Recent research suggests that most Americans now engage in social behaviour online, and that behaviour is becoming more and more involved every day. More people than ever before are engaging with people on social networking sites and this is causing businesses to recognise the value of social media.

Now that we understand the value of Social Media, the difficult thing to do is to measure its value. There are of course ways of doing this, and the more informed company managers out there are now looking to decent metrics and analysis models that are able to decipher the value of what people are saying about your product. Social Mediia Monitoring could be the next big thing. As companies feel the pinch, they are going to want to be able to look to Social marketing as a way of finding business in a difficult time, but it will be critically important for them to be able to evaluate the benefit of such a bold step in a difficult market. It also becomes an important tool for any marketing company who need to justify their fees for the man hours spend on building up public profiles for companies.