Social Media Monitoring: It Pays to Listen

In my last post I talked about the importance of integrating social media into your small business strategy. Social media is not just changing the face of marketing, advertising, or media - it is also impacting the way small businesses qualify leads, drive revenue, even create and sell products. Today I focus on one of the key elements of this brave new world: listening. In the new vernacular it's called social media monitoring. I prefer to think of it as a technology solution to what my mother told me growing up: God gave you two ears and one mouth for a reason.

Small and large businesses alike frequently fail to comprehend how social media can be used to hear the subtle, vital nuances of the market or worse yet, the not-so-subtle screams. They get caught up in amassing huge numbers of Facebook likes, Twitter followers, and high generosity scores. They forget to actually listen to what is being said. What does this look like in the real world? Take these two infamous examples from Domino's and United Airlines.

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