Yesterday's Twebinar on listening was, as usual, both inspirational and dizzying with the sheer volume of information, comments, opinions and questions spouting through the fire hose. Of course we all know it's important to listen and that companies should monitor their brand mentions in the blogosphere and podosphere before jumping in feet-first, but in this Twebinar, a wealth of social media experts addressed the questions of how exactly to monitor, what to monitor and how to choose an appropriate response to each opportunity for engagement.
A few of my golden-nugget lessons learned:
- Paul Gillin: the only way you can get any better is by listening to your audience
- Kami Watson Huyse: You have to know what people are saying about you before you do anything about it.
- Tim Marklein pointed out: The challenge is the companies don't always listen the way that you would want them to, that is, very often, they listen but ignore the focus group's recommendation or listen but choose a less direct response
- Marcel's great point: speed of response is critical. The longer you wait, the less of the audience will see you're participating. That is, if you're the 40th comment on a blog, fewer of the commentors will ever even see your comment.
- Phil Gomes: instead of focusing on crisis communications, focus on monitoring in order to unearth opportunities
- Sally Falkow made a point about why we listen--so we know where our customers hang out and what they care about.
- Steve Rosenbaum spoke on "engaging" versus "being ruled by customers." Good points--listen and evaluate seriously
- Todd Defren making a point of listening AROUND your brand, not just ABOUT your brand--your customers' broader concerns.
- Marcel's great advice on listening at the point of need to listen around your brand--listen for problems your brand solves.
- Sam Lawrence: Listening is about adding that layer above the numbers and really paying attention and doing something about that.
- Marcel using a stunningly obvious metaphor: would you let the phone ring and not answer it? Or answer it and not respond? Wow.
- David Parmet: take what you hear and let your outgoing messages reflect what is coming in.
My major lessons learned:
- Listen around your brand, not just about it. Visit forums where people are talking about the concerns that your product might address and what other concerns they have as well. Just monitoring your company name isn't enough.
- Be a problem solver. Don't push what your brand is; listen to find out what relevent problems it can solve.
- Respond immediately. Right now. Go respond. A day is too long to wait. Two to four hours is the best response time within social media.
- Gather a team to monitor mentions and concerns, meet, evaluate and choose your response. Not every vocal minority needs attention, but every customer service issue does.
- Listening makes you better. Acting on what you hear makes you fantastic.
Did I miss anything? BTW, thanks to Chris Brogan for bringing together such an incredible batch of innovators to feed our think tanks!