Social networking sites may often be closed systems of friends, but the impact of messages shared inside these walls is not isolated to online social networking communities. Influence is flowing in and out of social media circles because people have a foot in both the real and online worlds. Therefore, engagement on a topic of concern does not have to happen in the same medium where the conversation began. In fact, quite often a conversation may start on one platform and continue onward through a variety of others. The continued proliferation of highly connected mobile devices will only act to exacerbate this new reality in the coming years as more and more people have the ability to text, tweet, check in, comment, talk, blog, take pictures and video in real time and share them within their own circle of influence.

With an integrated monitoring plan in place, a company can take advantage of near real time knowledge of industry relevant blog posts, tweets, comments, articles, forum threads and content postings. What makes this more relevant is that we can now identify who is responding, what they are in turn saying and what their level of online influence is. This will allow for future interactions to be highly targeted, informed and proactive rather than reactive in nature.