Listen Now...Talk Later: Listening as the foundation  of your social media strategy.

Listen Now...Talk Later Listening as the foundation of your social media strategy. Heidi Cool - Internet Strategist/Social Media Consultant

Broadcasting from one to many. Old media was about publishing. T.V., radio, newspapers & magazines require significant infrastructure for production and distribution. Those with the infrastructure controlled communication. They spoke. We listened.

If consumers want to respond they could: Old Media write letters to the broadcast stations & newspaper editors, call or write customer service departments and complain to friends. Unless a letter to the editor was published, only the business or media outlet saw the response.

Anyone can speak to many, and many can speak to anyone. New (social) Media Internet, blogs & social media services provide infrastructure, making entry costs affordable for individuals and organizations. We all speak. We all (should) listen.

Broadcast Advertising
Print Advertising
Press Releases
Billboards
Direct Mail
Guerrilla Marketing
Telemarketing
Web sites
E-mail
Blogs
Social Media
etc.
Organizations send their brand and product messages via: They are accustomed to controlling the message.

on their own blogs
in comments on other blogs
via social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube...
in comments on business sites/blogs/social media spaces
face-to-face with friends
via e-mail
by phone
etc.
Consumers talk about products and brands: Ignoring them is risky.

What if they say something bad about us? No matter how wonderful you are, no one is immune. None of us can please everyone all of the time. They will. Ignoring it won’t keep it from happening.

They can talk about you anytime. Even if you don’t have a social media presence.

Listening helps us prepare. If we give them a place to speak (our blogs, sites and other accounts) we’ll know when they complain and when they praise. If we monitor and listen via social media we can also find mentions made outside of our own sites. Good comments and bad can show up on the same blog post.

United said “it pays to listen.” But they didn’t heed their own advice. When companies don’t listen and respond, consumers talk back. Details at: http://www.socialmediatoday.com/SMC/109126

Taylor Guitars listened. They saw the opportunity and turned it to good use. Taylor also provided the Sons of Maxwell with guitars for use in their 2nd United Video.

If you listen, and use social media, You can respond.

If we don’t listen now. We won’t know what our audience wants to hear, and we won’t be able to react when they are talking to (or about) us.

Social Media Search + Google Reader = Brand mentions Listening for Brand Management (or personal name mentions, products, etc.)

Search company name, services, brands, affiliates Brand Searches

Find blogs that link to your site(s) Link Searches

relevancy varies - many false positives More monitoring tools

Subscribe to RSS Feeds

Google Reader

Subscribing to Feeds Click RSS Icon to subscribe then select your preferred reader. Or copy RSS address then paste into Google Reader. If you can’t find an RSS link, try using the URL for the blog or site. If the site has been coded properly Google Reader will be able to pull the feed.

Organize feeds. Assign feeds to topical folders.

Viewing a feed. Peruse headlines from a specific subscription. Click headline to view post.

Read entries. View individual items in reader or click through to source. Click headline to go to original post.

Peruse Topics Browse all the latest items in a folder.

View all. View items from all subscriptions to skim for the latest updates.

Listening for Content Curation

search key words and phrases pertinent to our areas of expertise Key Word Searches

Keyword search Subscribe to feed.

View feed in Reader Skim headlines for articles worth sharing.

Share via Reader When you click share or share with note, the article will be published to your Shared Items page. This page also produces a feed. You can share this feed on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, your blog and elsewhere.

Share elsewhere

Sharing Knowledge Learn what people want then share your content & found content. Blog/Site

It’s not all about us. * Don’t copy full content. Summarize, attribute source and link. Just say no to plagiarism. A mix of content helps you provide comprehensive resources to your followers. My Content Other people’s content. +

When we share more, people notice. Our CPA plan, initiated in Fall ’09, was to share a variety of art resources from around the world. Apparently it’s working! Tweet Smarts Bored with Twitter already? You just aren’t using it the right way. Here are seven feeds with ties to our city you should check out. Jim Vickers [email_address] Cleveland Public Art featured as 1 of 7 most interesting local Twitter accounts by Cleveland Magazine “ Cleveland Public Art twitter.com/ClevPublicArt From a spinning cloud of heat that can be seen from 60 miles away to an artist’s wonderfully strange computer-generated representation of 40 of his friends’ iTunes libraries, Cleveland Public Art’s Twitter feed connects you to cool, thought-provoking works of art from around the world.”

Listen to your followers. What are they tweeting? What do they respond to? What do they want to hear?

Is Larry listening? Larry has lots of followers. He is probably using an automated following service to build numbers. That doesn’t mean that his followers are listening. Larry’s Tweets are all quotes. There are no replies, retweets or personal observations. He’s publishing, but doesn’t appear to be listening to or interacting with his followers. Only 4 people have replied to him...over 11 days.

Talk to people...not at them. Listening helps us know what our audience wants to hear and creates opportunities to respond and connect. They listen more to us when they see that we are listening to them.

Listening directly in different social media spaces. Social Media Services

Blogs
Pay attention to comments, and links to entries via social media.

Blogs
Conversation is archived on blog and may spread to other sites.
Readers, esp. commenters form a community on our blogs and across related blogs.

Listen to your news feeds, watch your wall posts and see which fans comment on pages. Facebook

Not just for job searches. Connect with peers & professionals. LinkedIn Users very concerned with professionalism. Spamming & unthoughtful posts are criticized.

LinkedIn Groups
Meet people in other groups then also create a group for your community where you set the tone.

LinkedIn Answers
Peruse questions to see what users in your industry want to learn more about.

Monitor mentions (replies) & share lists Twitter

Twitter Chats
Real-time meetings via Twitter. Simply set a time, hashtag and moderator.

Tweetdeck: Making sense of your Twitter stream. Twitter Allows for easier listening and responding. Assign followers to lists to monitor unique audiences. Set-up keyword searches to monitor topics.

Bookmark sites by tags - easier to find later - from any computer Delicious Save what is useful to you, but tag in ways that will help others too.

Social bookmarking & organization: http://www.delicious.com/hacool Delicious Click through to see who else has saved the bookmarks you’ve saved. Look at tags shared by others to see what they think is important.

By now you’ve been listening to me way too long. Have any questions?

[email_address] http://www.heidicool.com http://www.twitter.com/hacool http://www.facebook.com/heidicool Or just Google me. For future reference, these slides will be uploaded to: http://www.slideshare.net/hacool

Listen Now...Talk Later: Listening as the foundation  of your social media strategy.

by Heidi Cool on Jan 26, 2010

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