Monitoring social media continues to be challenging given limited search functionality and transparency on the major sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Brand owners continue to face uncertainty of how infringements on these sites are actually impacting on revenues and brand value.
However, at the very least a loss of brand control in these spaces makes it more difficult for customers to distinguish between brand owners official pages, affiliates and unauthorized entities.
There are usually clear areas to prioritise. This can include infringement at a username level connected with commercial activity that is likely to confuse or mislead customers. Often this type of social media activity is closely connected with third party websites where illicit transactions actually take place.
Subsequently, social media monitoring can compliment intelligence gathering into identifying highly proactive infringers. Data such as number of followers can be very useful in prioritising the entities with highest visibility and probable revenues.
