Social media monitoring. That’s the little stepchild of social media. Yet, it is also the most needed member of the social media family. Without monitoring, how will you know if what you are doing is working or producing the outcomes that you are expecting. Simple answer, you won’t know. As William Hung, so famously put it, I too have no formal education with most of the tools that I am using. I’m just doing my best. But that’s what’s so great about what we are experiencing these days due to the rise of the internet and especially web 2.0 and social media tools. We can learn it if we choose to put in the time and energy required to research.

A question that comes up when I’m talking to people about social media is how do you monitor and measure your efforts in social media. This is a great question and it is one that I am working on answering for my own business. I’m just a little person trying to define what I do now in this new economy. Can anybody relate? What I know for sure is that web 2.0 and social media give me a leg up that I didn’t have previously. Now I can use the skills that I acquired while working for various corporate entities to establish myself as an authority of my trade a lot easier than say 3 years ago. Social media has given me reach at a cost I can afford.

So, I’d like to invite you to go on a journey of learning with me as I work on understanding how the heck I’m supposed to monitor and measure social media.  Today, we’ll start with a little video from Frank Eliason, Comcast’s twitter boy wonder. In the video he shares his insight about ROI for social media and how engagement changes your online reputation. Who doesn’t know by now that Comcast has used Twitter to completely change its reputation going from having the worst customer service to now being a case study for great customer service. And it started with learing how to listen and respond. 

People are talking whether you care or not and sometimes words really can really hurt you.  Next post, we’ll discuss a tool that you can use for listening to social media talk.