How to Capitalize on Misspellings and Typos in Social Listening

I’ll let you in on a secret.

People are talking about you online. Whether it’s a direct @ mention on social media or involvement in an untagged rant—the likelihood is, there’s a lot of conversations occurring on “dark social” that you don’t know about.

For the most part, brand mentions are a marketing score (even when the words themselves are negative). It means your brand’s reach is growing, you’re developing a presence, and people are using your products or services.

Typically, social listening helps you stay on top of all the gossip, gauge brand sentiment, and have engaging conversations with your audience. However, you are bound to find that some people will misspell your brand name or other important keywords and hashtags you’re looking out for.

How do you catch all the praise, complaints, and potential new business if someone’s clumsy thumb gets in the way?

By monitoring misspellings and typos.

It’s a super-sleuth approach to stay on top of all your mentions, develop a robust social listening strategy, and inform business decisions. Not only will you find new leads that are valuable to your marketing efforts, but there is a ton of other benefits to improving your awareness online.

What Is Social Listening?

Social listening involves tracking brand and competitor mentions alongside industry conversations on social media. It helps you listen in on what people are saying online and gives your brand opportunities to act on positive or negative sentiments.

“But isn’t that run-of-the-mill social media monitoring?” you ask.

Nope.

While the two concepts are similar, there are some key differences.

Social monitoring is about collecting data like brand mentions, relevant hashtags, and industry trends. You would typically use this information for monitoring your ROI on social media campaigns or A/B testing. There is no direct engagement with your audience.

Social listening is when you take action with the data and add a human element to your business front by responding to conversations.

Why Should Brands Care About Misspellings and Typos in Social Listening?

OK, so why are misspellings important to your business?

Consider your own thumbs.

Sometimes when you’re in a rush, you might accidentally bash the wrong letter on your keyboard, or your smartphone might autocorrect your spelling without you realizing it, causing unintentional high jinks and drama.

It’s something so common that there are dozens of articles tracking the biggest autocorrect fails of all time.

Who’s to say the same thing isn’t happening to your brand or competitors?

If your company name (or other related terms) are misspelled, it is harder for your team to monitor social media mentions. You could miss out on potentially making a sale or stopping customer dissatisfaction by not covering all your bases.

Here are a few benefits of monitoring misspellings and typos of your brand’s name: