Social Media Monitoring Fallacies

I just re-read an excellent post by Jeremiah Owyang,do with this precious intelligence when we get it?
Partner, Customer Strategy, Altimeter Group. JeremiahThe second quote from this post, used here out of
used to work for Forrester Research and just recentlysequence, is
joined the Altimeter. There are a couple of quotes that... marketers were used to 'Bowling', where marketers
started me goingcould easily throw a message down the aisle and hit
Beyond monitoring, insight from the social sphere isthe pins with great confidence. Now, he eloquently
untapped. Social media monitoring is just the first babydescribe, it was more like 'Pinball' where a marketer
step, most companies haven't tapped into what thecould load the message up, shoot it out, but have no
data actually means.idea where it will end up.
We all, more or less, know what monitoring is. Here isIt seem to me that despite all the talk by the
an example of definition that come reasonably close"enlightened" marketers, by "listening" they still try to
to the marketing context after the word "enemy" isfigure how to control the flow of messaging, rather
replaced by something more appropriate, likethan to "hear" and engage into conversation. "Listening"
"customer" or "consumer", depending on what is onewithout deep desire to "hear" cannot yield any insight
monitors.or "Aha!" moment, and these are the ones that lead to
The act of listening, carrying out surveillance on, and/ormeaningful and measurable actions. No wonder there
recording of enemy emissions for intelligence purposes.is so much yearning for a magic ROI formula for
So presumably obtaining "the insight" and/orSocial Media investments. It is very difficult to figure a
"intelligence" is the purpose of the exercise. The mostreturn on knowledge you didn't bother to learn yet.
interesting question for me is - what are we going toLearning is not compulsory. Neither is survival.