The notion of implementing a social media strategy for a business is now a well-weathered concept, but after businesses of any size implement social networking or social CRM solutions, the area becomes a bit gray as they figure out how to monitor them.

Effective customer engagement begins with listening to the customer – this is old news. Getting proper customer feedback is what CRM solutions have been built around for years, with the ultimate goal of obtaining accurate information as to what the customer wants, and what it wants to change. Social media has enabled the world of customer engagement to expand ten-fold as companies now have direct insight into what their customers are saying across social networks, yet this insight comes with additional risks.

As business use of social media is relatively new in the realm of CRM, having gained popularity mostly in the last couple of years, there are necessarily few tools available to measure the effectiveness of such processes. Social monitoring ROI and metrics are elements that are increasingly coming into play for many businesses, and it behooves decision-makers to make themselves familiar with what is out there.

The value of social CRM, social media monitoring, and how to benchmark social efforts are some of the concepts that will be discussed in a webinar to take place Thursday, February 23 at 2:30 p.m. ET with thought leaders from the industry. Dr. Natalie Petouhoff, the president of the Social Media Club of Los Angeles, CA (News - Alert), will be attending the webinar to offer perspective on business’ use of social media and how best to leverage it to increase ROI.

Petouhoff’s position as a professor and director of the UCLA Executive Education Program for Social Media gives her unique insight into how companies should go about monitoring and evolving their social CRM strategies.

Joining her is James Norwood, CMO for Kana, with more than 20 years of industry experience in strategic marketing and enterprise resource planning.

Register for the webinar here to attend and learn more about social media monitoring practices.

Juliana Kenny graduated from the University of Connecticut with a double degree in English and French. After managing a small company for two years, she joined TMC (News - Alert) as a Web Editor for TMCnet. Juliana currently focuses on the call center and CRM industries, but she also writes about cloud telephony and network gear including softswitches.

Edited by Stefanie Mosca