Web Scraping For Brand Monitoring
When someone owns a personal brand or is a part of one, it would be wise to know as much as they can about it. Whether it is checking if the brand is mentioned on the news or setting up Google Alerts to notify You whenever Your brand is mentioned. Both of these ideas are good to know how well Your brand is doing. But there is a small catch in both of them. It requires a lot of effort to gain even the slightest notion of how things are going in reality. How to make it better? This is where web scraping comes in.
Use of Web Scraping
Web scraping is a technique used to gather large amounts of data from websites by ‘scraping’ them of data and compiling them in an easy-to-use manner. The technique uses software to mimic human activity on a website in looking for and obtaining data. How can brand owners use such a technique to their advantage to maximize their potential in the market?
· Brand Mentions
By using a web scraping technique, one can make use of it to scrape websites that mention the brand and the data around it. By doing so, people can analyze what types of websites mention their brand and what activity revolves around it. It can help in categorizing the demographics of the viewers of that particular site. Which can be used for the brand to create new strategies. Strategies that would adhere to users who visit such websites and gain more recognition among them. Think of it as an online brand tracking.
· Google Reviews
Obtaining a large number of reviews mentioning Your brand in Google can be a sure way to see what type of feedback You are getting. Afterward, brand owners can see whether there are some points that need to be improved in their branding. To lift up a more positive image of their business. Going through reviews can be a painstaking process. By automating it, You can see faster results pointing You to the problem at hand and rectifying it.
· Ratings By Country
Another good use of web scraping is to obtain and see information in which countries the brand is more frequently mentioned. This can help when brand owners wish to expand their business internationally. By having data ranked according to country, one can predict in which country their product would do better should they expand into it.
Regular Research Vs. Web Scraping
You might ask yourself a question — Why should not I do my own research in terms of what was mentioned before? The answer to that is simple. Manual research and data extraction offer You only a brief insight into data needed to have a more constructive analysis at first. It still needs to be compiled in an orderly fashion to be readable. Otherwise, You would be left with a chunk of data. And, of course — time. Time spent can be seen as a huge tip of the scale. Such as manually collecting data versus letting the software do the thing for You and making it visually appealing.
If You wish to employ the use of web scraping, there are three ways to do it. By learning web scraping Yourself which requires a lot of time, since of its steep learning curve. Another way is hiring a web scraping specialist which can do it for You, thus it means having an extra employee. Or, by outsourcing a web scraping service to do it.
All of this falls back to two things — monetary resources and time. Decide whichever course of action is the best for You and Your brand.
Future of Web Scraping Use
The use of web scraping is starting to gain momentum. What matters is to be on the train when it is set in motion.
The Internet is always evolving and being this ever-growing database of information. It will always be a hunting ground for people searching for quality data. The use of web scraping is a mere tool to help You on that search.
People spend a lot of money and time on creating marketing campaigns that do not steer their businesses in the right direction due to the lack of quality data, which could be relevant to their success if used. More and more people are inviting themselves to this world of web scraping, which is just a small step to take for a larger purpose.
Back in 2018, Bernard Marr said: “Data is the new oil!” Why dig with a shovel when You have this awesome piece of machinery that can do this more efficiently and faster for You?
To know more means You can do more and be even better in terms of making the right decision to Your brand and business. Find out more about web scraping services at https://www.finddatalab.com/
