We recently offered tips for checking out your business rivals through social media monitoring. But what exactly is the state of the customer-monitoring art in 2011?

Lucky for us, monitoring firm Synthesio has produced quite a useful article that explores what the big picture of social media monitoring looks like these days.

Here's the skinny:

Raising social media ROI is the top priority this year. A survey of 140 social media strategists found their top goal for the year was calculating ROI. To make your case to the C-suite, you'll need concrete examples of how social media has advanced other businesses. (Marshall Sponder is working on a book on social media monitoring tools, no doubt packed with practical case studies. Keep an eye out for it.)

Social listening platforms will become increasingly similar. Forrester Research has broken the 2011 listening market down into three types (read the article for companies in each category): social dashboards (focused on managing/analyzing social media); multichannel analytics providers (which mine social media alongside other data sources); and listening service partners (which use proprietary analytics tools and consulting teams to write research reports based on social data). Worry not: The market is expected to grow more homogenous.

Customers will expect to have—and hear—one voice across all channels. Per Forrester's Bruce Temkin: "Most large North American companies have some type of voice of the customer (VoC) program in place. But most ... fall short of fueling customer-centric behaviors" in-house. Which is why he stresses the importance of interpretation, governance and organization—to engage customers consistently across the enterprise. When answering your users' needs, your message shouldn't be fractured or mixed at any touchpoint level, from the CSR to the C-suite.

The Po!nt: 'Tis the year to listen and learn. Raise your social media ROI in 2011 by staying abreast of the evolution of the social conversation. That means using in-depth monitoring tools—and responding in a consistent organizationwide voice.

Looking for great social media marketing data? MarketingProfs reviewed hundreds of research sources to create our most recent Social Media Marketing Factbook (May 2010). With 140 pages and 102 charts, it is full of relevant social media marketing stats and trends. The Social Media Marketing Factbook is Part 5 of the complete Digital Marketing Factbook (our 296-page full report).