Within the world of marketing, brand advocates are what we like to call the holy grail. These are the customers that will actively promote you without any incentive. All they ask is that you continue to produce quality products and services. These types of consumers are fairly easy to pick out in social media, and it is important that you keep tabs on them, so when it comes time to reward your best customers, you will know exactly who deserves the attention. Here are some examples that we use at Social Media HQ for spotting advocates.

Frequent Comments on the Blog

People who leave comments on a daily or weekly basis are the ones that truly want to create a relationship with your brand. By leaving their mark on your blog, they are essentially telling us, “Hey, I love your stuff, keep it coming”. It takes time to read blog posts and comment, so you will want to keep track of how many times a person interacts with you on your own turf. I would even suggest coming up with a rewards program for blog commenting. It creates a social gaming aspect to your posts.

Daily Facebook Page Comments and Likes

Most activity on Facebook will generate a newsfeed story, unless you have very strict privacy settings. The Facebook users who comment and like your posts deserve special attention because they are actively promoting your status updates whether you know it or not. Content shared within Facebook has the ability to hit many people within a short period of time. Tip: Use an application that uses gaming aspects for sharing, liking, and commenting. One that comes to mind is Fan Gager. This company is based out of Israel, and I had the pleasure of speaking with one of the owners last week.

Daily Retweets on Twitter

Twitter gives you the ability to see who is sharing your content with their own followers, and you certainly want to keep tabs on the users that are doing this on a daily basis. To keep up with this, you need to create a special Twitter list called “ReTweeters”. I received this tip from my friend Andrew Mason. Also you can keep track of this list activity by using a service called Hootsuite. It allows to keep track of several lists and search terms in their own columns.

Conclusion

Currently, there are many customer relationship management software companies that are trying to wrap their heads around keeping track of brand advocates within the social media environment. Fairly soon all social media activity will be embedded in CRM applications. In the meantime, these are some free and easy ways to spot out your best leads and customers.

How are you keeping track of brand advocates within social media?