The old saying is true - if a customer isn’t satisfied they’ll tell 10 people about their bad experience, but now instead of only telling 10 people a single customer is able to reach thousands in a matter of seconds.While one of the best aspects of social media is the ability to engage in two-way communication with your audience, if your presence is not managed correctly it can also pose many risks and can potentially cause considerable damage to your brand’s reputation.It’s been said that 74% of consumers rely on social networks to guide purchase decisions and 85% of consumers will review social media accounts before deciding they can trust a brand - hence why the effectiveness of how you manage your comments can have a significant impact on your business.In order to properly utilise your social media profile it’s important to ensure you have a clearly-defined comment management policy in place. Here’s a few of the things you should do to keep on top of your social media monitoring.Ensure You’re Listening to Your AudienceFirst thing’s first - it’s essential for brands and businesses to understand the importance of listening to their audience. Social media provides brands with an opportunity to see the discussions that are being held about their products and/or services and offers them a chance to engage and interact with their fans. If you aren’t listening to what your audience has to say, regardless of whether it’s good or bad, you can lose the opportunity to gain invaluable customer feedback and potentially create lifelong fans of your brand.Through active listening on your social media pages, you can feel confident knowing customers are interacting positively with your brand and feel as though their views are respected and heard.When you’re listening to your audience online, negative feedback is almost unavoidable and it’s essential to know how to properly deal with this situation when it arises - this is where a scenario plan comes into play.Have a Scenario Plan in PlaceWhen it comes to managing your brand’s reputation on social media, catching and responding to comments, whether they’re positive or negative, in a timely fashion is extremely important. In an environment that can go from 0 to 100 so quickly, a post or comment on your page that hasn’t been responded to can go viral before you know it. Thus, having a plan in place that outlines what and who should be responded to is essential and will help you keep on top of your social media profile.As the name indicates, a scenario plan is designed to simply provide your brand with a number of scenarios that have commonly occurred on your profile and will give you a framework for immediate action and will establish a timeline for responding to queries.By preparing replies to a variety of potential comments or queries in advance, your social media team can respond quickly and appropriately to ensure the issue is solved or escalated as soon as possible.Have a Clearly Defined Escalation PlanIn the case that you come across a scenario that cannot be dealt with immediately, it’s important to have an escalation plan in place. When managing your comments and visitor posts on social media, developing an escalation plan can help you react to situations that become difficult to manage.At Bang Digital, we recommend that all of our clients have a clearly defined escalation plan in place for any scenario that may fall outside those indicated in the scenario plan.A suitable escalation plan will include an outline of the steps taken when a situation arises as well as the details of who should be contacted for further action. Having this process allows every member of your team to know and understand the course of action and will ensure your team are able to effectively manage a crisis should one occur.Show Your Human SideWhen it comes to monitoring your social media presence there’s a lot to consider, from consistently monitoring your platforms to managing and minimising risk - social media management can quickly become a full-time job.One of the most important things to remember when it comes to social media is that you want to show a ‘human’ side to your brand so your fans feel encouraged to engage and interact with your page and posts. If comments and questions on your page go unanswered, your fans will feel as though they aren’t being valued and their feedback is falling on deaf ears.There are many aspects to effective social media monitoring - that’s why at Bang Digital we employ a response management team to ensure that no comment, message, review or feedback goes unnoticed.If you’re looking to successfully manage and monitor your social media platforms, get in touch with our team of social media experts today and see how we can help you connect with your online audience. It all starts with a conversation - contact our team today.