How can a company best leverage monitoring and management systems to meet its online marketing needs?

That’s the question addressed by an expert panel at Social Fresh Charlotte — Amber Naslund (@ambercadabra) of Radian6, Adam Covati (@covati) of Argyle Social, Justin Kistner (@justinkistner) of Webtrends, and Rick Burns (@rickburns) of HubSpot.

Here’s a few of their recommendations:

• Use the “old” monitoring tools for new media
  The goal for social media tools is to take “old” online marketing management principles and apply then to new social media movements. Toolsets should match the goals of the organization’s marketing efforts. If your goals are not actionable, then you shouldn’t waste time and money on monitoring tools. Costly monitoring tools increase efficiency, but many smaller business may find that free tools meet their needs.
• Listen
  Listening is the most important skill set that should be part of an overall communication infrastructure. The goals of the listening program should be (1) listening; (2) to responding; and (3) reach. Thus, listening is not just the job of interns: listening should be done by a brand management team.
• Remember, content is still king
  Build your site through excellent content versus social media. Social media shares content. Twitter users that blog have 75% more followers (higher reach) than those who don’t blog.

In this panel on using analytics to measure online performance, I find it compelling that experts spent the largest amount of time discussing content and feedback. Content development and feedback loops are two of the primary concerns of good strategic communication strategy. Monitoring and management systems simply create a more efficient way for assessing the company’s efforts.

To me, this confirms the ideas that social media relies on excellent content; social media is a distribution platform for ideas; and social media should be driving your traffic back to a digital “home base.”