Its important to give customers what they want. How do you know what to give them? Ask them. “Asking” is no longer limited to focus groups or formal polls. To understand what people are saying, companies are now listening in on social media. There are currently two methods to do this, develop a private online community or employ brand monitoring.

Private online communities can be customized but are a more expensive option, while brand monitoring will typically provide raw data on brand mentions and provide a very rough approximation of sentiment (positive, negative or neutral.)

While I am a proponent of monitoring as a whole, Asi Sharabi’s echos my frustrations with solutions in his No Man’s Blog. Monitoring services are fairly basic but provide tons of data. With all that data, its easy to become consumed by it. We think we’re making progress by taking all of it in but unless you have a strategic approach for how to analyze the data, you could be wasting your time.

Above all listening is an opportunity to become closer to your market. Organizations that are close their market are able act quicker. The actions you take a result of monitoring don’t have to be reactive. In fact, the most successful organizations use the data proactively.

If you don’t like what you’re hearing, a smart marketer will not attempt to change the market’s opinion, they will instead determine how their organization can change itself.