Written by Phyllis Zimbler Miller, Twitter Marketing Expert

Your brand – what you are known for – is something that you should definitely want to protect.  You’ve probably worked very hard to establish this brand, and you do not want people tarnishing that brand.

Can you prevent people from complaining about your products or services?  No.  But you can make sure that the moment someone does complain publicly on Twitter, for example, you are brand monitoring and you then nip the problem in the bud.

How Brand Monitoring Can Protect Your Company

Jane is a cell phone customer of Company X and she’s been unsuccessfully trying to get her bill straightened out through customer service.  She’s frustrated and she tweets “Company X has lousy customer service – I can’t get anyone to straighten out my billing problem.”

Now you are Company X’s person on Twitter.  And you use various search functions to make sure that whenever anyone tweets about Company X you know about the tweet within a reasonable amount of time.

When you see this tweet by Jane, you immediately tweet her publicly: “@username Call me at xxxxx and I’ll personally take care of this problem.”

Jane calls you, you take care of the problem, and hopefully she then tweets: “Company X just took care of my problem.  That’s good customer service!”

Now imagine if you hadn’t been brand monitoring and Jane’s tweet went unanswered.  Then her complaint could snowball.

For example, someone could reply to Jane: “@username I also had lousy customer service from Company X.”

Jane could then reply: “I wish I could switch to another cell phone company.  I really dislike Company X.”

And before you know it a whole lot of people – people who perhaps don’t even have any complaint with your company – have jumped on the complaining bandwagon.

This is the way that a brand can suffer damage.  And it could probably have been prevented if you had caught it early, taken care of the problem immediately, and then you or the now-satisfied customer (or both) could have treated a successful resolution.

Brand Monitoring Can Take Advantage of Positive Comments

Brand monitoring on Twitter can also track positive comments.  If, for example, someone tweets a compliment for the customer service of Company X, you can retweet that compliment.

You can also help the perception of your brand by tweeting worthwhile information in connection to your brand.  This will enable you to build up goodwill so that, if there is a problem, people will be more likely to forgive you (assuming you took care of the problem immediately).

In conclusion, brand monitoring is a very important marketing activity as part of your brand’s participation in the social networking world of Twitter and other social media sites.