Social media metrics will soon be as standard and prevalent as search and PPC analytics. That was the consensus of yesterday’s panel on Social Monitoring at Social Media Camp 2011, covering popular tools, strategies, and metrics.

Amber Naslund, co-author of The Now Revolution, was perhaps the most vocal (and helpful) panelist. One sound bite that got lots of attention on the #SMC11 Twitter feed was her distinction between monitoring and listening.

“Monitoring is collecting data points, but listening is all about gathering relevant data that you can act on.”

This became the theme of the discussion, and most of the audience’s questions focused on practical tips and strategies to start measuring social media ROI and performance. Here are some highlights from the Saturday discussion. I’ve organized the post around the audience’s major questions.

Is there a difference between B2B and B2C Monitoring?

“Social media is not a three month campaign,” warns Sean Moffitt, the co-author of Wikibrands. “You have to commit.” Luckily, his presentation at Social Media Camp 2011 provided some powerful tips to help your company truly commit to building a social brand in 2011.

Here are some highlights.

Think inside the box.

Don’t just stab in the dark. Set some rules and overarching principles for building your online community. To act properly, though, you need rules that empower you versus dry, prescriptive rules.

Look to leaders at creating communities for some models. Some great examples of community builders, according to Moffitt, include Amazon, Firefox, and Kraft.

“We’ve created our own Frankenstein--and we call him real-time business,” began Amber Naslund, co-author of The Now Revolution, at Social Media Camp 2011 in Victoria, today on June 4th. Her keynote delivered a tightly-packed action plan for organizations, offering the foundations for developing an evolved and measurable social media strategy.

As Amber made clear, real-time business can pose immense challenges for your company. Every customer is a reporter now, and, at any instant, your customer can become either your biggest threat or advocate.

To illustrate the potential damage of real-time feedback, Amber cited a review of a small hotel on Tripadviser.com. It’s title: “I can feel death creeping up on me as I write this.” Her point was that your customers are responding. Right now. And sometimes their bad customer experiences are unleashed with poetic bits of customer angst like this: 

It's SOOOOOO gross. Like something in a horror movie. I'm about to walk out to my car to get my own blankets because this bed is so gross I don't even want to imagine how many people are brought here to be murdered. DO NOT STAY HERE. My wife and I are gonna go get tested for HIV because of this bed.

 also the WiFi blows.