The social media monitoring process and its role in social media strategy development

Abstract

Social media marketing is an integral part of digital marketing. It requires a strategy, user generated content and technology applications. A review of the identified German literature unveiled eighteen social media strategy frameworks, of which only three included the component of social media monitoring. This is in contrast to the English literature, where social media monitoring is evidenced in a large literature review. The research analyses and describes the eighteen identified frameworks in the German literature, validates them against a generic social media strategy framework consisting of seven components/steps; and describes the underrepresented component of social media monitoring by suggesting a four-step process.