Are you struggling to keep your business’s social media presence up-to-date and consistently refreshed? Can you remember the last time you gave your social media profiles a much-needed makeover?
Courses, books, and niche news sources can help you develop a better understanding of social media. However, these resources do little in the way of keeping you ahead of the curve.
Social media is constantly changing, and businesses that aren’t up-to-speed are bound to fall behind. Your business’s brand awareness, loyalty, and communication with customers all rely on staying fresh.
We put together this guide to explain the importance of refreshing your profiles and how social media monitoring can help.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
- The importance of updating social media profiles
- What social media monitoring is
- The best tools for social media monitoring
- How to refresh your social media pages
What Is Social Media Monitoring?
Social media monitoring is the process of studying and tracking relevant information on social media as it relates to your business and its goals.
With an effective social media monitoring strategy, here are some important things you can keep track of:
- Popular accounts in your industry
- Relevant hashtags
- Performance of competitors
- Major changes to specific platforms
- General trends related to your niche
Social media monitoring makes it easier for businesses to stay current on important changes across different platforms by tracking specific metrics.
These insights help determine how your social media profiles stack up with those performing well in the current climate.
Without social media monitoring, your social media presence is more likely to fall behind the trends and other significant changes.
Why You Need to Refresh Your Social Media Profiles
Social media platforms are powerful tools for connecting and communicating with potential customers.
But, if you want to maximize the connection with your audience, your social media profiles need to remain relevant — you have to stay ahead of social media trends and ensure all the information on your account is up-to-date.
If you’re always playing catch-up with the constant changes in the social media sphere, you’ll never successfully maintain a connection with followers.
Additionally, if the information customers find on your social media profiles isn’t accurate, this connection won’t be worthwhile. Even the most effective social media marketing strategy is meaningless if your accounts have inaccurate contact information.
How To Refresh Social Media Profiles
Every few months, you should reassess your business’s social media presence on all platforms to see what needs to be updated.
Here are some helpful steps you can take to keep your social media profiles refreshed and relevant:
Google Your Business
Seeing your business’s online presence through the eyes of your audience is a great way to make sure everything is up-to-snuff.
Google your brand’s name and see what comes up. Pay close attention to how your business is referred to across social media platforms.
To boost brand awareness and improve your search engine optimization (SEO) ranking, you want to make sure your social media profiles are all using the same name.
Here’s what comes up when you search “Bluehost,” for reference:
Googling your business is also a great way to see if any fake pages are claiming to be your brand. If you come across profiles that aren’t run by your business, make sure to report them.
Replace Your Old Photos
Photos are an essential component of your business’s social media presence. Online visitors use these visuals to get a better understanding of your brand and what it offers.
You need to consistently replace older photos with more up-to-date, higher-quality photos to give new followers the most accurate idea of your business.
Unless you’ve recently updated your brand’s logo, keep your profile photo the same. Changing it too often can confuse customers and hurt brand awareness.
However, you should routinely replace cover photos and gallery images to rejuvenate your social media presence. If you have the budget, hire an in-house or outsourced photographer to provide a consistent stream of high-quality, up-to-date images.
Claim New Social Media Handles
New platforms are a tricky component of the ever-changing social media landscape for small businesses. While you want to stay ahead of the curve, you also want to avoid wasting time and money on a platform that won’t last.
Whenever a new social media platform seems to be taking off, it’s a good idea to claim your business’s username right away. You can sit on it while deciding whether engaging on the platform is worthwhile or not.
In general, if you see a significant presence of your target audience on a new platform, it’s a good idea to get involved. Just don’t try to be everything, to everyone, on every platform.
Monitor Social Media
Keeping your business’s information refreshed is paramount when you’re trying to effectively connect with customers on social media — but it’s not the only piece of the puzzle.
Because social media is regularly adopting new trends, businesses have to use social media monitoring to keep track of these constant changes.
As we discussed before, social media monitoring is all about staying up-to-date on the current state of these platforms so you can make adjustments and avoid falling behind.
While you could do this manually by checking various social media platforms and relevant news outlets regularly, it could become a full-time job.
Here’s the good news:
There are plenty of great tools that can help you with social media monitoring.
Best Social Media Monitoring Tools
- Hootsuite
- Google Alerts
- Reputology
- Digimind
Social media monitoring tools allow marketers and business owners to track changes relevant to their business across various platforms, including: hashtags, keywords, conversations, and the actions of specific accounts. These tools can help you to get ahead of never-ending changes in social media.
1. Hootsuite 
Hootsuite is a popular social media monitoring software that allows users to track multiple social media platforms simultaneously from a single, intuitive dashboard.
You’ll use search streams to monitor a variety of relevant factors related to your market, target audience, and offerings. Hootsuite allows you to monitor conversations through locations, hashtags, keywords, and specific users.
Another great aspect of this social media monitoring tool is its collaborative nature. You can easily communicate with and assign tasks to other team members who all have access to the same information.
This connectivity also helps streamline your social media management.
Key Features:
- Easy team collaboration
- Multi-platform monitoring
- Reporting and statistics
Best Social Media Monitoring Tool For: Bigger businesses
Price: Hootsuite has three pricing-tiers. The Professional plan is the most affordable at $29/month, followed by Team plan at $129/month. The Business plan is significantly more expensive at $599/month. There is a 30-day free trial available for users interested in the first two pricing-tiers.
2. Google Alerts
Instead of searching for relevant news and mentions manually, the Google Alerts function allows you to set automatic notifications to stay on top of social media trends.
With this social media monitoring tool, you can stay updated on any mentions related to your industry, competitors, business, and other important information. Just sign up for a Google account and set your parameters accordingly on the Google Alerts page.
Simply input a phrase or keyword into the Google Alerts search box. Every time Google comes across a result pertaining to your search criteria, you’ll receive an email notification. It’s easy to use, powerful, and incredibly convenient.
Key Features:
- Keyword tracking
- Powered by Google
- Automatic alerts
Best Social Media Monitoring Tool For: Broad searches
Price: Google Alerts is completely free, making it a great option for smaller businesses with limited budgets.
3. Reputology 
Reputation management is an important component of social media monitoring. If you’re always up-to-date on what people are saying about your business, you can make the necessary changes on social media to maintain a positive perception among users.
Reputology simplifies this process by offering the ability to check and monitor conversations and reviews involving your business on a variety of social media platforms. This real-time oversight allows you to respond quickly, improving brand image and awareness.
Key Features:
- Daily monitoring
- Email alerts
- Integration with Hootsuite
Best Social Media Monitoring Tool For: Single-person operations
Price: Reputology has three different plans, starting with the Single Location option, for $29-49/month. The Multi-Location and the Agencies tiers both range from $10-49/month. Each comes with a free trial period.
4. Digimind 
Digimind is a social media monitoring tool that gives business owners comprehensive oversight on different social media platforms. With this software tool, you can better understand market trends, your competitor’s actions, and get customer insights.
Advertising itself as “showing the world as it is,” Digimind helps businesses measure online sentiment by telling you if a certain keyword has a positive, negative, or neutral perception.
You can also use it to get a better idea of how your target audience perceives competitors in your niche.
Key Features:
- User-friendly interface
- Responsive customer support
- Automatic alerts
Best Social Media Monitoring Tool For: Assessing your online reputation
Price: Digimind is a quote-based software, meaning that pricing is provided on a per-client basis. You’ll have to reach out to them directly in order to get an accurate price. However, this service is known for being a bit pricier than other options on this list.
Refreshing your business’s social media profiles is critical for staying connected with your audience.
Routinely updating key pieces of information on these platforms ensures visitors know how to reach and interact with your business.
In order to stay abreast of major trends, you should use social media monitoring tools to streamline the process.
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