Listen, Stop Shouting

One of the biggest mistakes that businesses make on social networks is forget that they’re meant to be social. How should you be social? Start by shutting up and listening.

We’ve all had some form of relative or superior let us know some version of the fact that we’re born with two ears and one mouth for a reason. If I was in the mood to digress, I’d probably want to delve into how cool it would be to have two mouths, but for now I’ll hold back. OK, just one: I can’t begin to tell you how great it would be to harmonise with myself in the shower. If you haven’t had that little talk yet, then essentially what that relative or superior was trying to tell us was to shut up and listen more. And they were right.

So why are you not listening on social media?

Hopefully you’re not, but at least 90% of the brand owners reading this blog won’t be listening enough on social networks related to their brand. Why not? Because listening is harder than talking. It’s easy to talk about how great you are, it’s harder to try to filter out something relevant to you from the white noise. When was the last time that the easy option got you a better result for your business than the one that took some effort?

Benefits of listening

• Discover conversations about the brand and its products
• Hear ideas on how to improve products and services
• Find influential social media users in the industry, to help spread your message
• Find potential customers with intent to buy

Oh yea, and:

• You won’t be yet another brand on Facebook or Twitter sending a million and one “BUY MY PRODUCT” updates each and every day. I’m a consumer too, and I’m bored of that. If you’re a personal user of social networks, then I have no doubt you are too!

How to listen

This is a massive subject, and I try to keep my blogs to something you can digest the point of pretty quick. So for now I will give you one simple way to start listening to the world of social media. The screenshot at the top of this post shows a small portion of the setup of in Hootsuite that I run for a client (any guesses what they sell?). All I’ve done there is to run a few searches, and turn them into streams that update automatically every ten minutes. That gives me a very simple way to keep my eye on some potential opportunities for the client, and act on them when necessary. Just doing this will give you a social presence far more power than just putting out a million “BUY MY PRODUCT” updates, while scratching your head as to why it’s not working.

If you want me to go into more depth on the subject of how to listen then I’m more than happy to. Just let me know here, on Twitter or Facebook, and I’ll get it done once a few of you want it!