Anyone who has ever been tasked with the duty of monitoring social media would have little if any hesitation endorsing it as an enabler to informing business strategy and decision.

I participated for the first time yesterday in a tweet chat moderated by @MiChmski, and during the chat, @karimacatherine tweeted the following:

A sentiment which I and others unanimously agreed with - in fact shortly afterward, @Marc_Meyer mentioned he had a good friend at IBM who he would talk to. If you're reading this Marc, please feel free to tap me on Twitter if it turns into a chat hosted by your friend.

Now while the folks following the #monitoring chat yesterday all seemed to get how social media monitoring fits into the business intelligence (BI) category, I've had a few experiences that would suggest otherwise.

Now before I jump into describing the flipside, I believe it would be valid to draw in some of the overtones on this subject. There is the whole traditional analytics vs. risk mitigation that brushes across the social media monitoring and sentiment analysis landscape. And then, there is a collective wisdom that warns about regulation, efficiency (or lack thereof) of managing volumes of data and requiring human review and double checking for precision, consistency and accurate analysis.

These are all fundamental elements in understanding how social media monitoring ought to evolve to be versatile enough to tackle any/all business needs and requirements. A worthy footnote in the discussion concerns the matter of regulation - on this @deanmeistr tweets:

I especially liked @deanmeistr use of the word cautious, because that is exactly the correct term to describe my experiences in talking to business intelligence folks.

On to the housekeeping: social media as a whole gets a bad rap, and the truth is a lot of the flack is justified. The same rap sheet that follows traditional media concerning honest, unbiased, unsanitized joursnalism sometimes applies here, however even more concerning is that a growing number of people think social media equals quick and easy cash, with no effort required. Insert sponsored posts into the mix, and you get honesty and accuracy thrown under the BI bus.

I don't want to turn this into a finger pointing session, however we can't overlook the fact that the FTC's decision to crack down on blogger payola compounds this perception problem.

I also want to express the fact that I have my own opinions on the subject, but rather than choosing to express them openly and potentially stifle the discussion with my own biases, I genuinely am interested in hearing the opinions of others on the matter.

What sorts of things can we do, say or demonstrate to change this external perception towards social media, and show others that social media monitoring deserves the attention of key influencers in the business intelligence community?

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