Did you know that Social Media is a great way to get a feel for what your market is thinking? You can create a specific campaign to gather information as well as monitor your brand on the interwebs. The 2 really work hand in hand – what people are saying about you can and should affect how you engage with them. Here are a few quick steps that you can follow today:

1. Listen for your brand being mentioned across the web. Services like Google Alert and Saved Searches in Seesmic for Twitter make it easy to view a running thread of what others are saying about your company name.

2. Set up something apart from your business as usual website – think blog, Facebook Fan Page – great place to ask your fans questions. Conversely, encourage them to leave feedback good, bad or ugly. Generally, as long as you deal with it timely and effectively any and all feedback, even the bad stuff doesn’t have to be detrimental to your brand.

3. Remember that people will talk honestly and openly about your products and services in open forums. Get out there and find out where these forums are. You may have to go off the beaten track – there is more than just Twitter and Facebook. Some of your raving fans (or even haters, see People of Walmart) will setup their own groups on blogs and Ning platforms- its worth doing a search there.

The proactive person will not only monitor brand mentions, etc..but will respond and engage with the community as well as refine processes where needed. Remember to be transparent at all times. If you are going to jump into a forum discussion, make sure to say who you are – don’t just get in there and gloat about what a fantastic company you have.

How are you using web 2.0 to find out what your market thinks about your brand? If you aren’t using this method yet, how could you?

You may or may not know that I am a Creative Vadographer which means the lovely folks at Vado were kind enough to give me a Vado HD pocket cam to capture moments in my life. Its a fantastic pocket cam. I did alot of research on the options out there, and here are the qualities I love most:

- its lightweight

- its HD! High Definition rocks socks!

- Its wide angle, no other decent pocket cam on the market offers wide screen ability.

- Color is unsurpassed

But, there is alwasy a but. The only minor that didn’t work for me was how akward it was to get the video files across on to a Mac computer. But alas, this has all been changed. Creative have come to the party and now offer a fantastic program for Mac OSX users that makes it so simple to get your video exactly where you want it – wether it be on the net, your computer as a raw file or across to iMovie.

Want to see examples of the awesome vids you can get with a Vado? Check out my Real Social Girl Posterous for low light vids, action, fun, a whole heap of stuff.

Watch the video below to find out just how easy it is to use.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Creative Vado HD Pocketcam V2 Features Direct Transfer to iMovie, Slightly Better OS X Support [Creative] (gizmodo.com)