It started with a simple Tweet from @all4monitoring:

"In the social media monitoring business? If you're a free or paid tool, describe your service in 140 characters. #a4m"

After the first three responses, I posted this a day later:

"@radian6, @CustomScoop + @Socialscape responded to this: http://bit.ly/37EZnT. Are other social media monitoring companies listening?"

In total, over a few days, six social media monitoring companies responded to these tweets. Six.

Hats off to those who did respond, including the following (in chronological order):

• CustomScoop
@All4Monitoring CustomScoop: Fast/accurate/affordable online news clips/social media monitoring. 24/7 Dashboard-Email Alerts-Custom Reports

• radian6
@All4Monitoring Real-time tracking, slice'n dice analysis, influencer scoring, workflow/team feats., platform API, Salesforce & Web trends Integ.

• Catherine_VZ
@All4Monitoring Attensity: Monitor+analyze+respond 2 social med+email+surveys etc: deep sentiment+intent 2 buy+intent 2 churn+other reports.

• Blake Cahill
@All4Monitoring @visible_tech here. A comprehensive social web listening, learning, engagement, & BI SaaS platform for brands & agencies

• vishals
@All4Monitoring #Viralheat Real-time social media analytics #a4m

• Intelligence Pro
@All4Monitoring Blog monitoring, search profiles, five presentations - graph, latest by authority, latest from prefered, frequent, search

So my question became, as noted in the title of the post, "Are social media monitoring companies even listening, let along responding?"

You would think it's a natural.

Thanks to bit.ly, I can tell you that the link was clicked 75 times, which would indicate to me that some of these companies are at least listening. However, in a world where it's vital to plant seeds to get yourself on the radar of potential customers, why didn't more than six companies bother to respond? Especially to a Twitter account that identifies itself as:

"All about monitoring, including links, pointers and the odd challenge to companies to see if they're listening. Are you all for monitoring?"

So, social media monitoring companies, are you practicing what you preach? Feel free to answer on Twitter (@all4monitoring or #a4m) or by posting a comment below.