The secret to the success of every brand marketer/content strategist is branded keywords. Branded keywords are also one of the best bets for an SEO win for any company. These keywords offer valuable insights like:
- How many people know about your brand?
- What is your audience talking about you?
- Your Top Competitors, and so on…
And chances are, you already know about monitoring branded keywords. However, for most of us, the concept of monitoring our brand is limited to looking for comments mentioning “@ourbrandname”. But that’s not always enough. Sometimes people forget to attach the official handle when talking about your brand. Or they might make a mistake while typing your brand’s name and so on. In such cases, you will miss out on these conversations if you’re only relying on app notifications. And missing out on such conversations can mean missing out on a wealth of information.
What are Branded Keywords?
Technically, a query that includes your brand name or variations of it is called a branded keyword. For instance, Apple, iPhone, iPad, are all brand keywords associated with each other.
Sometimes, however, branded keywords can be deceptive. Apple itself is a classic example. Without any context, it is difficult to know if a user is talking about the fruit or the brand! This is where we start talking about the role of social listening in analyzing online chatter to better understand your brand’s performance.
Why are Branded Keywords Important?
The answer to this question seems like a no-brainer. Every business owner, every person, in fact, wants to know what others think of them or their brand. Marketers, however, worry about SEO and SERP when they think of brand performance. Branded keywords often aren’t the first metric marketers think of. But they should. Here’s why:
- Direct access to more meaningful conversations. People are overwhelmingly invested in social media these days. Naturally, they share each experience with friends and family over social media. Filtering relevant data from here can offer a world of insights for companies.
- Monitoring branded keywords help you to listen to every conversation around your brand whether or not the user tags your brand’s official handle. And when you listen to every customer/lead and take the appropriate action, you make them feel valued. This helps you build a healthy relationship with the customer.
- Brand-related keywords also are a powerful tool to spy on your competitors. Monitoring the chatter around the keyword – [‘your brand name’ competitors] or [‘your brand name’ alternatives] can highlight what your competitors are up to.
- Most importantly, branded keywords inform you about your customers’ sentiments. Measuring your brand’s share of voice and customer sentiment are two critical steps. Measuring the brand’s share of voice lets you know how many people are talking about you. While listening to customer sentiments tells you how they feel about your brand. What do they like, and what do they not like? These insights further help you to improve customer service or your products or whatever is the pain point.
Trying to get a comprehensive hold of your brand’s marketing and operations? Tracking branded keywords is one of the key steps. Social media intelligence tools like Auris can help you through the entire process. Want to experience the tool? Take it for a trial run!