One of the biggest obstacles that have today some of the companies involved in social media is to clearly understand the effect of their efforts on social media.

The first challenge is the magnitude of social conversation today: There are over one billion Facebook users, hundreds of millions of people on Twitter and LinkedIn, and there are thousands of smaller social networks but no less important for certain activities, Online communities, forums of specific interests … If we add a few million blogs, just keeping track of these channels becomes a really overwhelming task and more, keep activity on them.

The second obstacle is to find within that universe of interactions what “social” conversations are produced that are important to our company and contribute to the goal of our social marketing campaigns or other activities to achieve engagement with the brand.

They will have to adapt to the specific characteristics of the chosen channels, and that well applied, will help you to face and take advantage of the enormous value of having a constant and useful connection with social channels, where you can create value and relationships in a much Greater than it could be in traditional media.

In particular, this means separating relevant and irrelevant signals into social media, finding the channels that are important to your business, and to ensure that they are coming to you, analyze the effect that your social strategies and tactics are having.

For this, we have to be clear the limitations of being present in the channels, choose those channels where we can be and be active. For this we must:

HEAR

Organizations must have a great capacity to connect with the thousands of social channels that have relevant conversations, brand messages that bring value, support requests, new product ideas, etc.

FILTER

Select the criteria that will help us to discover the “right” social conversations and situations to be present. The key is the ability to select a set of filters to find out which ones really matter and add value.

ANALYZE

While filters are good at capturing specific events, the biggest advantage comes from understanding what the overall framework is, and what our effectiveness in specific efforts is “finding the needle in the haystack.” A good starting point: The analysis can also determine who the best advocates are to engage in particular conversations that act as our loudspeakers.

TRANSFORM

Organizations must proactively push for the necessary changes. This requires at least the awareness that social media requires a new way of working, and that adaptation is a set of strategies that must be considered in the long term: New technology, new languages, culture change in relation to the client

The last key is TIME . Finding debates in social media and people who can be influential and who are really relevant to our business is only important if we can do it quickly enough. Opportunities come and go and have been lost or won depending on whether companies can discern and take advantage of the useful conclusions they represent, while there are: Intervene in time when a social crisis is brewing in the media while it is Still small and can be easily treated, improve our reputation, be agile in the requirements of our audience: Losing a sales opportunity or a customer service means losing the business or losing the customer.