Eric Melin, Manager of Marketing and Communications for Spiral16 sat down with the Go To Market Show to discuss social media monitoring.

Discussing social media monitoring is an ever-changing proposition that matches the fluid nature of the online environment. Through Web and Mobile channels, content is discussed across a wide range of sites. From Facebook and Twitter, to an almost endless landscape of blogs, bookmarks, forums, networks, news, comments, images, video and more.

Leading monitoring tools, like Spiral16, constantly morph and evolve the process of gathering, analyzing and reporting data toward the end goal of providing a more complete and accurate picture of what's being said and who's saying it. Measuring sentiment, for example, is a function of many monitoring tools – each deploying a proprietary set of algorithms to quantify the level of positive or negative comments about a subject. Machines aren't people, and people don't use language the same way so the information isn't perfect. Sarcasm is just one factor that can drag down the accuracy of sentiment reporting. Still a 70% measure of sentiment is better than nothing.

The beauty of monitoring tools like Spiral16 is that it can quickly identify trends in conversation across the breadth of the Internet. While the top line data may not be perfect, you can quickly see what needs further exploration and then take a deeper dive into the data through the application's dashboard. Because people can say anything they want online, having top line data on what is being said about a company, its products and services, competition, or standing in the investment community provides critical insight that can drive actions and decisions.

It is the business intelligence piece of social media monitoring that Eric Melin touts as Spiral16's strength. Social media insight can go beyond marketing to influence customer service and more. It can even serve as a crucial source of information for new business prospecting (imagine having a profile of information about a company prior to meeting with them).

At Salva O'Renick, we deploy social media monitoring to help track response to marketing campaigns, trigger interaction with key influencers of products and services, and provide research and intelligence to help map out go to market strategies for our customers. In fact, for clients exploring social media as part of their marketing efforts, we recommend monitoring as the first step. Learning about how the marketplace is talking about your company in the social environment provides a wealth of data to drive strategies to build reputation and participate in conversation about your brand.

Want to learn more? Visit Spiral16 online. View a list of 150 social media monitoring tools. Or learn more about social media terminology.