I’ve just got back from an amazing (and enlightening) trip to London where I was lucky enough to receive a sneak preview of the new features coming soon to Radian6 (just one of the social media monitoring tools we use) which will make the interface super powerful for organisations.

It made me realise just how significant the advantage will be for those companies who are listening to, and joining in this online conversation. And it isn’t just about marketing, it can and will sometimes involve customer service, HR, corporate affairs and legal and perhaps every other division of an organisation.

An article in today’s South Australian Business Journal by Cameron England highlights the urgency for organisations to do ‘get social’.

It quotes Andrea Matthews from GM Holden which is a great example of an organisation that  has done it the right way. The team, headed by Andrea, placed a huge emphasis on active listening and monitoring before engaging in this space.

We started with a relatively extensive period of listening and identifying where consumers, our customers and enthusiasts are participating on line so we could fit a strategy around that. Andrea Matthews, GM Holden

Organisations will all be on different points along the path of adoption of social media - but the one thing we at Carve believe every organisation should do is start listening today. Below are some some very good reasons why they should do this and here’s a link to the full document we’ve summarised from by Radian6.

Top 10 reasons to monitor your brand in social media

1. The compliment - equivalent of testimonials or references, they deserve your attention
2. The complaint - respond early, turn into a positive
3. The expressed need - monitor keywords related to your product or service area - it’s an opportunity to reach out
4. The competitor - realtime competitive intelligence
5. The crowd - knowing what issues your customers care about
6. The influencer - spread opinions on brands fast, their views rank high in Google - where your customers will see it
7. The ROI - easily track and measure the effectiveness of a campaign
8. The crisis - an early warning system
9. The audit - ’score’ a brand’s overall user sentiment, rank social media channels, competitive analysis, uncover brand advocates and potentially pinpoint most valuable / engaged audiences for ad placement
10. The thread - connect the dots between the often splintered social media conversations on Twitter, blogs, Facebook etc.