The decision to investigate social media monitoring tools needn’t be daunting. A streamlined approach that involves giving yourself ample time for the initial research, decision-making and analysis, and post-implementation assessment can get you well on your way.

In this post, we offer 6 tips to help get you started:

Whether your business is prepared to handle customer service questions via your social networking sites or not, the day will come probably sooner than later—when people will start reaching out to you there—expecting timely responses. If you haven’t started to integrate social media and customer service you might be surprised to learn that for the most part you already have the tools you need right at your disposal. You may just need to be thinking about using them a little differently.