Brand monitoring on social networks

Solidnames offers brand monitoring among account names (“usernames”) on major social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or YouTube.

There are countless social networks worldwide. Usage and social media vary from region to region. Solidnames’ social network brand monitoring service has selected 10 major networks, particularly popular in Europe.

In 2022, there will be almost 8 billion people on the planet, 60% of them using social media.

Which social networks should my brand monitor?

Among social media, Solidnames monitors account names (“usernames”) on the following platforms:

• Facebook: historic social network founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg in the United States of America. Facebook enables users to publish a wide range of content (e.g. photos, videos, documents, etc.), exchange messages with other users, and join and create groups. In 2022, Facebook will have almost 3 billion members. It is part of the Meta group.
• Instagram : created in 2010, the social network offers a photo and video sharing service. Owned by Meta since 2012, it will have 1.4 billion members by 2022.
• LinkedIn : the professional social networking site par excellence. Founded in 2002, it was acquired by Microsoft in 2016. 875 million people will be using it by 2022.
• Pinterest: this network, formed in the USA in 2010, enables users to share photographs. This social network will have 450 million users by 2022.
• Snapchat: the U.S.-based photo and video sharing app. Created in 2011, Snap will have almost 600 million members by 2022.
• TikTok: the Chinese video-sharing social network launched in 2016 has now reached one billion users.
• Twitter: the microblogging social network enables its half-billion “twittos” to send short messages, called “tweets”. The American company, founded in 2006, was acquired by entrepreneur Elon Musk in 2022.
• Twitch : the video game streaming site launched in 2011 was acquired by Amazon in 2014. The service has diversified and no longer operates solely in the world of video games.
• Vimeo: the video hosting site was founded in 2004 in the United States. The online video platform boasts 260 million users, including 1.7 million paying subscribers.
• YouTube: the video-hosting website has 2.5 billion users. Founded in 2005, it was acquired by Google the following year.

How does brand monitoring work on social networks?

The diversity of digital media and social networks is complex. Monitoring your brand on these different services requires defining a strict perimeter.

The Solidnames monitoring service focuses solely on account names, or “usernames”.

Trademark monitoring on social networks differs from that of domain names. The publication of domain names, particularly those registered in generic extensions, is regulated. In addition, there are standards for data access: whois, DNS…

Even brand monitoring among NFT domain names is technically simpler; the information stored in the blockchain enables efficient monitoring.

Finally, the number of results remains manageable, with less than 400 million domain names registered by 2022.

By way of comparison, Facebook alone has 3 billion members, almost ten times as many as all the domain names in the world.

What’s more, each platform has its own way of working. The data to be collected is heterogeneous; one platform is equivalent to a different system.

No social network publishes its list of accounts. Access to this information is closed, with numerous barriers to entry.

For example, you need a social network account to access the search service. In the event of too many searches, captchas appear.

Finally, many social networks are only accessible via an app, without a website (e.g. Snapchat).

How much does it cost to monitor a brand among the “usernames” of the main social media?

As a result, the Solidnames R&D team has devised a solution to overcome these difficulties. It monitors changes in the functioning of platforms on a daily basis, as they are constantly evolving.

Solidnames’ brand monitoring among social networks has defined a type of content to be detected. These are account names (“usernanmes”). For the professional social network LinkedIn, monitoring takes place on the names of company pages. As for YouTube, the element monitored is the channel name.

For each social medium, a limit on the number of results collected has been defined in order to offer a solid solution, see details below.

monitoring social media account names

Under these conditions, Solidnames is able to offer “username” monitoring of a brand name in the social networks at the affordable rate of €1 ex VAT / day, i.e. €365 ex VAT / year. The social network brand monitoring service can be ordered on a prorata temporis basis.

If a new name is detected, you’ll receive an e-mail alert.

The results collected are archived daily and available on your customer extranet.

Search for “username” availability in social media

Before setting up a social network monitoring system, it’s a good idea to carry out an audit of the existing system.

To do this, it is possible to carry out identical free searches on each platform. You’ll then need to repeat the “username” availability search on each relevant platform (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn…).

Other free services compile several social networks. However, these specialized search engines offer unreliable, undeliverable results. What’s more, they are limited to identical searches.

As with monitoring, Solidnames offers a search for the availability of “usernames” on social networks identical to and/or containing the brand name.

This social media account name audit is priced at €96 excl. tax per brand surveyed.

Alert detection username social networks

The search will list active account names. Screenshots are in full resolution.

As such, the user can easily consult the number of subscribers to the account, measure its activity, etc…

How to recover a branded account name on a social network?

After performing a username availability search across social media, the brand will potentially identify problematic accounts.

Fake accounts, identity theft, sales of counterfeit products… Social networks are no exception to the damage that brands can suffer.

Sometimes, it’s simply a case of a distributor or franchisee taking the liberty of registering an account name on a social network… without asking the brand’s authorization.

Due to unavailable account names already taken, the company will often have different account names on each social network where it is present.

It’s not uncommon for a company to add terms like official, France or group to its brand name to get around the fact that its “username” is already taken.

However, every social medium offers free solutions for recovering the name of an account corresponding to a trademark.

On the basis of a registered trademark, the company can, for example, contact Facebook or Twitter and recover its account name.

Social networks are on the whole benevolent towards brands, especially in cases of obvious abuse. Social media also prefer to return an inactive account to the legitimate brand rather than have a dormant user.

To find out more about the subject of brand monitoring on social networks, our webinar on the subject is available here.

Finally, you can contact Solidnames if you would like to subscribe to the “usernames” monitoring offers presented above.