As is promised in the previous blog, I’m continuing with writing about Microsoft Social Engagement.

In this blog I will show you how to setup Microsoft Social Engagement. After that you will see how to connect it with your social networks, how to track posts, how to post on it, as well as you will see results of all those activities.

Setup

If you want to start with Setup in Microsoft Social Engagement you first have to make connections to your social networks.

For that, you will need these social networks usernames and passwords, and of course all admin rights (in a case if there is a fan page which you want to connect).

First step is going in to the Settings, and by clicking on the button ’+’ you will see a popup menu where you must choose which network you want to connect. After that, simply type in all necessary data.

After you’ve connected all your social networks, you can proceed to the next step.

Just to know, this step is optional. In a case if you use Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement, you can connect it with Microsoft Social Engagement. Again very simply, you just have to click on a ’+’ button, and after that you will have to select name of your Dynamics 365 instance. On the end, the system will do by itself the rest of the connecting.

When you have done all these things it will be time to start with defining what you will follow.

Now, you have to find Search Setup on the menu and again simply click on ’+’ button. With that, you will start to make definitions. First you will define Categories (as your business require), after that you will define Topics in these Categories, and at the end you will define exact words which you will follow. In all these definitions there is one restriction made by Microsoft… you can define words which will not have more than 10,000 mentions in one month by their opinion. This is nicely shown by one chart which you will see immediately on entering in the Search Setup.

Social Center

When you finish with all these configurations, you will have to do some additional config as well. But this time you will need to define your tracking in social center, and this will be one of the main places in this tool where you will spend your time.

Before we start with Setup, I will tell you a few things about Social Center. This is place where you can see your posts, posts where you were mentioned by your followers (or by people who just mentioned you). From here you can have direct Messaging with your Social Networks, you can directly post from here, and of course you can Like, Share, Comment, Mark, link to Dynamics 365… and all of Social Network activities. As I told you, this is place where you will spend most of your time working with this tool.

To Setup a new stream you just have to click again on ’+’ and after that you have to enter all necessary data: Name, Filters and Color.

When you have done all these things you have one new stream which you will follow at this moment.

As I mentioned you can answer on message, do all activities (like, share, retweet…), directly post. You will do all those things right here on stream, except posting.

For posting you have to click on a ’Publish’. After that, you will choose if you are going to use Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. Then that you will do exact same thing as for Social Network, you will write a post, choose some photo if you like, and Post it.

Your posts will be available on your stream and you can see all thins which are going on around your post.

Dashboard

You will spend most of your time in Social Center, but Dashboard is still most important for you. On the Dashboard you will see all important information’s about your brand and you will find out how you can improve your activities on Social Media.

Here you will see how your Conversations are going on, what about your Sentiments on your posts and mentions on social networks, Locations, so that you can focus on some specific type of Marketing on some locations and of course you will see which of Sources are the best, and what you will have do to beater of other one.

Now I will pass through few important things to follow.

Sentiment: Here you can see how much people are satisfied with your brand or product, and you can do something do make your customers more satisfied.

By saying sentiment I mean that this tool have some type of ML and AI and it knows some language’s, so it can understand what is positive comment or post, and all that what is negative, all others which he did not have understood Microsoft Social Engagement will show as Neutral sentiment.

Phrases: Microsoft Social Engagement is tracking which phrases are most mentioned with words which you have categorized on the beginning. By having this information, you can always do breather categorization of words which you want to track on Social Media.

Authors: By knowing which authors are mentioning you the most on Social Networks you can make some type of partnership with them, or you can offer something to them so they can make beater commercial for your brand.

Sources: By following all sources where your brand is mentioned you will know where you are the best, and where you have to improve yourself.

Language and Locations: By following on which Language is your brand most mentioned you can understand how you have to position your advertisement, and which language is most important for your brand, al that Location is the same thing, but with it you can track weary precisely your customers (followers).

But more about Location and rest of functionalities in Microsoft Social Engagement you will read in my next blog (last in this series about Microsoft Social Engagement).