🔑Choosing keywords

Some tips for what types of keywords to choose & how to refine them.

When choosing what keywords to monitor

• Be specific: Avoid choosing industry keywords that are too general, these will pollute your feed and use up your monthly limit, e.g., open source, software, or survey.

• Avoid common words: If your band name is a common word (e.g., Apple), it will generate a lot of useless posts. Try adding the domain or other identifier (e.g., Apple Inc.) to refine further.

• Consider different languages: sometimes your brand or product name can mean something in a different language (oftentimes, it's why we liked the name to begin with!). If that's the case, you will get a lot of low-relevance posts counting to your mention limit and you'll want to consider removing or refining the keyword.

• Test & tweak: If you aren't receiving any hits after a few hours or days, try broadening your keyword, or if there are too many, do the opposite.

• Try long tail keywords: You may know this from SEO efforts, long tail keywords can be a goldmine of opportunity. They may generate very few hits, however, if chosen well will show that a user has high purchase intent or exactly fits certain criteria you are looking for. For example, you could search for a question like "What are the best social listening tools."

Types of keywords you can try monitoring for

1. Your company name or product names

One of the most valuable keywords to track is your company name or the name of specific products that you sell. For example, we monitor for the keyword "Octolens." This way, we will know if anyone directly mentions our company and can jump into the conversation.

Consider adding multiple versions of your brand name, for example, with your domain (e.g., "Octolens.com" or the way you write it in your social handles on sites like X (e.g., "Octolens_HQ").

Remember, if you have a very generic or common brand or product name, you will have a lot of low-relevance hits which will count toward your monthly mention limit. You'll want to apply the tips we mentioned above.

2. Keywords related to the problem you are solving

For example, since we offer social listening, we track for the keywords "Social Listening", "Keyword Tracking," "Social Media Monitoring," etc. These words relate to our industry and the problem we are solving.

Another example is if you offer project management software, you might track keywords like "project planning tool," or "task management strategies." By monitoring these keywords, you can intercept conversations where users are expressing pain points or seeking recommendations, positioning your brand as the solution they've been looking for.

3. Your competitors names or their product names

By monitoring for your competitors' company and product names you can uncover a lot of information. For example:

• You can get inspiration from their social media posts to see if you should be talking about something as well.

• You can find complaints about their products - here, you can swoop in and present your product as an alternative and better solution.

• You can spot rave reviews and understand what makes their product loved amongst users - this may help you decide what features to add to your product next.

4. Pain points you can help address

Your product will (hopefully!) solve a specific pain point your target audience is having. Perhaps you've seen certain phrases or pain points being addressed in social posts. Therefore, you can try to track these specific pain points. E.g., we could track "how to track reddit" or "real-time alerts for social mentions."

When you first sign up to Octolens and choose keywords during the onboarding process, we go as far back as 7-days in your chosen platforms and find up to 100 posts per platform.

For any new keywords you add after onboarding, we also go as far back as 7 days in your chosen platform and find up to 10 posts per platform.