The CEO gives an interesting quote, stating “2010 marks the start of the digital decade for marketing” with the study going on to show that 66% of all those surveyed are planning to invest in social media marketing in the coming 12 months. The report also touches upon the growth of social media monitoring, with almost 40% of respondents intending to spend on social media tracking tools as we enter the new decade.

Alterian reflects upon the growing understanding that a forward thinking marketing strategy now has to listen to potential customers, especially if a ROI in social media is to be realised, with marketers now being required to appeal to customers at a one-to-one level. A growing power shift that is seeing more control in the hands of the consumer as networks of friends and influence continue to evolve over social networks.

For a full breakdown and details of the survey, sign up here.

The post serves as an excellent resource for anyone interested, or yet to be convinced by, the power of social media and the benefits to be gained from a coherent strategy around it.

The value of social media lies in people, as consumers help to shape or influence reputation it’s clear that media has already changed. While conversations occur around products or brands the key is knowing where these are happening, your role in them and which conversations you should be involved in. This is the value of listening, what issues matter to your customers and what drives that passion on particular subjects.

A great quote from yesterday was “Social media is word of mouth on crack” (I believe original credit for this goes to Scott Seaborn), and if you’re not sure what that means just ask Domino’s Pizza. It can work both ways though, as smart brands will use social media to involve and cultivate a fan base as well as to identify risks and improve their products.

While the case for listening may be strong, the case against such monitoring tools was also a point of discussion with Asi Sharabi’s controversial blog post inspiring a lively panel debate. No solution (right now anyway) is perfect and the current limitations in technology are important to discuss, along with the many strengths and benefits. All this can only be advantageous as we move forward and the social media monitoring industry matures. Social media is fundamentally changing the way we do business, while change can often be a challenge, the social Web is here now for the long term and the sooner we can integrate it into our business intelligence solutions the sooner we can all profit from it.

MSM09 has already sparked a spirited conversation here at Moreover Towers, as we look to continue growing and innovating in the space, we’d love to hear from you if you attended the event or have any words of wisdom on the subject, if so drop us a line in the comments below!

Monitoring Social Media 09 is taking place in London early next week, a first of its kind event for Europe, bringing together leading marketing professionals, brand managers and the virtuosos in the field of Social Media Monitoring.

The Moreover delegation are ready and raring to go, with over ten years experience in the business of media monitoring we look forward to the joining in the debate and offering some intellect of our own. Key speakers include Matt Atkinson, CEO of EHS Brann, and Paul Alexander from Beyond Analysis with host Luke Brynley-Jones giving his views on the inspiration behind and aims of the event at ‘we are social’ blog here.

We’d love to hear from anyone else attending in the comments below, any particular highlights you are looking forward to? And should you be unable to attend remember to check-in at the Moreover Blog over the latter half of next week for our thinking and thoughts on what promises to be a very influential meeting.

London already enjoys its position as Facebook’s largest geographical network and the United Kingdom as a whole is second only to the US when it comes to traffic to these social networks reports The Telegraph.

It doesn’t matter if you’re tweeting in London, Little Rock or La Paz there will always been someone to connect with, and as a social media monitoring provider it’s our job to make sure we’re listening to the most relevant conversations across the globe.

Londoners are we driving the adoption of these exciting new technologies or just taking advantage of the office tea break?! Leave us a comment below or send us a tweet @moreovertech

It has been estimated that by the year 2010, 70% of all digital information being created will be user-generated, with social media applications, such as Twitter, Wikipedia, Amazon, YouTube and Flickr attracting over one billion users within five years.

With the dramatic increase in user generated content, the challenge for today’s content manager is how to track quality social media news and disseminate it across their enterprise.

The Webinar, first in a series of events and activities focused on important industry issues, will take place this Wednesday 23 September at 16.30 BST/11.30 EDT/08.30 PDT. So if you’re interested in attending please register here and we look forward to your company on Wednesday!

Above showing an example screenshot of a quick search over Microblogs in Newsdesk.

As we look to grow our social media monitoring tools and content we will be continuously adding to our “White List” of feeds, so as conversations happen across the Social Web the best place to track, analyse and manage your information is Moreover’s Newsdesk.