Do you know who is talking about your brand?

With so many folks using social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter these days, its easier more than ever for the public to get the good, the bad and even the ugly on your company out to a mass audience. Having such tremendous access to others makes it even more important, to you as a marketer, to get actively involved in your brand’s social media conversations.

Here are some core things to keep in mind when conducting your own monitoring plan for social media:

-Make a decision on what you want to achieve. Have a clear goal on how you will measure the success of your monitoring program. For example that objective could be to increasing sales, address a percentage of negative comments, or increase the number of positive posts.

-Figure out what tools you want to use to listen in with. There are many sites that offer this service for free however if you want highly detailed analytics you want to look into services that require payment.

Some suggestions for free monitoring sites include:

http://www.trendrr.com/- tracks, charts and compares the trends of any keyword.

http://www.socialmention.com/- offers a snapshot of conversations surrounding your brand on blogs, Twitter, bookmarks, images and more.

http://www.backtype.com/- will monitor the comments that are related to your company regarding a blog post. This online service can also keep track of comments made by a specific person and alert you.

-Decide where you will go and what you want to listen to. It’s good to start out looking for social networks, sites and blogs where your target audiences are already having a discussion.

-Know when and how to respond to comments or posts and decide if what you want to say will actually help your brand’s online reputation. Sometimes not saying anything at all, can in the long run, be the best policy when it comes to unruly commenters.

-Don’t just wait around to respond to others that are talking about your brand. Get out there and make mention of new features on your product or thank others who have decided to make comments boasting about your brand’s product/service.

-Keep in mind that you not only want to give praises to your product/service on social media sites but you also want to display value so offer information readers can generally find useful.

- Monitoring social media is not just for the folks in PR and marketing, it’s something that the CEO, VP and other high level executives should also be taking part in. Their interaction will help present your brand with a bigger, more involved and knowledgeable voice.

If you know of other free or paid social media monitoring sites out there post them in the comments section below.