Social media monitoring is more than an @ reply when your brand is mentioned on Twitter. It’s even more than responding to every mention, review and comment—positive or negative.

The best social media monitoring strategies propel you past simply reacting to what others are saying about you into the realms of competitive intelligence, lead generation, product development and content idea generation.

So whether you devote a few minutes or a few hours each day to social media monitoring, it’s important to have a plan in place to make sure all the mentions you want are coming through, with all the noise filtered out.

To help you make the most of what’s possible, we’ve compiled a list of 50 ways to max out your social media monitoring, ranging from the basic to the more elaborate. When you find the right blend for your brand, Raven’s new Social Stream can make your social media monitoring (and managing) the most effortless and efficient part of your job.

Brand monitoring

Use a tool like Raven’s real-time Social Monitor to:

1. Monitor your brand’s name.
2. Monitor all variations of your brand’s name.
3. Monitor any potential misspellings of your brand’s name.
4. Monitor the names of the most active/visible members of your company.
5. Monitor for positive sentiment mentions for future cataloging.
6. Monitor in any other languages in which your brand is likely to be mentioned.

Industry monitoring

1. Use a tool like Percolate to email you a list of the day’s most shared stories in your industry.
2. Set up Google Alerts focusing on industry terms.
3. Subscribe to blogs and news sites devoted to your industry.
4. Browse open questions in LinkedIn Answers focusing on your industry.
5. Subscribe via RSS to LinkedIn questions focusing on your industry.
6. Browse Quora for questions focusing on your industry.
7. Subscribe via RSS to Quora and LinkedIn topics and questions focusing on your industry.
8. Create Twitter lists consisting of the major players and news sources in your industry.
9. Use a tool like Tweetdeck to monitor hashtags for conferences happening in your industry.
10. Monitor frequently used industry hashtags.
11. Create and save Twitter searches focusing on major industry terms and hashtags.
12. Use a tool like Topsy to subscribe to an RSS feed or email alert of industry terms.
13. Join Google Groups and forums related to your industry. Sign up for email alerts or subscribe via RSS when available.

Competitor monitoring

1. Follow your competitors on Twitter.
2. Fan your competitors on Facebook.
3. Subscribe to competitors’ Facebook updates via RSS.
4. Subscribe to competitors’ blogs via RSS.
5. Subscribe via RSS to Quora topics and questions about your competitors.
6. Set up a Twitter search for mentions of your competitors. Use Advanced Search to get specific.
7. Use a service like Twilert to send you all daily Twitter mentions of competitors.
8. Subscribe via RSS to competitors’ Facebook pages (Click the “Get Updates via RSS” on the lower left side.
9. Create a Twitter list consisting of your competitors’ accounts.
10. Create a Twitter search for competitors’ @ replies. Use “-http” to filter out retweets.
11. Create a Twitter list of the most active/visible employees of competitors.
12. Use a tool like Topsy to subscribe to an RSS feed or email alert of competitor mentions.
13. Monitor public customer forums like Get Satisfaction or review sites for competitor mentions.

Troubleshooting/product development

1. Monitor for and respond to questions about your brand.
2. Monitor for negative mentions of your brand.
3. Assign questions and problem mentions to team members.
4. Create Google Alerts for your brand name plus words like “hate” or “sucks” to ferret out more negative mentions.
5. Tag or otherwise keep track of complaints frequently reported about your brand. Create a system to move issues quickly up the chain of command.
6. Tag or otherwise keep track of requests customers make about your brand.
7. Work backwards from your product to set up monitored searches for categories and industry.

Lead generation/retention

1. Monitor for general words relating to your product or brand (Example: For Raven Tools, this might be phrases like “link building” or “Google Adwords tools”).
2. Add qualifying words like “anyone,” “recommend” or “suggest” to general industry phrase searches to find people who might be searching for a product like yours.
3. Create a Twitter list of industry influencers you’d like to target.
4. Create a Twitter list of customers and fans of your product.

Content idea generation

1. Tag/keep track of questions frequently asked about your brand. Consider a blog post, FAQ or other resource that can answer these questions.
2. Subscribe via RSS to LinkedIn and/or Quora questions focusing on your industry. Keep track of similar questions being asked or questions that aren’t being answered well.
3. Use a service like Muckrack to identify journalists working on topics related to your industry, and keep up with what they’re reporting.
4. After a breaking news event in your industry, set up a search for terms to follow up on.
5. Search for phrases like “infographic” to find content that’s often shareable to link to on your own blog.
6. Set up searches on Picasa, Flickr and YouTube for multimedia content to use in blog posts.
7. Monitor industry-related Twitter chats for questions or potential ideas.

Those are my Top 50 ideas for maxing out social media monitoring. What are yours? I’d love to hear them in the comments.