How is a company, product or service being perceived by our clients' consumers or customers? What’re the benefits? How about the weaknesses? Who’s the competition? What's your USP? What does the overall market situation look like? Are there any relevant trends to consider? What's the existing conversation like? 

We do an comprehensive social media audit as part of our SWOT analysis. Today, those answers are usually not provided by conducting focus groups in a traditional setting (that’s now an outdated method). The biggest focus group is already talking about you, you just need to tune in. We use various social web monitoring tools to gather information from a wide range of sources including blogs, microblogs, videos, forums, press releases, etc. They help us learn what’s being discussed, when, where and by whom. 

This process serves us in three ways:

1. Creating a pool of data as a foundation to develop an effective strategy.

2. Acts as a before and after study so we can gauge how many people nibbled at our goodies and occurred because of that.

3. Ongoing control during a campaign.