Nowadays we are bombarded with so much information that we are not able to comprehend and digest it. The switch towards the internet made the division between the sender and the recipient of the content completely blurred. Everyone who writes on a blog or any web page content knows that the value is no longer the posts themselves, but rather the comments appearing under them. Internet users leave traces in every place of the web, producing more entries, questions - just the content. This high amount of content forces us to search for help in order to catch the most valuable one, the one that can bring real business benefits. And this is where internet monitoring tools enter the stage.
How does it work?
Internet monitoring tools function as a filter collecting all the posts, comments, or in other words “mentions”, in one place containing words that we specify. By catching them we can, for example, answer questions about exercises or join discussions about new fitness trend or healthy nutrition. This extremely helps to increase brand's recognition and build trust among Internet users, which in future can translate into higher number of memberships sold giving concrete sales result and a long-lasting brand image effect.
The recipient creates content - how to use it?
Internet users increasingly not only google words or expressions that have not been very popular until now such as: kale, quinoa, spirulina or chlorella but they also share the knowledge themselves and comments they look for opinions and experiences of other Internet users on forums and fan pages. Such entries are a real bottomless well of sales leads for healthy food stores, but also a chance for numerous fit-related businesses for a discussion and for building an authority. A great example could be personal trainers who should definitely monitor Internet in terms of New Year's resolutions. As it turns out the turn of a year could be even more fruitful time for a multitude of them especially for those who complain about the lack of customers. All you have to do is prepare for a conversation and engage in a discussion.
Which media channels are worth monitoring?
Of course all, simply because it is worth knowing what they say and write about us - on every field. Being the person responsible for the brand image or the development of the fitness network it is worth focusing on those places where we can interact with a user and influence his/her perception. First and foremost, these are mainly social media, blogs and forums. What was not long time ago a great advantage of some online-conscious brands- today is the main sin of many of them. I am talking about focusing on running company fanpages. Of course, I am not saying you should drop it, as it still plays essential role when meeting existing and potential customers, but this alone is not enough. When dealing with such a fast-growing market as the fitness one, we need to look for competitive advantages and enter an interaction with users of the entire internet, not only those who came to us on Facebook or Instagram.
How to measure effectiveness?
We can measure the effectiveness of our promotional and communication activities - so-called internet buzz. Let’s imagine we plan a massive marketing campaign which we will operate internally with communication tools available on PerfectGym management software and on social media. If, for example, we have defined a specific hashtag for our campaign, then it is simple - you can check how many times it was used, whether it was more often used by women or men, and what was the sentiment of the speech. Looking closer at the results, it is also possible to determine in which channels the most frequent discussions have been taking place and at what times, what has been the percentage of positive mentions in relation to the neutral and negative ones. It is worth delving into those numbers as we can check if we reach targeted audience and how this audience is reacting. This tool can help us save time and money plus gain competitive advantage if we are fast and smart enough.