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We Care: 5 Easy Steps to Make Listening a Form of Activity

We Care: 5 Easy Steps to Make Listening a Form of Activity

By Anne Deeter Gallaher

Are you tired of reading and hearing about Twitter? You’re bombarded by social media seminars. And now your clients have started asking whether their businesses should have a LinkedIn account, a Facebook fan page, a Twitter profile, or all of the above. (For a complete social media platform base, you’ll also need a blog, a YouTube account, Flickr, and Digg!) It’s time to conquer social media anxiety and join the conversation.

Where should you begin? With the same basic communications protocol @DaleCarnegie explained in 1936. In chapter four of How to Win Friends and Influence People, “An Easy Way to Become a Good Conversationalist,” Carnegie writes about former Harvard president Charles W. Eliot, who said, “There is no mystery about successful business [conversation]. Exclusive attention to the person speaking to you…Nothing else is so flattering as that.” Carnegie observed that “Dr. Eliot’s listening was not mere silence, but a form of activity.”

For a business owner, the thought of paying employees or agencies to listen in silence in social media channels seems wasteful. Businesses need customers, not conversation monitors. Or do they?

The most successful businesses understand their markets, their customers, and their suppliers. The best companies are futurists, trendseekers, customer-centric, and great listeners. The quickest way to forge connections in all these areas is the public timeline, and the ROI can be immediate. By following Ford’s @ScottMonty or @comcastcares you’ll quickly discover the value they bring to their companies just by listening.

Although it’s hard to convince management and clients that being productive now includes listening to hundreds of 140-character tweets or reading industry blog posts from consumer bloggers, that’s precisely the truth. New media has snatched new mindshare, and business media channels no longer cater to the elite. Consumer opinion rules.

To ease into the conversations, here are some simple steps to help you find and listen to people in the social media sphere:

1. Choose one or two platforms to engage in. While you are “doing” business—producing, servicing, selling—smart companies are listening to conversations about their competition and searching the public timeline for opportunities to create their own Blue Ocean Strategy. Listening on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and reading blog posts from consumers in your industry provides enough data to develop a competitive landscape. What’s your competition doing? Who are their customers? Is there a need being unfulfilled? Is there a weakness? Is there a service delivered unsatisfactorily, hence an opportunity? You’ll find your answers in social media channels.

2. Choose what topics to listen in on. Dedicate at least one hour per day to explore conversations of interest and consequence. On Twitter, use the Search function to find people talking about your products or to discover wholesale conversations on your topic—energy, analytics, IT, commercial real estate, non-profits. On Tweetdeck, you can organize your columns by topics and listen to real-time, continuous conversations. As a branding firm, we listen to @Wegmans, @Ford, @comcastcares, @JetBlue, and @Gevalia. We listen to streaming topics which are connoted by a hashtag—anyone talking about #IABC, #marketing, #PR, #likeminds, #entrepreneurs, and #CEOs is noteworthy to us. It won’t take long to find pertinent topics to listen to and influencers in your fields of interest.

3. Choose who to listen to within a topic. You can’t possibly listen to everyone who’s sharing online, but you can discern who is sharing the best content and who has valuable connections. Find the industry experts by evaluating their tweets. Unfollow the people who don’t add value. We listen to PR colleagues @HowellMarketing, @MikeLizun, @SueYoungMedia, @thinkBIG_Blog, @AmberCadabra, @demicooper, and @kimschaumann around the world and learn from them. We read their case studies and comment on their blogs.

Who are the influencers in your field? Glen Gilmore (@TrendTracker) has developed such a strong knowledge-flow and group of followers that he is a media channel himself. The quality and value of his tweets attracts more than 60,000 followers who use him as a Search engine. Follow the people he tweets and retweets.

4. Listen to countertrend and divergent views. Try not to follow only like minds. Listen to those who rebuke social media and who have opposing political, trade, and business views. Learn why people feel social media is a fad and from that column, you will discover more influencers. Read a mashup of blog posts and comments from sites not related to your field to make your own product and consumer research richer. Regardless of industry, listen to local (@CPBJ, @andreacecil, @bydanielvictor) and national media (@WSJ and @USAToday) and local and national businesses (@Starbucks, @DunkinDonuts, @JetBlue, @mayoclinic, @Nordstrom). Listen to leaders and CEOs like @CEO_INGDIRECT, @jack_welch, @shelisrael, and @Scobleizer.

5. Build a rich personal and business community by listening. You can quickly discover where @SuzyWelch is on her new book tour, what new fast food account @ThePowerofSmall won, or what @garyvee says about wine. Your community on Twitter will be filled with people who are passionate about writing books, raising children, starting businesses, running governments, protesting governments, training for Ironman competitions, and curing cancers. Listening to them is the foundation to building your community.

Frank Eliason is @comcastcares and tweets from Philadelphia. His job is to “listen” to Comcast customers who seek his advice and tech help or who need to rant or rave about Comcast’s service. His real value is to be the ears of the corporation. The biggest signal he sends Comcast customers is that he is listening to them—Comcast Cares.

By engaging in social media for marketing, knowledge, or friendships, you are initiating a two-way conversation that begins with listening. And that sends a powerful message that says “I care.”

If you missed my first “Featured” article title: “Twitter: Inane Chatter or Powerful Conversation Channel?” just click on the link. It’s a Powerful In-depth Case Study on Ford Motors Enjoy

The Deeter Gallaher Group, a Harrisburg-based marketing firm, has always taken pride in its tagline: “Powerful language. Smart marketing.SM” The advent of social media, however, has caused us to internally recognize a new ethos: “Powerful conversation. Smart marketing.”

Anne Deeter Gallaher is owner and CEO of the Deeter Gallaher Group LLC, a marketing/ad/PR firm in Mechanicsburg, PA, delivering Powerful language. Smart marketing?.

She can be reached at ADG [AT] DeeterGallaherGroup.com and @AnneDGallaher on Twitter.

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