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.

Here are my picks of the best reads last week about things you should consider if you are responsible for your brand’s reputation online.

Please note: A big hat tip to Gavin Heaton (or @servantofchaos) who provided the insipration for this post. His weekly “5 must read posts from last week” are great reading which is probably why, totally unwittingly when I posted this last night I managed to completely (almost) plagiarise his blog post title - funnily enough, that being the topic one of the must-read posts he links to on an earlier list.

1. How brands should manage their reputation online

Some of the biggest names in social media gathered together at Blogworld expo last week. This post covers highlights from one of the panel sessions including some level headed advice from Amber Nasland at monitoring specialists, Radian6 such as “social media didn’t invent criticism” and that organisations should have emergency plans in place (Vegemite’s iSnack 2.0 leaps to my mind here).

2. The Top 10 free tools for monitoring your brand’s reputation

One of the most important things to do if you are responsible for your brand’s reputation online is to know what people are saying about you and this article reviews some of the easily accessible, free tools to listen to online conversations.

We must remember that conversations are being held on the web with or without our consent. That means we can choose whether to be observers, participants or outcasts

3. Top 5 Twitter Trends to watch right now

Once you start monitoring conversations going on about you / your brand / your organisation you’ll realise quickly that many of these are taking place on Twitter.

Here’s a great article that includes insights about Twitter trends from blogger, author and entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki as well as PR2.0 guru Brian Solis.5.

4. Managing your reputation through search results

This post from the Google blog has some tips on what to do when you aren’t that happy with what you find when you type your company’s name into Google. These include thinking twice before you publishing anything online and if there’s something you don’t like - contact the source of the information (and there are some tips on how to do this) as well as proactively publishing positive information.

5. Damage Control: Social Media Reversals

Renowned web strategist Jeremiah Owyang identifies and analayses three case studies in this post looking at how organisations should respond to a social media crisis: “assert themselves and be proactive - even during a crises”.