Viralheat, a cheap (yet amazingly effective) service for Social Media Monitoring, is something that I’m definitely looking into for a number of my own properties as well as some of the other properties that I’m helping to launch soon (North Point Online).

“Presence Management” is another term that’s closely tied to this idea, (and you can read more of that from Chris Brogan here, here, and here), and is fast-becoming more important to the success of our social media endeavors as time goes on.

The fact is that the more you know about the conversations that are swirling around your brand and your organization the better, and the faster you can respond to it. Viralheat can help you do that without breaking the bank.

Check out this video of their service here:

If you’d like even more info and opinions, check out TechCrunch’s writeup here, and Mashable’s thoughts here.

A quick side thought that I had was about how neat it would be if an organization built an app and/or service like this specifically for churches and ministries. I know that Goodmanson is cooking up something with Ekklesia 360 but it appears to be closely tied with their platform and service; I’d much rather have something that is platform-agnostic and independent.

I know that I don’t have the time to “build it,” so someone else do it, ok?