Most companies now have a Social Media strategy in place, whether it be in use for PR purposes (as a lot of big companies are doing with Twitter) or for Lead generation (this is the side that most marketing companies are talking about). Regardless of your approach, it's going to be important to understand how things are working for you.

There are some important statistics that you're going to have to monitor, like audience size and interactions, but if you're active across multiple platforms this can get a bit confusing. The fact that there are hundreds of different terms being thrown around, all of which basically mean the same thing, doesn't exactly help. On top of this, there's some more important and all together more interesting things you're going to want to monitor, and they may not be the first thing that gets drawn to your attention.

What I'm going to do is break down for you all the different things that might get mentioned in a report to help you get a clear picture of how your campaign is going.

Audience

After much speculation and what seemed like an eternity, finally - the Facebook Timeline for brand pages is now live!

Facebook Timeline for pages is a great opportunity for brands that want to tell a more engaging and authentic story of their company.

Timeline makes it easier for people to find information by pushing the Info section, photos, apps and map to the top of the page in a clear navigation bar.

It gives companies of all sizes the opportunity to get creative and use their cover photos, app designs and interactive features to grow their overall presence and influence in the world of social media.

With all this in mind, I will now show you how to get your company's page up-to-scratch and ahead of your competitors!

Firstly however, it is important to note that there are some major changes to company pages such as; how the applications are displayed, the introduction of cover photos (the default landing pages have now gone entirely) and the options for fan interaction have now been improved.

You can enable your new brand page now but on the 30th March 2012 your Page will automatically convert to the new format (much in the same way the new Timeline for profiles was introduced earlier this year) – so it's best to get prepared beforehand.

Follow my guide on how to enable it NOW:

As many of you have already seen, Facebook recently launched the 'Timeline' feature which allowed a Facebook users 'life story' to be shown in the form of a scrap-book style profile page. All of your activity on Facebook within a particular year (and since you created your account) such as photos taken, events attended etc are captured by Facebook and then displayed to your friends in a 'Timeline' format.

Having relevant and interesting content is vital, however this alone does not guarantee that your fans will continue to visit your page or interact with your page. You need to give your fans a reason to engage with you.

With nearly 1 billion users, Facebook is an ever-present in most of our lives and it is now being utilised by businesses just as much as the everyday user.

Businesses have learnt to harness the incredible possibilities of connecting with their customers through Social Media, and the power of advertising to new prospects by means of heavily targeted advertising campaigns and promotions.