Today Aberdeen Group released its Social Media Measurement and Monitoring Report.

As a leading company providing social media monitoring and measurement services Converseon agreed to help sponsor the report earlier this year to help educate the industry. To find out more about our Conversation Mining and eResponder social media monitoring technology, visit our site here. We will be providing a review of the research in the coming days; however, on an initial glance it appears to have some interesting findings, such as:

• It found that Best-in-Class organizations are over 680% more likely than Laggards to improve their ability to predict customer behavior through the use of social media monitoring and analysis tools.

• Best-in-Class companies are nurturing technology implementation with key organizational processes and capabilities, such as a formalized process for monitoring consumer-generated content (65%), dedicated personnel devoted to social media monitoring (52%), and an “early warning system” for detecting potential threats to the brand (42%).

• As a result of strong organizational support, Best-in-Class companies are 5 times more likely than Laggards to be “extremely satisfied” with the number of actionable insights derived from social media monitoring and analysis.

The report is an important contribution to other research of the industry that has been growing, including Peter Kim’s industry report (The Forrester Wave™: Brand Monitoring, Q3 2006) and Nathan Gilliat’s comprehensive Guide to Social Media Analysis.

Access to the report is free until March 31 (just requires a registration) and please click here to download your copy.

We hope you find it interesting and of use and look forward to feedback.

I had the pleasure of participating in the OMMA panel last Monday adeptly moderated by Max Kalehoff with David Dunn of Edelman and Keith O’Brien providing some solid insight. MediaPost provided full coverage of the session. The consensus was, i believe, that in this world of subversive content creation and virality, brands are not quite ready to defend their brand through new and emerging tools.

Of course, I’ve always felt the best defense is a good offense, as indeed if we don’t define ourselves, others will happily define us. With a standing room crowd, the topic is clearly on the minds of many. I predicted that by next year, if the session is done again, that there will be more “directors of social media” in attendance as brands continue to create these internal positions to transcend the traditional marketing siloes that inhibit effective brand defense. We’ll see if the prognostication is accurate over time.