers and a couple of freelancers who are scattered all over the globe but make up their team.
Tool to quantify hashtag impressions & reaches
The idea for Socialert came organically from other services the three offered. “Initially, we catered various social media marketing services to our clients.”
As they sought ways to run more engaging campaigns on Twitter, they were asked to perform a number of hashtag campaigns. “Most of [those campaigns] involved keyword analysis and conducting tweetchats. As we commenced, we realized that there wasn’t a reliable tool that could quantify the impression or reach of a hashtag,” said Narang.
Instead of relying on a third-party tool, they decided to create their own hashtag tracker. Since they’d already worked on the marketing end of things, the three knew exactly what end-results a marketer would want to know. They added every significant analytic they could think of that would help them and thus would help other marketers.
Narang himself has an extensive background in software and marketing. He co-founded Infoshare Software Private Ltd. 10 years ago and never looked back. “We have dealt with various clients from all over the world and gained an abundance of knowledge in the process.”
He moved into social media marketing two years ago. Since then, he’s had the opportunity to work with affiliate marketing, development strategies, content marketing, and more. “Digital marketing is such a wide subject and with each passing day, I tend to learn something new and constructive.”
What You Can Learn from Studying a Hashtag
When you go to the Socialert website, you can input a hashtag. In order to show you an example, I put in the popular hashtag #amreading to see what results would pop up.
The results are pretty interesting. I can immediately see how many posts involve the hashtag and by how many different users. However, what is even more interesting is the reach and impression numbers, which hit 4,329,727 and 7,627,664 respectively.
The tool allows you to dig even deeper into the results, though. For example, you can see how many of the posts were negative, how many positive and how many neutral. In this case, the majority were neutral, but if your hashtag was trending negative, you could quickly step in and do some damage control.
Some of the hashtag campaigns Narang and his team have worked with have had great success. He points to one:
“#SMMW team did a remarkable job this year. Their hashtag crossed a billion impressions and created quite a buzz on Twitter. We also did an in-depth analysis of their hashtag campaign and published it on our blog.”
Three Available Plans
You can try out their services before signing up. The company offers a free trial for one month with up to 1000 mentions. You can utilize their filters and export reports. You can also create up to two free trackers with the trial plan.
Socialert has three plans available. Depending on the size of your business, you can choose a basic plan and then work your way up as your business grows.
| Plan | # Campaigns | # Mentions | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | 2 | 10,000 | $9.95 |
| Professional | 5 | 20,000 | $29.95 |
| Enterprise | 10 | 20,000 | $49.95 |
How Hashtag Tracking Can Help Small Businesses
Narang shares that hashtag tracking can drastically help every business owner and entrepreneur tap into more customers and grow a presence on social media channels. Socialert helps business owners track specific keywords related to their business and get to know what’s in and out.
“Small businesses should try to coin a unique and relevant hashtag. This will help them create a distinctive presence on social media.”
These days, brands are no longer focusing on offline marketing tools to gain traction. With the wide reach of social media, every kind of individual can expand their business with a successful digital marketing campaign. One can register for free and use Socialert’s interactive hashtag tracking tool to gain specific industry-related insights.
Caution! Watch Out for These Issues
It seems like a lot of businesses pour time and money into social media marketing but don't see any real results. The reason may be because of minor mistakes. Pankaj Narang had some thoughts on one of the biggest mistakes online marketers make when just getting started.
“Most new marketers try to tap another hashtag that is already established by some other brand. Too often, in order to come up with a unique and creative hashtag, they lose the connection between the brand voice and the marketing campaign. Selecting just the perfect hashtag for your brand is an art in itself that can only be mastered with time (and a lot of research).”
Other things that can derail an online marketing campaign include:
- Not understanding your target audience.
- Advertising at the wrong time of day.
- Not having a purpose behind your campaign.
- Not completing A/B testing to see which campaigns are most effective.
The analytics that are built into Twitter and tools like Socialert can help those new to online marketing spot some of these pitfalls and avoid them.
Specific Marketing Elements on Twitter
There are many different ways to market with a hashtag on Twitter. From tweeting out about a trending topic to Twitter chats and features like Twitter Moments.
Twitter Moments
Twitter Moments is a new feature that attempts to make Twitter more relevant with the changing preferences of the younger generation coming up. Because it is a photo-based change to the platform, the way you market will change a bit and the way you market with hashtags will need to be adapted.
“One of the best things about Twitter Moments is that it isn’t a replica of Snapchat or Instagram. Instead, it is a unique tool that allows every brand to narrate an engaging story to their followers.”
Twitter Moments allows users to capture a snapshot in time. Because of the nature of the new feature, it can act as an excellent marketing tool for product launches. Narang points to the advantage that a person can easily combine user-generated content on a topic and present it in a sleek manner. He adds, “Event marketers can utilize it to generate a pre and post-event hype. From recycling past tweets to generating testimonials, the sky is the limit here.”
Twitter Chats
Twitter chats can be used to drive traffic and for networking opportunities. But it is also important to track the effectiveness of the chat and get the most leverage possible out of it.
“Twitter chats are a great way to let your audience know how much you care about them.”
Narang shared that Twitter acts like a quick and reliable platform for brands to communicate to their consumer and vice versa. It essentially opens up a dialogue that potential customers otherwise would not have.
“If your aim is to generate more traffic from a Twitter chat, then you should walk an extra mile in order to provide something valuable to your audience. Try to include visual aids and be as responsive as you can. No one likes to wait for hours during a chat.”
Narang also advises keeping an eye on your hashtag and encouraging your customers to use it often. One mistake marketers make is organizing a chat out of the blue without any advance warning. Instead, Narang advises to make an announcement so your audience knows about the chat ahead of time and to prompt them to start posting.
Reaching Influencers
When looking for an influencer with whom to connect, Narang has some specific thoughts making the best choices.
- Pay attention to details.
- Make sure the fellow influencer is related to your industry.
- Ask yourself if their posts are engaging and interesting.
One of the easiest ways to connect with an influencer, according to Narang, is to share posts from them. This might encourage them to do the same and would gain you access to their audience.
“Every brand should focus on providing something valuable to their influencers. Hashtag and keyword tracking can help you identify relevant influencers.”
Narang also suggests checking the potential influencer’s Klout score to figure out their possible reach. Influencer marketing is a give and take relationship that should also be a long-term one.
Brand Reputation Monitoring
Another unique aspect of Socialert's tracking tools is that you can keep up to date on what people are saying about your company.
“Hashtag tracking and keyword analysis can help you keep a track of your brand’s presence on any social media platform, including Twitter. Too many times, marketers or brand representatives simply miss out on a lot of information that is related to their firm. By tracking every relevant keyword and hashtag related to their industry, not only can they know about the ongoing trends, but can communicate with their customers in a faster way.” Narang pointed out one of the main benefits of monitoring hashtags.
Reaching a Local Audience
Local businesses, such as service industry businesses often want to reach a very narrow target audience. These people might live in a specific geographic location and have other specifications on top of that. Reaching them isn’t always easy as the online world is so large.
Pankaj Narang advises: “A local business owner should start with the basics and use various filters provided by Twitter wisely. While monitoring hashtags and keywords, they can keep their geographic location in mind.”
In addition, companies should keep track of ongoing local events where they can engage with a larger section of their target audience and visitors. Socialert offers filters than can help businesses narrow down results to prospective leads in their vicinity instead of running blind.
Whether your business is local or global, Pankaj Narang has some parting words of advice…
“I would like to include a piece of advice for all the young marketers out there. If you want to make your presence on social media and come up with the “next big thing”, you got to do something out of the box. Learn, re-learn, and un-learn new and exciting things every single day to be a few steps ahead of others.”
Socialert is definitely out of the box. The ability to dig deeply into how well a hashtag is doing is a vital part of online marketing. If you haven't analyzed your hashtags, now is the time to give it a try. This might just be the thing that takes your social media marketing to the next level.
