By Darren Gilbert

After all, in not monitoring your social media, there is the possibility that it could destroy your brand reputation. Nobody wants that. No brand can afford that. However, regardless of the need to monitor social media, it does come with its own unique challenges.

Social media is changing, constantly

Social media is a wonderful opportunity for business to not only engage with consumers but to also build their brand. However, the social media landscape is constantly changing.

“Social media monitoring is in many ways still an emerging focus area [and] is prone to change and fluctuation,” explains Gavin Coetzee, digital researcher for amaSocial, a Social Media Management and Monitoring tool provided by Newsclip Media Monitoring. “The technology used to support such systems is constantly evolving, as are the platforms utilised.” And then there are the ever-changing laws of the social media ecosystem.

It’s a point which Tonya Khoury, managing director at ROi Africa agrees with: “Media monitoring is not an exact science and the use of keywording coupled with human beings does leave a gap for error.”

“Social media monitoring demands innovative answers to new and often unknown problems,” says Coetzee. “As such, it requires a proactive technological solution that draws on the skills and competencies from a range of fields and disciplines to derive real world value.”

Measurement techniques are troublesome

Regardless of what industry you work in, there is a common debate. Is what you are doing worth it? In order to know this, you have to do some form of measurement. However, once you figure out that you have to do that, you then have to figure out how you are going to measure yourself.

When it comes to social media, it can be tricky. “I find the measurement techniques in the market place to be lacking,” says Khoury. “For example, there is one measurement that irks me – ‘Opportunities to see’. This metric assumes that I am watching someone’s Twitter time line 24 hours a day. That is simply not true.”

One only has to look at a recent case study that Khoury references. The opportunity to see was well over one million yet the retweets and unique tweets amount to three. How does that work? How can you possibly accept this measurement if there is such a huge disparity? You can’t.

The available data has limits

“Social media analytics offers a limited perspective on what’s being said in social forums because all of the data being generated there isn’t readily accessible for analysis,” writes freelancer writer, Beth Stackpole.

“Take Facebook and Twitter, for example. Most companies don’t have access to the complete ‘fire hose’ of Twitter data and are only able to capture publicly available information on Facebook,” adds Stackpole.

While that is certainly good from a privacy point of view, it does pose a problem for companies and business who are intent on finding out who their customer are and how they think.

What are your thoughts? Do you monitor your social media? Tell us below.