The Listening Side of Social Media

For a lot of businesses, social media are viewed as new avenues for message outreach. While this is a major benefit of social media as part of a communications strategy, there is one key task that must be done consistently in order to ensure social media success – listening.

Maria Ogneva, director of social media at Attensity, recently posted on Mashable “10 Steps for Successful Social Media Monitoring.” She writes that monitoring social media can seem daunting, but in the end it ultimately completes your social media experience.

Monitoring social media is different from measuring. Measuring, in effect, is determining quantity, but monitoring social media is establishing quality. For our clients, we strive to make sure every social media interaction delivers maximum power. And the only way to do that is to listen and observe what is being said about your company and your industry.

Ogneva’s 10 steps are:

1. Define an objective. Don’t just say you want to monitor because “everyone is doing it.” Maybe you want to know what is being said about your brand or you’re looking to stay on top of customer service queries.
2. Decide where to monitor. Where do your key stakeholders “hang out” online?
3. Decide what to monitor. Pinpointing the appropriate keywords and tags is crucial.
4. Prioritize. Social media can seem overwhelming, so focus on what outlets are most important and relevant.
5. Develop a plan. How will you respond to positive/negative feedback?
6. Involve others. Make sure you’re disseminating feedback, tweets, Facebook posts and blog comments to the appropriate person in your organization.
7. Listen first. Ogneva puts it perfectly: “Before you ever open your digital mouth, listen and observe the culture of the community, interactions between members, how influence is expressed, and even if there’s a particular vernacular.”
8. Inbound vs. outbound conversations. These two have different rules for engagement. Outbound means you’re going out and participating in conversations with others, so it’s not always appropriate to self-promote. Inbound means people are coming to you in search of specific information, so promoting your company or product then might make more sense.
9. Build relationships. Identify spheres of influence and engage with leaders in these circles. Comment on their blogs, chat with them, get to know them personally and professionally, and maybe even meet them in person at a professional event. Never go into it with the sole expectation of getting something out of it.
10. Select tools that match your strategy. Find monitoring tools that fit in with the social media outlets you chose in Step #2. And be sure these monitoring tools ultimately help you reach your objective from Step #1.