Posts Tagged ‘listening’


A Listening Exercise – Gaining Information and Encouraging Action from Your Social Media Communities

Monday, June 13th, 2011
Flickr Image: Sebastian Fritzon

Flickr Image: Sebastian Fritzon

Valerie Simon

Listening, as I define it, is not a passive exercise. Listening is not a matter of simply hearing words. Listening requires a concentrated method of digesting the information, and using that information to take action. So like any exercise program, I’ll recommend you do a quick check up before starting to strengthen your listening efforts.

Check Up
Take a quick pulse: Review your business objectives and marketing plan. Keep in mind that social media participation should be integrated with your overall communications plan.

Set Goals:  What business objectives will your social media participation help you to achieve?

  • Sales
  • Donations
  • Event attendance
  • Customer Service (response/retention/loyalty)
  • Brand Awareness
  • Crowd sourcing/ product development
  • Membership/Admissions
  • Communications amongst different stakeholders
  • Recruitment
  • Thought leadership

Warm Ups
Who are you trying to reach? Consider what social media channels will be most beneficial for your organization. Stretch. Extend beyond Facebook and Twitter. Consider Flickr, YouYube, Tumblr, LinkedIn and seek out forums and blogs with strong communities.  BurrellesLuce offers several tools to help get you warmed up quickly, including ContactsPlus™, which helps you to identify new blogs by matching up a current release with those bloggers who are writing on similar topics, and Social Media Monitoring and Engagement solution, Engage121, which enables you to explore what is being said across social media channels and effectively build and manage your online communities.

Speed
Are you planning/prepared to provide immediate responses? The W Hotels “Whatever/Whenever” promise may well be on its way to becoming the standard, rather than the exception, in customer service. Social media allows stories to break and quickly spread at any time of day. I encourage those using BurrellesLuce’s Social Media Monitoring and Engagement solution, to experiment with setting up alerts using filters such as Klout rank or sentiment to sift through the noise and make sure that they are advised of critical information whenever it breaks. Of course a quick, well thought out and efficient response across all channels is critical.

Strength
Do some heavy lifting, err, searching. Investigate the current conversations being said about you, your competitors and the industry. Identify recurring themes and study trends. Review sentiment and compare how the conversations vary across different platforms. Identify key influencers and pay attention to the language and tone. What topics evoke passionate responses?

Flexibility
Don’t get stuck monitoring the same keywords you have always deemed important. As you study industry trends and influencers, adjust your searches accordingly. Begin listening to your communities even when they are not actively speaking about “relevant” topics. What do they care about? Consider what new topics or audiences may be interested in your organization.

Endurance
Set yourself up to succeed over the long term. Put in place a structure to collect the data that will allow you to learn from both your communities and your own social behaviors. There are a myriad of ways to measure social media buzz, sentiment, link tracking, share of voice, fans and followers, geo-location check-ins… slow down and take another pulse check. Review business objectives and consider what metrics can best indicate whether your activity is supporting those business objectives. As you embark upon this listening exercise, look at the data in a number of different ways.

Cool Down
Evaluate all of the data you have collected and all your new knowledge regarding trends and influencers. Go back to your business goals and consider how you will align your social media activity to meet those goals. What channels are best suited for your organization? Where should your voice be heard? Where can you build a strong community that will offer business results? Participating in social media will require an investment of time, so consider the time and resources you can devote. 

Prepare to Play
Listening exercise complete, you are ready for the big game… engagement. But that, my friends, is another post!

What would you add to your listening exercise? What activities are included in your daily listening routine? Share your thoughts with me and the readers of BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas.

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Posted in Advertising/Marketing, Career Advice, Media Measurement, Media Monitoring, Media Relations, Public Relations, Social Media | 2 Comments »

Online Media Monitoring: An Essential Part of Listening

Friday, September 3rd, 2010

Online Media MonitoringIs it really necessary for companies to monitor social media in order to interact with their customers? Or is there a better way to observe and report on your client base?

Rick Mans believes this to be so in his blog post entitled, Why Companies Should Not Invest in Online Monitoring, featured on Social Media Today. He writes that “If companies really cared about what was going on, they would have invested in such a social infrastructure that complaints/news about their products and services would come to them in no time.”

He goes even further by stating “…monitoring tools are a poor man’s solution to engage with your audience… when you are in touch with your audience and your audience can find you and you have created a group of loyal people (brand ambassadors / evangelists) around your online presence, you won’t need monitoring tools to discover complaints.”

This runs counterpoint to a contention of the modern business age that all social media must be monitored in order to truly be in touch with all of your customer feedback.

However, I believe the point Mans attempts to make is that if the proper feedback infrastructure is created internally, then the monitoring of online media will only be redundant. Moreover, no news should be breaking in the world of social media that you shouldn’t have been made aware of and are already working towards either finding a solution or a way to profit from it.

In a perfect world this may be so. Even if companies create their own customer feedback rail network, they still must possess the ability to anticipate the response in the social media world in order to best deal directly with their client base. After all, if a customer truly cares enough, they will vent or praise in their preferred online outlet (be that Facebook, Twitter, or some other forum) regardless of whether a company maintains a presence there or not.

Thus, it is imperative that we do both – monitor online media and genuinely listen to and engage with constituents. That is why BurrellesLuce is working even harder to create even more tools to help you listen, manage, and respond to the activities taking place in both traditional and online news, social media, and broadcast. Stay tuned in the coming month(s) as we unveil new ways for you to effectively take charge of your WorkFlow.  

In the meantime, what do you think? Is it critical to incorporate online monitoring into the larger engagement funnel or is it merely a show put on by companies? How are you using online monitoring in your public relations and marketing efforts? Please share your thoughts with me and the readers of Fresh Ideas.

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Posted in Client Services, Media Monitoring, Public Relations, Social Media | No Comments »

Highlights From 2010 PRSA Travel & Tourism: Sree Sreenivasan, Columbia University, & Johna Burke, BurrellesLuce

Thursday, July 1st, 2010

Transcript -

JOHNA BURKE:  Hello, this is Johna Burke with BurrellesLuce, and I’m here at the PRSA Travel and Tourism Conference and I’m joined by Sree.

Sree, will you please introduce yourself?

SREE SREENIVASAN:  Hi, folks, I’m Sree Sreenivasan. I’m a dean of student affairs at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism. And I teach in the digital media program there.

BURKE:  And I’ve heard Sree speak a couple of times, and I always take away great value from the presentation. You know, I think it’s interesting that you were an early adopter of Google, but for things like Google Buzz and Google Wave, you haven’t quite seen the value of those things yet.  So I think you have a really healthy perspective of how you look at things, and can you share some of those tips with the audience now about how they should try to find things and work them into what works for them as opposed to just adopting everything that’s out there?

SREENIVASAN:  Sure. This is, I like to say, very–or in a very early time in social media. This is where the Internet was in 1996, where radio was in 1912, where TV was in 1950, which means there’s a lot of new stuff coming all the time and you have to decide, though, whether to jump on things or not.

My own rule is, I’ll only work with something once it fits into my work flow and my life flow.  Work flow, life flow.  If it doesn’t do both, it’s not for me.  That doesn’t mean it’s not for other people.

So for example, Google Buzz and Google Wave are great examples of things that people love and thousands, millions of people maybe around the world use it. In fact, we all one day woke up and were on Google Buzz without knowing it because it’s something every Gmail user was on Google Buzz.  But what I’ve—I say is find when–only when it’s time for that technology for you should you use it.  So an example is Facebook.  I work at a university and Facebook was available very early.  I probably joined two years after everybody else did and couldn’t quite figure out how I can use it in my work till even after that.  Same thing with Twitter. Once you find something, then you are ready for it, then you use it.  Don’t panic, don’t worry that everybody’s using something that’s not important. Use the things that work for you.

The other thought about all of this is that it’s going to keep changing, and what we need to build is an ear that is listening to these new ideas and then looking for where we can–we can come aboard. Right now geolocation’s very big. I think it’s going to get bigger. Social media, I think, is much bigger than we imagined, and especially PR people need to be paying attention.

BURKE:  Great, Sree.  And where can people find you online and in social media?

SREENIVASAN:  Sure. My main web address is sree.net.  So if you Google “Sree” I come up first.  But Sree Stinks come ups–comes up afterwards, which doesn’t matter because the main thing is that I come up first.  But you can also find me on Twitter @sreenet, S-R-E-E-N-E-T, and on Facebook I have a page where I’m posting tech tips, job ideas, which is sree–sreetips.  So it’s www.facebook.com/sreetips.

BURKE:  Great.  Thank you so much.

SREENIVASAN:  Thanks. 

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Posted in Industry Events, Online Video, Public Relations, Social Media, Technology | No Comments »

The Marketer’s New Clothes

Tuesday, June 29th, 2010
Flickr Image: gfpeck
Flickr Image: gfpeck

First appeared on Social Media Marketing Magazine, June 24, 2010.

My friends and I have joked over the years about CEOs (who will remain nameless) taking on the persona of the “Emperor” in the Hans Christian Anderson tale, The Emperor’s New Clothes. It was all fun and games until we let a CFO friend in on the joke, who suggested that, perhaps, marketing and public relations professionals are the scoundrels in this analogy. Ouch! This seemed harsh, but it gave me pause to reflect and better educate my CFO friend on why we are not the scoundrels.

In the spirit of his DNA, the CFO only responded to the numbers. Not just any numbers, but those that impacted the bottom line of the business. Certainly, this was the beginning of a beautiful relationship. He opened my eyes to the importance of every activity driving the bottom line, and I opened his eyes to the importance of the customer experience. Without evaluation and measurement, it was hard to know where you’ve been, where you are, where you’re going, and the most efficient way to get there.

While he appreciated the metrics I was using to manage the department (the outputs and the outtakes) and pointed out that perhaps those were simply the bolts of invisible fabric, clothing my CEO (and organization) with those metrics would be just like sending him out into the crowd naked. This was a pointed lesson that took hold and has stayed with me throughout the years.

In this analogy, is social media the cloth, the crowd, or the golden thread?

Social media is the golden thread. It’s real and it’s quantifiable. It’s how you use it in the weave of your fabric that makes it an effective cover of your efforts.

In social media, one of the easiest metrics to quantify is the conversion of an unknown to a qualified prospect. While this is an important metric to the marketing department to understand how your campaigns are performing, it’s only when the conversion becomes a sale (or outcome equivalent) that it really matters to the organization as a whole. The same stands true with engagement. While engagement is important, we should all look for opportunities to listen and learn from our customers. Until there’s a marriage or the deal is closed, it’s really all ceremony.

The moral of the story?

  • Know the difference between metrics necessary to manage your department and those important to the business objectives of your organization.
  • Don’t allow your organization or CEO to be naked while pretending to be clothed.
  • As a matter of strategy, make sure your organization’s “suit” is made of only the finest fabric, woven with solid metrics that are visible to the crowds (investors and stakeholders).
  • Don’t invest your time or resources in anything—including and perhaps especially, social media—that doesn’t cover your organization as you venture out into the crowds.

In the final analysis, trust your eyes, and if something doesn’t look right, say so. Even if it isn’t a popular thing to do.

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Posted in Advertising/Marketing, Media Measurement, Public Relations, Social Media | No Comments »

Don’t Listen To Your Clients, Really?

Tuesday, April 20th, 2010

“The customer is always right.” How often have we heard that expression? In fact, it’s become rule number one or an unofficial mantra for good client relations.

If that’s the case, and it is indeed true that the customer is always right, then we should probably just poll our clients and ask them what they want from us, right? Then we can simply deliver on those promises to ensure the ideal client services relationship.

Mark Cuban writes from a different perspective in his post entitled, Why You Should Never Listen to Your Customers. He says that listening Don't Listen to Your Clients, Really?solely to what the customer wants is risky and you do so at your own peril. It can create a “never ending revolving door of trying to respond to customer requests… Resources and brainpower that can be applied to ‘inventing the future’ instead are being used to catch up with features that (lock you) in the past.”

He proposes that instead of simply responding to your clients’ concerns and being reactionary, the real goal should be to anticipate what your customers are going to want and deliver it to them proactively.

“Someone is always out there who thinks they have a better idea than you have. A better solution than you have. A better or more efficient product than you have,” says Cuban.

He closes by saying that your customers can only “tell you the things that are broken and how they want to be made happy.” However, this is not something to bet the farm (or your business) on.

You still need to determine for yourself what your customers are going to need, want, and desire for tomorrow, the next day, and 20 years down the road. Harry Hoover also touches upon this point in his post entitled, “Stop Listening to Your Customers.” He writes: “You must ask the right questions of your customers and then figure out what it is that they are really saying. Your customers are smart and can provide some excellent input. It’s our job as marketers to ferret out the true meaning of that input.”

As marketing, public and client relations professionals, how are you listening to your clients and incorporating their feedback to meet their needs while balancing those of your company or agency and remaining proactive? Are you utilizing CRM systems, surveys, or social media communities, among others tools to help you get to the heart of what clients really want? Please share your thoughts with me and the readers of BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas.

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Posted in Advertising/Marketing, Client Services, Public Relations | 4 Comments »

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